[It was nothing like I thought dreaming of him would be like. There were no dazzling smiles.]

I was outside, in a forest of never-ending tree trunks, all tall and thin, impossibly reaching toward the sky. Though under a thick canopy of trees, there was still plenty of sun light. It spilled through the holes in the leafy roof above, and lit up the ground around me. I wasn’t alone, either. To my right walked a boy, slender like the trees. He had strong limbs; his fingers held tight to mine while we walked effortlessly, dodging tree trunks and stepping lightly over fallen logs in a sort of airy-dance. Our bodies twisted playfully with each springy step, and I felt something erupt inside of me. Violent vibrations leaked from my core, trickled all the way to my fingertips and every other limb on my body. I felt his laughing vibrations echo mine, although we created no verbal sound to disturb our surroundings.


I was content there in our singing place, and looked up at him. I wanted to register his personal details to what was easily becoming my favorite memory. But I couldn’t look away from his face; featureless, it was unrecognizable but calm and completely captivating though I had never seen it before. He had no name I knew of. I was more in love with this serene creature than I ever imagined I could be with a human I knew.


He looked down at me, a mouth suddenly appearing and smiled, his lips quickly pulling back, exposing every one of his teeth in a flashing, modest grin. My eyes moved rapidly, skillfully over the hallow smudges where his eyes should have been, his cheekbones, his nose, his jaw line. Nothing was familiar as I hoped it would be, but I was glad, content in our stare-lock, as we continued our harmonious walk through a forest I had never seen before.
We followed no path but knew where we were going as if our journey had been predicted; as if our happiness was foreseen, and that it was scheduled to end now.


We stepped from the bright wood onto the shoreline of a lake, one so huge it had tiny waves breaking in a quick rhythmic pattern on the stony earth. We walked toward it, never hesitating as the sky grew progressively more overcast, darkening the shadows on his body, under his eyes. Still, clothed and feeling the cooler air now, we walked right into the water which almost immediately swelled to our waistlines. Under my feet I could feel the cold ground, slimy wet sand with pebbles rolling as I shifted my feet. Had I been in my waking state, and had this been a real lake, I would not, for sure, allow my feet to rest on the floor. But I was sleeping, and the sickly feeling below me didn’t bother me at the time, so we stood still, side-by-side, hand-in-hand.


There was no one around for us to talk to. There were no critical movements made toward one another, no speaking or even breathing. Waist deep in the cool water, our clothes swayed loosely in the light currents around our bodies. I don’t know long we waited in the water, but it was time enough for me to feel uneasy in my watch along the forest line of trees that seemed to take on a deep purple or magenta color the longer I stared, strained my eyes to find movement. There was none. We were utterly alone in the approaching darkness, rapidly covering everything in almost complete black.


It was during this abnormally still moment, covered in the dark dingy grey of approaching doom, that a tiny, naked baby-doll sized body dropped from the sky. It moved slowly through the dark shadows and I sucked my air in sharply, extending my hands to find the body was just beyond my grasp. I recognized her at once. The baby looked like a doll I had wanted as a child that was filled with water to create a heavier, more lifelike feel; she was supposed to be more real. She fell just beyond my grasp and landed with no sound of a splash when breaking the calm water’s surface in front of me.


I spoke for the first time. “The baby!” my voice was alert, a surprise warning, and he glanced down at me when I removed my hand from his. His face was suddenly horror-struck, not calming me as it had before, but urging me with its worry. Still, I waited too long to look away from his featureless face.


When I plunged myself under the surface of the water, everything changed, morphed into a nightmare. The water was ice cold on my skin, and with my every downward frantic stroke it cut against my skin like long blade slices. Still, I kept trying. The once crystal water was suddenly clouded with dark, had become a bottomless pit filled with weeds that grabbed at my wrists and tangled around my ankles. I knew I had to breathe soon, but my arms kept up their frantic flailing, hoping to touch the rock hard body that had fallen, dead cold, from the sky in front of me. My chest ached now with not only worry but a burning sensation that came only with the lack of oxygen. I knew the moment I would decide to trade my search for air I would have no more hope, no more chance of finding the little stiff corpse in the deep water.


I should have been afraid of drowning, but I wasn’t. I should have been more afraid of bumping the icy, solid fingers than not finding them, but I wasn’t. I should have been more afraid of the fingers actually reaching back for mine in a single quick movement like a true nightmare. But I wasn’t.


In the endless pit below me, the only thing I was able to see was darkness and the legs of the boy who stood next to me moments before that still somehow stood tall and strong in the never ending pond depths. I reached for his legs, my last bubble of oxygen escaping, and I screamed a hundred times that I was drowning, that I was too weak to make it to the surface on my own, that I needed his strong hands to guide me to air as they guided me through the woods. But they never came. And somehow, when my mouth broke the water’s surface I saw nothing but his horrible sad face glairing down at me. This face was one I knew. This face belonged to Peter, and he looked at me with ruined features, his brow creased, pulled toward the middle of his forehead in a strained position. The perfect mouth that always gave me my favorite smile was cracked open, its corners pulled downward, as he exhaled. He saw I had no baby in my hands, that the expression on my own face closely resembled his, and when I reached for him to pull me from the water he only closed his eyes and turned his face heavenward to ignore my plea.



I woke suddenly, my entire body shaking in reaction to his defeated face, my left and right hands reaching for something aimlessly in my tangled sheets.