Last night I dreamt I
went to the beach house again. I appeared to be standing just outside the white
wooden fence, wearing nothing but my bathing suit and a damp towel around me.
It seemed strange to me that I was cold, and that the wind was crisp against my
bare skin. It wasn’t the usual balmy, humid breeze. Instead, it was biting cold
against my nose and cheeks, sending goose bumps up my bare arms.
The wooden fence was
white, but the paint was chipping everywhere. It was like the popular
shabby-chic style gone totally wrong. Some areas of the fence were void of
white paint altogether.
My gaze wandered past
the fence, peering above the splintered wood into the sandy yard of the beach
house. The sand was a grimy grey-brown color, small tendrils of it whispering
away from each little pile, dancing in the air and disappearing into the gloomy
shaded hues of the evening. It seemed alive in the sharp tug of the wind, waltzing
around like an uneven cluster of dancers, leaving behind the dirt and lint that
polluted it so.
I was suddenly aware of
the fact that I was climbing over the fence, driven by curiosity and the need
to move some warmth into my body. I landed less-than-gracefully on the filthy
sand, grains of it sticking to my wet towel. Like in all dreams, the gentle
pain from the fall was vague and surreal. I got up and dusted myself off, the
damp grains of sand brushing off of me, carried in swirls by the crisp wind.
I turned towards the
beach house, and was surprised to see that it was suddenly masked by a row of
palm trees that hadn’t been there before. The leaves of the trees seemed to sag
eerily, bending and swaying in the tug of the wind, rustling softly. Usually
the sound would have been calming to me, but instead I felt a nagging heaviness
in my stomach, pulling at my chest in uncomfortable nausea. My knees felt weak,
and I realized what the feeling was. Fear. I was all alone, with a line of dark
trees swaying in unison in front of me. They felt like a wall of demons
defending their lair of fire, large and intimidating, ready to pounce at my
every movement. I found myself shrinking back protectively, never taking my
eyes off of them.
I moved forward slowly,
cautiously, until I was right underneath the giant trees. They were even more frightening
from beneath. Towering high above me, they continued to sway, leaves spread out
like menacing claws of doom, threatening me, forcing me to a halt. Every nerve
of my body was on edge. I felt the adrenaline coursing through my veins, my
brain screaming at me to run, run! But I was completely frozen in place, numb
with terror. I couldn’t move a single muscle, despite my mind’s persistent
yelling. My muscles were fighting my will, twitching indecisively and complaining
about the constant strain between choosing to move and choosing to stay rooted
in the same position for all eternity.
Just like in like in all
dreams, it seemed to me that I stayed there for hours, waiting for wind to calm
down and the trees to finally disappear. But they never did, and so my nerves
eventually released their rigid tension. My muscles were vaguely sore from the
long battle with my mind, but the pain was pushed aside quickly as my subconscious
turned me around to look at the beach house.
It stood there, alone,
barely four meters ahead of me, yet it seemed so much further away. It was as
if I was looking at it from a distance, watching it grow smaller and smaller
and more alone, surrounded by a vast expanse of murky sand. The fence was gone
from my vision, as well as the pillars of demons that I had already overcome.
The house was alone.
It was not how I had
remembered it. In fact, it seemed to me as though I was seeing it for the first
time. The sand just before the front porch steps was uneven and bent with
dozens of footprints. The steps themselves seemed to creek just from looking at
them, splintered edges jabbing out on all sides, threatening to harm any intruder
of the house.
Was I an intruder? Confusion
covered my mind in a hazy blanket. Of course I wasn’t. This was home, wasn’t
it?
My gazed raked over the
rest of the house: the wooden pillars of the front porch, weakly supporting the
broken structure of the cottage; the veranda itself, chipping white paint
everywhere; and the pitiful set of rocking chairs, swaying back and forth as
though an eerie figure had just gotten up and left them a matter of seconds
ago. The roof of the house was a mere skeleton of splintered wood, bare of any
straw or shingles that used to keep the rain out. The windows of the house were
dark rectangles of shattered glass, betraying no glimpse of what was inside the
house, broken shutters of chipped blue paint thudding incessantly against the sides.
My fear of the place was
gone by then, substituted with surges of inevitable melancholy. It wasn’t
nostalgia I was suffering from – I knew there was nothing to be done – but somehow
I still knew that this place was not the way that it should have been. It
should have been different. It was supposed to alive with laughter and color,
but instead there was only brokenness and misery.
By then, the last of any
spare light from the sky was gone, replaced by a dark, moonless expanse of dark
clouds. The wind was colder then, and I wanted to go home. I looked to my left,
for the first time catching a glimpse of the sea itself: dark, colorless water,
glistening in the limited starlight.
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