Sweet Gruesome Dreams

Hedra Dearhart

I scream so loud, the sound comes out in short, choppy gunfire bursts. My throat aches with the force exerted from it. Molten globs of pain slide past my vocal cords and burn away the encore.

Around me, guardians have taken root, upright in mounds with sharp sleeves that whisper around me. They lash softly against my flesh. Cuts burst open and ooze blood and sweat and desperation. Braided strands of their hair stand tall, swaying gently in the breeze. The fingers of my watchers are sticky silken prisons that cocoon me. My toes curl and grow downward. They root and mingle with those of my keepers until we are one entity.

Shadow is my friend. It swallows me. I crouch deep into its bottomless belly. Tiny bursts of light about the heads towering over me could be bombs detonating millions of light years away, a fragment of time slowly expanding into the only safety I can find.

Voice warbles through the maze of protectors, slow and insane. Kendra… Tones that terrorize drift into my shivering brain. I feel reality rushing toward me before snapping back. What I know, what I think is happening, is attached to a relentless rubber band. My puppet master strums the thread until I’m too dizzy to breathe.

"I’ll find you, a low promise comes too close to my safe place. Its hot, fetid breath nuzzles my face. When I find you, I’m going to squash you like a mosquito, the plump, buzzing pest that you are. Hide all you like, Kendra. You’ll stay down there forever, just wait and see."

The muscle deep in my chest cavity slams a bruising rhythm against bone. The world around me quakes a temblor, shuddering out a fear so strong, I can taste it. It’s sweet like honeydew. Odd. I think terror should be bitter.

Waves of calm, or perhaps acceptance crash over me. The lights above fade away to pinpoints. My world sways side to side, a pendulum winding down. And as suddenly as it began, it stops.

There is no air, no sky, no damp softness beneath me. Only shadow cradles me in its welcoming embrace. My eyes close. The tension bleeds out of my throat. Relief is the tonic that spreads through my limbs and lulls them to sleep.

Lub-dub.

My lungs release a low puff of a sigh.

Lub...dub…

The quivering in my skull stills.

Lub. Dub.

A final lub, and the drum beats no more.

*~*~*

Freak.

The low insult came over my left shoulder and hissed into my ear. It was accompanied by a hard shove with a biker-styled boot. My desk spun in a forty-five-degree arc with a loud squawk of metal against tile.

Ms. Tyson’s chin snapped up. Neck bones popped. Who did that? Hedra?

Sorry, Ms. Tyson, a high pitched mumble sounded from another gallery of the seventh circle of hell, my English Composition class.

She peered through the centers of the magnification lenses that passed as eyewear and shook her head. It was ever so slight a movement, but her jowls shook like a mastiff shaking away his nap time drool.

Please right your desks, class. Orderly surroundings make for orderly minds. Now… Hedra, would you please read your composition for the class?

God, what a loser, demon-boy whispered at close to 30 decibels.

Who said that? She rapped her 12-inch ruler on the desk, an old school call to order. Declan Dennison, was that you?

He cleared his voice. No, ma’am. But Hedra already told her story.

"They are compositions, Declan. Your assignment was a composition on the theme of surrealism.

Hedra?

I already finished, Ms. Tyson.

Blessedly, the bell pealed and rent the tension in the room like a proverbial veil.

Declan kicked my chair back around into original row formation and sneered, Psycho.

I watched him slink out of the room with his new-found gang. He flipped a lock of chin-length hair out of his kohl-black eyes and flipped the finger at Ms. Tyson on the way to his next class.

When his eyes were blue and not caked with black goop, a whole seven months ago, leather boots used to be Air Jordans. The black leather jacket replaced one with a letter and our high school colors. He was a rising star on the football team. Before a wicked twist of fate changed everything, I didn’t think anything could turn him into a stranger. Back then, Declan Dennison was my best friend.

He leaned casually against a bank of lockers when I slipped out of Ms. Tyson’s classroom. I hugged my books to my chest, armor against another attack. My eyes couldn’t miss how different Declan looked now, yet he had the nerve to call me a freak, a psycho.

Unfortunately, that was the prevailing sentiment at Westridge High. Hedra Dearhart, mind freak. I’m not like that illusionist guy. (Declan seems to have adopted that appearance, though). My mom says that having a vivid imagination is what will pull me up from the midst of mediocrity and propel me to great heights, and that this so-called teasing only means people like me.

So I’m not as sure about that as she is, but I keep writing. In the margins of the newspaper, on the backs of napkins, inside notebooks, in the palm of my hand, I’ve been known to write random musings. The important stuff won’t be found there. That comes in a different space and time, and is stored accordingly.

Declan fell into step beside me. You do my trig assignment?

Go screw yourself, Declan. I’m not helping you out anymore.

Aww, are you still pissed about that thing in Tyson’s class?

He nudged my shoulder with one bulky arm. People only tease you because they don’t understand your enormous brain, Heddy.

Yeah, I’d heard. Check out the big head on Heddy.

I put a safe distance between us. I never thought you’d stoop to their level, Dennison. I hope you flunk trigonometry. I hope you end up in community college and flunk out there too. You’re gonna end up getting fired from flipping burgers at McDonald’s when you’re 35, if you’re lucky. But don’t worry, Declan. I’m sure your new Goth pals will hook you up with a sleeping bag in the back of somebody’s van.

He slapped one hand over his heart. I’m crushed.

The grin said otherwise, and the one thing I could still recognize about him confirmed it. His blue eyes twinkled brightly enough to make the rest of his ridiculous costume fade into the background.

Hey, Hedra, it’s not like you’re fooling anybody.

I spun the combination lock on my locker. I didn’t think I was the one trying.

A large hand slammed the door shut before I could open it completely. We all know these girls you write about are really you. You came close today. Kendra. Hedra. You’re the one who’s the freak. See, I can wash this off before I go home, but you... he tapped the top of my head with a blunt thump from an index finger, in here, nothing ever changes. Think about that, Miss Perfect.

The irony was, I thought of little else. Declan was right and wrong at the same time. The things I write trouble me. The characters aren’t me, but I see what they see and feel what they feel as if we are one person.

Part of me is afraid they’re real. What I can’t figure out is why I only see them in my nightmares, and if they really suffer in the ways I see when my eyes close at night.

Maybe Declan is right after all.

Chapter 2

In another night of suburban bliss, we plopped down in front of the television for a late dinner. It was almost nine and Dad was finally home, so Mom pulled the dried out roast from the oven and reheated the once-steamed broccoli in the microwave. Cold potato salad was hard for even my father’s workaholic bent to ruin.

Some lame sci-fi show was winding down, the two heroes wallowing in angst and unresolved sexual tension. Dad reached for the remote and punched a button. The channel information displayed. He muttered a curse. He hadn’t timed his arrival as well as he hoped. There was a solid ten minutes of conversation time before his nightly ritual began – Fox First, News at Nine – and silence was mandatory for the next hour.

Honey, did you tell your father about the essay you wrote for school today?

My mother, the eternal optimist. I think she believes that if she keeps forcing conversation between us that one day, a relationship will magically appear. Not so. I shook my head.

I’d rather not talk about it, Mom. Our assignment was a surreal theme, so –

I’m sure it was fascinating, Hedra. Caroline, did you see what I did with my Blackberry when I came in? Bob was supposed to email the specs on the new project I mentioned last month. I should really have a look at them, since I’ve got a few minutes.

It’s in your pocket, Howard, I said.

Hedra. Mom’s voice was a soft rebuke. Meanwhile, I probably could’ve lobbed f-bombs coupled with his name at him and he wouldn’t have noticed. Dad stared at the television in a growing haze.

Can you believe people watch this garbage?

Hey, I said, this garbage is aired on your favorite station. They obviously like catering to the lowest denominator.

Hedra! A bit more forceful this time, Mom’s tone grabbed my father’s attention.

He glanced at me. Perhaps you’re right, Hedra. News however, is news. I prefer mine early.

I sawed through a hunk of Mom’s once juicy pot roast. The marbled fat that should’ve leeched juicy goodness into the meat looked like translucent veins, hardened by atherosclerosis. Vegetarianism started looking like a good option. I could never figure out why Mom persisted in the belief that Dad would stroll through the door in time for dinner at six. It hadn’t happened in all the years I could remember. Even though not all seventeen of them are crystal clear in my mind, I’m pretty sure that smelly diapers, spit up, teething grouchiness and squalling noise were never enticing to someone like my dad.

Work was his defense against fatherhood. I wondered if he would’ve been different with Mom if I’d never been born. Then again, I might’ve given her something to do so she wouldn’t mind that he was seldom around.

Declan once asked if I ever thought about how my parents worked up the passion to get pregnant. I mimed gagging and slugged him in the arm.

Shut up, pervert.

Mom carved a jag out of memory lane. Hedra, have you finished your homework?

Yeah, Mom.

You’re not eating. Howard, tell Hedra to eat. She’s too thin. Don’t you think she’s too thin?

I felt something foreign, my father’s eyes. They raked over me, metal over dead autumn leaves.

For God’s sake, Caroline. At least her hair isn’t pink and she’s not sporting a hardware store on her face. Kind words from the invisible man. He hadn’t finished speaking before his attention turned back to the television. Fingers groped the sofa for the remote control. Volume rose, a cue that conversation was concluded.

I drifted out of the living room with my dinner and scraped the ruined meal into the garbage disposal. Mothers are supposed to worry about their kids, right? Shouldn’t fathers notice they have children? Shouldn’t something I do or say make him sit up and see me?

Suddenly Declan’s drastic appearance made sense to me – except for the fact I knew he hid it from his mother. She was a psychiatric nurse, and would’ve dragged him by the girly long bangs to the nearest clinic for drug testing, that is, if she didn’t just jab a needle into his arm herself, if she had a clue what he was doing behind her back.

His parents paid attention to such things.

My mom had good intentions, but if my life were a bull’s-eye and her interest were the arrow shooting toward it, I suspect it missed the mark by at least two zip codes.

Who cares what your kid looks like? It’s not like I’m on the cusp of anorexia (how 1980s) or bulimia (ditto on the popularity). It is not now, nor has it ever been my goal in life to inspire sonnets written to my beauty. Frankly, what I see in the mirror is the antithesis of feminine perfection or anything close to it. I’m too tall, built like a twelve year old boy (I’m done filling out at seventeen), and have this thin pointy beak that my father once said was reminiscent of Gonzo’s on the Muppet Show. (I had to Google it to figure out how bad his insult really was.) My lips inspire many a crude joke about collagen injections. My complexion borders translucent, and the hair color doesn’t help matters. It’s sort of a washed out dishwater blonde that Mom calls sunflower blonde, and has the texture and mass of a thoroughbred’s tail. As a result, I wear it yanked up into a knot tight enough to compress atoms, and have found the most god-awful horn-rimmed glasses manufactured to draw attention from my wholly undesirable features.

Whatever curves or potential might lie beneath my oversize clothing is irrelevant to me. I have one goal. Well, two if you want to be picky. I want to make it through school without being noticed, targeted, harassed or otherwise sticking out like a prickly saguaro, and two, I’d like to wake in the morning and remember nothing. It’s not a huge request, the latter specifically.

Something in my rear pocket tickled. Phone. Set on vibrate. Another one of Dad’s rules (which clearly didn’t apply to him). All cell phone activity must be muted during dinner and news hour. Heaven forbid he miss a single utterance on how the markets performed today.

I pulled it out of my pocket and stared at the screen.

D.D.

No. No, no, no. A millisecond before my finger touched the button to ignore the call, conscience whispered, it could be important. What if he’s come to his senses? Yeah. And what if he’s really that dude from Publisher’s Clearinghouse calling to tell me I won the ten million dollar prize?

What.

Good evening to you too, sunshine.

What do you want, Declan? I told you, I’m not giving you the answers in trig anymore.

Eh, I almost heard the shrug. I’m cool with that. It’s not why I called.

Please stop wasting my time and tell me.

It’s my mom, Declan said.

Is she ill?

No, nothing like that. She’s having a thing this weekend and she’s insisting that I invite my friends from school.

The veil in the heavens parted and made way for dawn. And I’m the only so-called friend you think won’t rat you out to your mother. I was thinking about her only a moment ago, Declan, how she’d be hauling you off to Dunhaven and locking you up with her other crazies if she had even a hint of an idea what you’ve been up to lately.

Look, I didn’t call for a lecture or your opinion of my friends.

No, you called to ask me to help you lie to your parents.

I’ll pay you.

I heard his mother’s voice in the background. Is that Hedra?

Yeah Mom.

Tell her I can’t wait to see her Saturday. She hasn’t been over in so long, I was worried that she started seeing some other boy.

Declan groaned.

"I’m seeing you?"