Prompt: "The last thing I remembered was staring down the barrel of a gun."
Title: Gunmetal grey
The last thing I remember is staring down the barrel of a gun.
No, that's not true. I remember something else too – a shadow, a silhouette. It was big, tall, muscular. It was a man. Although I don't remember his face, I remember his hair. Midnight colored with strands fringed over his forehead. And he was holding the gun to my head, so close that I can still feel the imprint of it on my clammy forehead.
I shut my eyes now, scrunch them, try to go back to the moment. I want to see inside my head and come up with a clue. Who was this man? What did he look like? Why did he want to kill me? What did I feel when faced with my death? But I can't.
It doesn't matter, really. The details don't matter; it was a dream. And now I'm awake.
Lying on bed, I stare up at the white ceiling of my room, the crown molding bordering the edges seem strange. I look to the side and the white walls of my room seem odd. Like this bland room can't be my own.
It always happens to me after a dream. The real life seems unreal to me. It's as if my my sub-conscious hovers in a no man's land. Dreams and reality blur and mingle. Usually, it takes a cup of coffee or two to get me back to the land of the living.
And then I draw the dream -- or whatever I remember of it -- on a piece of paper to really pull myself into this world. To kiss the scattered, imaginary moments goodbye.
I have done this a thousand times now.
Because I'm a dreamer; I dream about things. Random things. They don't mean anything, not really. Once I dreamed that I had wings, white with golden strands and as I was flying, I crashed against a cliff and died. Morbid stuff. If you ask me now, I can't tell you the details. I never remember them fully.
Then, another time I dreamt that my house was over-ridden by crows. Why, how, I don't know. All I remember is seeing a bunch of crows sitting on the brown roof of the house I grew up in.
I think I've been dreaming all my life, ever since I knew what dreams were.
At first, they scared me. My mom used to say that I dreamed a lot because I was sensitive, in touch with my inner self.
You have a soul of an artist, Aimee, she used to tell me.
Well, I never believed her. Not until she died in a car crash when I was fourteen, anyway. Then I wanted to prove her right so I tried being an artist. I tried singing, writing, dancing – nothing worked. Nothing stuck until I tried sketching and filling them with colors.
I came alive then.
Now six years later, I'm, in fact, an artist. A painter, or trying to be one.
That reminds me – it's Monday and I have class.
With a sigh, I swing myself out of the bed and flex my toes, feeling the cold hardwood floor of my bedroom. And that reminds me that I need to get the heat fixed. In my head, I try to figure out how long is it to my next paycheck.
I'm an artist, which means I'm broke. It's the saddest cliché in the world and I'm not immune to it.
I wonder why I never dream about hitting it big. Painting something that people will fight over. Something that will become a success overnight. Okay, not overnight, I'll allow it a week or ten days.
But no, I never dream of good things. Only things that are weird and yes, scary.
In the bathroom, I stand in front of the free standing sink and wash my face. As I look in the mirror, the grey color of the wall jumps at me. I frown, studying the paint that peels off in teardrops. It looks...vivid. It dulls the other colors in the space – the red of my towel hanging on the hook of the door, the blue of my toothbrush, the moss green of the rug, the green of my shower gel that sits on the porcelain tub.
