'Reality is never as bad as a nightmare, as the mental tortures we inflict on ourselves,' - Sammy Davis, Jr.
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I KNOW IT IS A NIGHTMARE. It has to be a nightmare. It has to be.
Xavier is alive, he's here with me and what I'm seeing is nothing but a dream, a very horrible dream. The cries should have woken me. If not the screams definitely should have, but they don't, just like me unable to move doesn't wake me up either.
Desperate to move I remain paralyzed.
The trees are punishing, clutching me like unbreakable chains as their branches lodge themselves deeper into my flesh. No matter how hard I trash against them they won't let me pass. The nightmare won't release its grasp on me.
I'm incapacitated and condemned to watch my worst fears. Leaving me a mere spectator, I am forced to watch the clearing in front of me without being able to act. I scream, wanting to let him know I'm there, but it turns horrified with despair as I am kept from him.
Dead he lies in a bath of his own blood. There is no way to help him. I cannot help, I can only stay here while the blood consumes my vision, my smell, and even my taste. The odor of the metallic liquid lingers everywhere impossible to get rid of. Just like the branches that continue to tangle around me to keep me in place, all the while branding me with the mark of death as their leaves of nurturing green are tainted red.
Unable to withstand their mercenary act I cry as the blood drips onto me like a reminder of my incapability to help, to be there for him - to save him. The red extract continues to move, crawling its way up my arms and legs while I feverishly try to free myself. Cold and torturous, it continues to advance and I try to suppress a sob, but soon it fills my mouth and ears anyway, before eventually taking away my vision too. Blind to anything other than the redness of torture.
And so I scream.
A scream that finally absolves me and follows me into reality. My rapid heartbeat fills up the room as I look around at the unsullied walls that remain oblivious to the prison my mind tries to contain me in.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale and exhale, I have to tell myself over and over again when my body can't seem to concentrate on it by itself. Slowly gaining control, I expel the sweaty sheets, not wanting to suffer under yet another feeling of entrapment. Then I reach out to the other side of the bed only to find it vacated and untouched.
He did not come to bed, again.
With another shaky breath I lift my arms to watch my hands, afraid to see if the blood too has followed me here from my nightmare. At least it hasn't.
