Breathe Me || Completed

14.3

14.3 - Nightmares

In my dream, my mother and father are sitting on one side of a table in a bright white space. They are distorted versions of themselves: my mother's face is too long and my father's nose is too big. They both have teeth too big for their mouths and hair too close to the color of their skin.

I am sitting on the other side of the table.

They're yelling.

"Go, Sally! Go! Get out! What are you still doing here? Get the fuck out! I never want to see your face again! Get out here before I make you! Go to hell!"

And there are sirens ringing out like the wails of the damned and the flashing red and blue lights fill up the white space. They're screaming, their too-big mouths opening and closing like alligators snapping up their prey.

There are arms around my waist and legs, strong arm, and they lift me up out of my chair and carry me away as my nightmarish parents cry, "Get out, Sally! We don't want to look at you! Get out of my sight!"

I awaken in a cold sweat, shivering. My head snaps to attention and I twist back and forth, still desperatley trying to evade my captors.

But in a second more, I realize that I am no longer in the blank white space with my disproportionate parents and the faceless police force. No, I'm in a cool, dark clearing in the woods with Samantha sleeping beneath me, still and silent as a coma patient.

I relax my shoulders and lay back down against her sharp body -- my back hurts from curving over her like a chunky, ill-fitting jumpsuit, my neck aching from hanging over her shoulder all night.

The sun is yawning, brewing up a pot of coffee. Faint yellowish light filters between the trees. I lift up Samantha's wrist to check her watch (I realize quickly that it's my father's, the one he doesn't use anymore because the chain is tarnished) and see that it's five forty five AM.

My stomach feels jumpy from my dream, my limbs buzzing with the desire to get up and leave here.

I almost shake her by the shoulders, but she looks so peaceful, her thin, chapped lips parted into an unconcious kiss. Her face is calmer, less combative in sleep. A little girl again. I smooth back her hair and unzip the sleeping bag.

This morning is the morning when my mother should realize that I'm gone, if she hasn't already. Today is the day that there will be Missing Person posters in my home town, the day when my school picture will be on the local news, my frizzy hair and half-closed eyes displayed for the world to see.

I feel electrified by it, sick with it. We need to get as far away from here as possible. Now.

While Samantha sleeps I put on a bra and a pair of shorts. I pull my socks over my blistered, pus-filled feet and then jam them into my sneakers. I rub some deoderant onto my armpits and slather lotion onto my ashy arms and elbows. Something about it feels disembodied, like I'm watching a girl in a movie do all of this. Why am I in the woods? What are you doing, Sally?

When I'm finished, I crawl back to the sleeping bag and takes Samantha's face in my hands, rubbing my thumbs along her steep slope of a jawline. Her eyelids flutter after a moment, a short moan escaping her throat. "No," she mutters.

"Sammy? Samantha? Time to wake up," I say, omitting the words I want to put at the end of all my sentences: baby, sweetheart, honey, my love, dearest. What would she say? I can't be sure, but it makes my heart rocket around in my chest to think that she might laugh.

She drags her eyelids open with the force of someone lifting a heavy garage door. Her bleary gaze falls past me into the slowly illuminating woods. "Mm, what time is it?" she asks. Her voice breaks over the word "time", dry and husky as sunned corn.

I reach into her backpack and unscrew the lid on the top of her plastic water bottle. Her eyes close again as I hold her head in one hand, tipping water into her mouth with the other. "It's almost six," I tell her. "We've been sleeping since like eight last night. We need to go."

Samantha swallows the water but doesn't sit up. "Come back to bed," she mutters.

"We don't have a bed."

"Shut the fuck up and get in here."

But my agitation is such that I can't even kowtow to Samantha's commands the way I want to. I would love to climb back into the sleeping bag with her, but with every passing second, I think I can hear the sirens growing louder, closer. I shake her shoulders. "Get up, Sam."

"You're mean." Samantha rolls over in the sleeping bag so that her back is to me.

We don't have time for this. I stomp to the end of the sleeping bag where her feet are and grasp the fabric in my hands. With one swift pull, the rubbery lining slides out from under Samantha's body, leaving her laying on her side in the middle of the rocky ground. She doesn't react. I start to roll up the sleeping bag, giving her back a nudge. "Sammy, I'm only doing this because I love you, okay? If we don't leave now, we're definitely going to get caught."

Finally, she sits up and starts to brush the leaves and twigs off her arm and out of her hair with a frown. Guilt clenches my stomach, but I tamp it down. She looks like a pouting toddler, legs out and back slumped as her face complains. "I hate you," she says.

"No you don't."

"Yes I fucking do."

"Here." I reach into my bag and pull out a mini box of frosted flakes. "Stole this from the pantry just for you," I tell her as I toss the box her way.

Samantha catches it in her ropy arms. She frowns at the box, then at me, trying to decide if breakfast cereal is enough to absolve me of my crimes.

I offer my hand to her. "C'mon, get dressed. You can eat while we walk."

With a sigh, Samantha lets me drag her to her feet and puts on a new shirt. She tells me to wait while she squeezes a dab of toothpaste onto her toothbrush and proceeds to brush her teeth with bottled water. I follow suit, wondering how she can be so lethargic. Maybe when you know that your parents don't care whether you live or die, you don't care if you're caught -- I'm certain Samantha will just run away again.

When we're finished, we pack everything neatly back into our bags and heft them over our shoulders. By this time, I'm breathing heavily with anxiety. "Get out the directions," I demand, my voice shaking. "Let's go."

"Hey." Samantha doesn't get out the directions. She looks at me, arms crossed over her chest. "You, my dear, need to chill the fuck out."

"No I --"

"No excuses," she says. "You trust me?"

" . . .Yes?"

"Okay. Well, I'm not gonna let anybody take you away from me. I'll fucking . . . I'll kick 'em in the balls or something, okay? Quit worrying about it."

It's silly, but the panicked buzz in my chest quiets a little. She reaches for me and we continue our journey hand in hand.