Laced » Lip Gallagher [3]

11: nightmare

"But you can never see forever in your hindsight, stuck in your hindsight..."

-

I once dreamt that I was a mother. It started out with a bump.

A small bump that stretched across the skin of my stomach. I felt it kick and I quickly realized.

I would do anything for that small little kick.

I felt attached. I felt protective. I felt love.

The dream jumped from child birth straight to infancy. I was in a one bedroom apartment. Alone. The apartment was a mess. Everything was dark and crowded.

All I could hear was crying. Endless, echoing, screaming cries. It was suffering.

The thing I bared in my stomach was suffering. It hated being brought into this world. It hated the nest I built for it. It hated me.

No matter how often I fed it, bathed it, rocked it – it still cried. And soon, I was crying with it. I didn't know how to make it stop.

I barricaded myself in the bathroom and the cries only grew louder. It was safe in its crib – I knew this, but I could still feel it's misery seeping through the crack.

I buried my face in my hands and screamed. When I looked at the mirror, I realized.

I was staring at myself, but it didn't look like me. My hair was in ruins. My eyes were red. My skin was gray.

I looked just like her. The ghost that haunted my head for so long. The ghost that told me I was sick.

The ghost that used to be the addict.

The baby's cries only grew and grew and so did mine.

I once dreamt I was a mother.

It was a nightmare.

——

I was on my way out of the apartment the next morning when Andie emerged from her room.

"How'd you sleep with all that knocking?" She leaned against her doorframe and scanned my appearance.

After I got home at 3am last night, Lip decided to pay us a visit. He knocked and knocked until Andie answered. She knew his state just by looking at him before she closed the door. He continued to knock over and over, saying my name like it was a prayer. I swear I could hear tears, too. After an hour or so, he finally left.

"Like a baby." I grabbed my keys off the hook by the door and looked back at her. "Can you make sure that she gets to the school bus?"

We both looked at Melanie, who was sound asleep on the couch. She had to be at the bus in an hour, and I needed to go talk to Bobby.