Chapter Six
Joe
I was starting to feel like a stranger in my own life. It was another dream about her. This one was strange. It wasn’t the dream that was out of focus, it was me. I could see her, the one called Naomi but it was distorted, as if I were looking through a dirty window and the sound was muffled. Her sobs still reached my ears though. She appeared to be curled up on a chair, it was dark but it didn’t feel or look like the room I’d seen her in before. The sound of her cries tugged at my heart like nothing I had known. I felt drawn to this woman and the immediate need to comfort her overwhelmed me. I never remembered my other dreams…at least I don’t think I did, only the ones about her. I had that same feeling as before, I remembered my life but it didn’t feel like reality. The need to be here, with her, was stronger every time this happened. Each time I found myself experiencing these bizarre episodes, it felt more and more real. Then why did this one feel wrong?
I reached out to comfort her but my arms turned to smoke. There was little or no solidity to them and when I started moving, swirling transparent colours replaced what should have been flesh and bone. I tried to touch my hands together but one went straight through the other. When I looked at my feet they weren’t even on the floor, I was floating.
“Naomi?” I said. I heard the voice in my head but it came out of my mouth like the rush of an autumn breeze, a wordless whisper of sound.
She continued to cry, her heart-wrenching sobs echoing all around me, fading in and out. I struggled to correlate the sound with where she sat, it was disconnected and disjointed. I didn’t understand this dream at all, it really was the strangest thing I had ever experienced.
“Naomi, please? Can you hear me?” The attempt at speech resulted in the same incoherent gush of air as before. The frustration of not being able to communicate made me feel utterly useless. Maybe if I moved closer to her she would hear me? I was clearly supposed to interact with this woman because I dreamed about her all the time now. For what purpose, I had no idea but I knew I needed to speak with her, I wanted to speak with her. I wanted to know about her and why she was in my head.
So how was I to do this? I had no ‘feet’ to speak of, just a vague smoky outline that swirled about a foot off the floor. I had to find a way of moving towards her. Perhaps if I concentrated my mind instead of trying to move normally it might work. I closed my eyes and focused on moving my body forward. When I opened my eyes, instead of being closer to her, I was further away.
“Aaahh! Porco dio! - Goddamnit!” This was annoying. I was torn between wanting to comfort her and wanting to just wake up and be done with this seemingly pointless escapade.
Naomi shifted around in the chair so her face was more visible. Just like before I was overwhelmed with a feeling of recognition, of knowing more of her than I could immediately comprehend. Scouring my memories, trying to place where I knew her from, I studied her beautiful, tear stained face. Her heavily lashed lids were closed, salty droplets clung to them like morning dew. I ached to kiss her sorrow away, If only I could make her see me.
I wondered what had happened to make her so upset. The last time I’d seen her she had acted as if I were imaginary, which seemed bizarre because it was clearly the other way around, she was in my dream. I watched her and waited, unable to do anything else.
Her sobs subsided gradually and her breathing became shallow and regular, she had fallen asleep. Without knowing how, I found myself inching closer, it was like she breathed me in, and every inhalation drew me further forward. The fascination with this strangely familiar woman was intoxicating. Just as an artist knows his muse, I found that I knew every line and gentle curve of her face. Distorted as the scene before me was, if I closed my eyes, a perfect picture of her etched itself in my mind with consummate clarity. How could this be?
“Daddy…” she whimpered, “…don’t go...”
She was crying over her Father then? Whatever had happened, it must have been recent, and her grief was new and raw. Glancing around the shadowy room, I noticed picture frames hanging above an obscure looking fireplace. The faces of the people in the frames drifted in and out of focus but I could discern a family portrait of four people. Two of the four were young women, the other an older couple. One of the women had the same colouring as Naomi, and although her features were indistinct, I knew it was her. Other things littered the mantelpiece; a china plate, a small vase and what appeared to be a document propped up behind it. It was unreadable at first but as I concentrated my gaze a few words stood out, ‘Charles Henry Douglas,’ her father? ‘Time of death…’ so, it was grief that caused her suffering. I understood now, I remembered the loss of my own father when I was very young. It seemed but a vague memory at this moment, I presumed because it was so long ago, and that I had been a child, I maybe wouldn’t have understood what had happened. I tried to picture my father’s face in my mind but all that came to me was a fuzzy silhouette of a man, nothing recognisable. It saddened me that I couldn’t recall what my father looked like. How could I empathise with Naomi in her grief, if I couldn’t find the source of my own? Why did it matter so much to me that I wanted to share in her sorrow?
Looking back upon her face, I puzzled it over. There was no denying there was a connection of some sort but I had yet to discover what it could be and what the reason for all of this was. Perhaps I could gain more clues from my surroundings? The thought had no sooner occurred to me when I felt that familiar blackness looming, its stealthy approach meant this was ending. A multitude of protests readied on my tongue but I never got the chance to utter them. The scene before me became murkier, colours drained into greys and a final whisper reached me through the fog- her swansong,
“Stay…”
And then I was gone.