Another nightmare descends.

This one is real, just like the others. But now it’s my birthday. I’m fixing up my hair. Putting on my makeup. It’s yesterday again, but in this dream, I’m still happy. I’m still able to smile, even though I can feel something bad on the horizon.

Even though I can feel something hanging in the air, getting ready to snatch me away from the life I’ve known and loved, I continue to get ready for my birthday party— for my night out with my friends that I’ve planned. A night of fancy drinks, and exquisite dinners. Time to socialize.

But even as I’m putting the rest of the makeup on my smiling face – my happy, excited lips – I know it’s not going to be my dream come true. It won’t be what I’ve planned for, for months.

Part of me already can hear the doorbell I know will be ringing. I can hear it echoing through the house, through my soul, like a lonely siren.

Still, I continue on, ignoring the knot in my stomach. The spiderwebs in my brain. The static in my heart.

And now I’m waiting for the doorbell. Part of me is excited for it. That’s gonna be Dad with the flowers. The flowers he always sends me on my birthday, even when deployed. Even from Iraq he always sends me two dozen red roses. And always with a little card on it that says “to my juju-bear with love,” I think in the dream.

Then, the moment I’ve been waiting for and dreading comes: the moment I hear the doorbell reverberate through the house. Up the stairs it climbs like lava. Like the trumpet at the end of the world. But I watch myself smile when I hear it. I race down to greet it, as if it’s the sound of my father’s voice. As if it’s the same as him standing on the front of my doorstep, home and safe.

Each footstep I take is like a thunderous heartbeat in my ears. It speeds up the blood in my veins, the pulse I can hear in my head. I’m down the stairs now in the blink of an eye. I’m headed toward the door, hoping for flowers, but knowing that it’s not going to be that pretty. Some part of me knows that this is not going to be a birthday surprise I’m looking forward to.

But, as if my whole body is destiny, and my whole house is the wheel of fate, I open the door anyway. I feel the joy I’m supposed to feel, thinking it’s the flower delivery guy. As it always is. As it has been for the last ten years on the dot.

I open the door, seeing two airmen standing there. Their uniform decorations let me know they’re officers. The moment I see them, all I can feel is terror. There are no roses here. No birthday wishes. Only two strangers that I hoped I’d never see. And yet, here they are.

Strangers no more, I’m beginning to realize they’ll haunt every dream I have. But this one quickly escalates. As the two officers open their mouths to give me the news – to say what feels like biblical truth by now — “Your father’s dead. He died bravely, defending his country, and was killed in a deadly counterstrike by the enemy” — words are not what comes out of their mouths. The moment they open them, snakes jump out.

Hundreds of them wiggle out of the officers’ gaping mouths and wrap around my throat. I’m drowning in them, their moving bodies constricting every last bit of breath out of me.

I gasp and choke under this, feeling moments away from dying. From losing my life. Even my heartbeat feels constricted. Slowed.

Just as I get one strangled sound out — something like “Dad” and “no” combined — I awaken, and it’s to the sound of Brandon’s voice. It’s loud. Thunderous. It almost matches the big, heavy arms I feel around me. The comforting ones I’ve just fallen into. They’re holding me. Comforting me.

“You’re okay,” he says, as if he knows what kind of nightmare he’s having to talk over. “You’re okay. I’ll keep you safe. I won’t let anything happen to you. Whatever happened, it’s okay now.”

With that, I try my best to relax. To stop the part of me that wants to fight him off me as if he’s one of the giant snakes from my dream, wrapped around my neck.  Somehow, I manage to keep from struggling, and instead collapse completely into him.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” he says quietly.

I look him in the eyes this time, once again struck by their beautiful contrasting light and darkness. Their liquid quality still shines through, even in the shadows of the room.

“That’s good,” I say, “because I’m not going to talk to you about that. Or anything at all. All I’m going to tell you is that my name is Juliet, and I want you to fuck me.”