“Jesus Christ, it’s just a fucking dream.”
Carmen flinched away from Tarek’s words, cowering on her side of the bed after being shoved awake violently by his rough hands.
“I’m sorry, sorry, I –”
“It’s every night this week, like, enough already.”
She responded to Tarek cutting her off by moving even farther away from him, her shoulder drifting off the side, practically touching the ground. They had been forced to buy a new bed, one without a frame, because Carmen had started falling off, a regression into her past, mirroring her childhood and the countless sleepless nights her mom was forced to stay awake, ensuring Carmen wouldn’t harm herself, or others.
She hadn’t felt the need to tell Tarek about that part of her life, as the beginning of their relationship saw calm, peaceful nights, giving her hope that this time would be different. But as time trudged forward, and little tiffs turned to arguments, and arguments heightened to fights, Carmen’s sleep patterns moved beyond the pattern of waking in fright with a cry or scream, and into more physical expressions of her fear.
That night, according to Tarek after he had calmed down, Carmen began muttering as soon as she fell asleep, short, sharp words, like responses to someone asking questions she didn’t want to answer. It didn’t take much for Tarek to ignore her after he put his earplugs in, but almost the moment his focus drifted from Carmen into his own sleep, she darted straight up, eyes wide open, mouth agape, and her hand flew into the air and WHACK straight onto Tarek’s bare chest.
WHACK – WHACK –
She got three solid, painful hits on him before he was forced to use more than his words to wake her. That was where the shove came from. The only time he ever put hands on her was in defense and she felt guilty in that moment, in the retelling of what must have been a horrible moment for Tarek.
Horrible for him, but horribly familiar for Carmen.
How could she express to him the terror that she feels in those dreams, or what Tarek believes are just dreams, but she knows are so much more. How could she tell him about the
thing that lives inside her dreams, waiting in the shadows, her Dark Passenger, the one who gets so, so jealous. Jealous enough to do whatever it takes to keep her in Its grip, keep her from waking, desperate to hold her in that dark place It has burrowed into, the cave It’s dug out for them both. How could she tell Tarek about the things It does to others while It holds her under sleep?
She couldn’t tell Tarek all that, and he wouldn’t believe her, so it was time again to break it off. Another relationship that should have worked out, sent to the growing graveyard. But it was better to let him go before something terrible happened to him the way it did to her mother. As far as Tarek knew, her mother was killed in a car crash when she was a teenager, a lie that Carmen felt justified in telling if only to stop having to talk about her.
In the past, Carmen had enjoyed more creative freedom with the story. With one boyfriend it had been a terrible case of Salmonella poisoning from dirty chicken at a food cart. To a girlfriend in college Carmen spun a tale about base diving and an unfortunate miscalculation that led to her mother smacking straight into the side of a mountain. She didn’t relish in the lies, but everything she conjured in these stories was better, and less horrific, than the truth.
Carmen sat up and felt around in the dark for the clothes that she always laid next to the bed. Sleeping naked was a risk but she felt strange about Tarek sleeping naked and her clothed.
“You put them on already.” Tarek said from his side of the bed.
“When?”
How did she completely miss that she was dressed?
“Sometime between me falling asleep and you attacking me, I think?”
She could tell he was trying to make a joke, but it fell flat without her being able to see his face and the bleak reality of the shakiness in his voice.
Carmen’s recollection of this dream was limited, but the last thing she saw was her Dark Passenger climbing atop Tarek’s chest and digging Its claws in. She could still smell remnants of the blood It drew from Tarek’s skin, and the only thing she could think to do was to smack It off him before It did something worse – no, not something, but the thing, the thing she knew It would do to him if she allowed him.
The morbidly funny part was that the ugly, terrible little creature thought It was protecting her. That’s what It told her at least, without ever spitting a single word out of Its crooked, snaggle-toothed mouth, It swore to Carmen that she would have been dead a long time ago if it wasn’t for him – It – and that she should be more grateful.
Grateful?! She spat back at It in their twisted little dream huddle. Grateful for you ruining every relationship I’ve ever had?! Grateful for what you did to my mother?!
That shut It up, for however many minutes translate in the dream world at least, and when she got to that point of anger, it scared the little demon away from her long enough to have uninterrupted sleep.
She couldn’t explain those dreamtime delusions to Tarek, to anyone in her life, but this hurt more than the others. Tarek was kind and gentle and had been so patient when the sleep issues started, determined to make Carmen feel okay about the strange muttering and occasional sleepwalking. When she explained about being strapped into bed when she was a kid, hands tied down at her sides, mouth taped shut (for the biting, her mother told her), it was accepted by Tarek as childhood trauma that deserved a considerable amount of understanding and empathy.
Carmen didn’t expect him to feel sorry for her. Others had laughed at her, especially when she told them about what exactly the biting entailed, most notably the time that she bit her mother so hard that she woke up with a bloody chunk of skin in her mouth. She hadn’t ever found it funny, but after others laughed, she could see the humor in it, she guessed.
Carmen told Tarek all the stories that led right up to the appearance of her Dark Passenger. But after – she couldn’t bring herself to go past that. She was ashamed of the creature, of how ugly It was, how crude and violent. She had a hard time really remembering anyways, exactly what happened when It came to her. But she remembered when It first manifested in her dreams. The night her mother burnt her favorite stuffed animal in the fireplace, insisting that Carmen relied on it too much, that she was a weak, stupid, cowering fucking baby.
Carmen remembered weeping uncontrollably that night, tears falling despite her mother’s insistence that they stop, despite the hard metal of the fire poker coming down onto her backside.
That was a moment of learning for her, learning how to turn her feelings off.
She tried that now, to turn her feelings for Tarek off, so that what she would have to do next would be easier.
“I don’t know what to say.”
She immediately felt like an asshole. What a stupid start.
“I don’t want you to have to put up with this. I thought it’d be different with you. I thought It would like you.”
“It?”
His confusion cut through the darkness, followed quickly by the bedside light that Tarek flipped on. Carmen closed her eyes and covered her face. She knew what he would see, what the dark hid, her face changing, dark circles under her eyes, small, red veins popping up under her otherwise clear skin. She wasn’t the same as when Tarek first fell in love with her. It was the effects of the creature on her, Its jealous little claw marks struggling to break out of the prison she had It locked in, sleepless nights and walking dead days, that was the old familiar feeling.
“Carmen – It?” He pulled her hands away from her face. “Look at me,” his voice changed, softened, “what do you mean It?”
She shook her head, refusing to open her eyes. If she did, he’d see It peeking out at him through the bloodshot and tears.
“Me – I thought I’d be different with you.”
“It’s not that deep, babe, tons of people have sleep issues. When I was a kid I’d have night terrors whenever I got a fever. I’m sorry I yelled at you; I was scared. I didn’t mean to push you, I can take it, Carmen, I love you. You’re okay. It’s okay.”
Carmen finally looked at him, and he didn’t pull away, he kissed her, and she felt her Dark Passenger scurry back inside, back down at least long enough for them to make love, and then fall back asleep for the last few hours before sunrise.
***
Her dream was immediate.
She turned on her side, sliding on what she thought was sweat on the sheets.
Tarek was on his back, covers up to his neck, one arm flung over his face like he does when he sleeps. At first Carmen thought he looked peaceful, but that was because she had only seen his face. A rustling under the blanket drew Carmen’s eyes down.
The sound hit her with a gut-dropping clarity. A squelching, shattering digging, claws on flesh, giggles between chewing.
Carmen threw the blanket back and came face to face with It. A satisfied, almost childlike grin spread as Its grimy talons stuffed the meat of Tarek’s still-beating heart into Its maw. There was a giant hole torn in Tarek’s chest, and her Dark Passenger perched on his sternum, with Tarek’s ribs torn up and out to form a new kind of cage for the creature.
In the place of panic, Carmen felt a nightmarish peace. She could taste the iron of Tarek’s blood in her mouth. She began to make the motions of chewing, grinding her teeth back and forth, forward and back, and as her creature swallowed, Carmen swallowed. She felt all the love that Tarek had offered flow through her, a warmth coated her belly, and she crawled, slipping thorough what she knew now was blood on the sheets, toward her creature.
At first It cowered away from her, certain she was about to swat It back inside her, but she didn’t do that. She practically purred, coaxing It to continue eating.
While It fed, nourishing them both, Carmen stroked Tarek’s face until it glimmered red with his own blood. Chewing and kissing, the sweet score of the scene, music to accompany the faintest whimpers coming from Tarek’s still breathing body.
Carmen leaned in, her ear close to Tarek’s mouth, the moist heat of his breath caressing her, and she could just barely, faintly make out his desperate, gasping words to her –
“It’s not a dream. Please. Please. Wake up.”
She giggled and kissed him, then moved down and joined her creature as It rummaged through Tarek’s chest, digging out all that love, nourishing them both.
Carmen knew it was just a dream, just like it had been with her mother, just a dream, just a beautiful, beautiful dream.
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