Oneirophobia-fear of dreams.


Her left eye looks so scared in the jar hidden under my bed. Such an endless stare...I wish it wouldn't rotten so fast.

In twenty-four letters my life is constantly fired up, brought down, settle in for a new round of everything you could imagine.
All of it in only one bizarre name.
Twenty-four letters, this number symbolizes home, health, harmony, but for who? not for us. But for something else, something I can't describe or see, something still invisible to my eyes. 
It makes me intrigued...very intrigued.
 Meanwhile, I just look, stare deep down its meaning for me, drinking this cup of coffee...waiting. 
We are not allowed to drink coffee, but it's Friday, it's a day when at the start of the weekend we are allowed to do as we please because almost everyone it's heading out of here after a week of work with "rats".
Friday it's a day where the fun starts for all of us, and I can't wait to hear the last time a door its shut. A creaking peculiar noise which is telling me when it's safe to get outside.
 The only person who will stay with us it's just Miss Patty, a very sour woman whose everyday goal it's to make us feel under the cat's claw.
 I found that from the very beginning when I could speak and understand others around me, but here and now, the end of the week means freedom.
A little bit of freedom, enough to make us keep our sanity.
Miss Patty always was someone who had never been nice to children. None of them likes us I think.
 Even so, I am not complaining because things get their start to move. I can feel tiny bits of disturbing things scattering around the floor, being inhaled in the drugged air by all of us.
 I can feel that something is about to happen, and I can't wait for it.
 The first time I meet her, I was twelve years old, I was getting used to living unnoticed and unnecessary in the hallway when I, accidentally, woke up with my tiny body lost in her dress. I bumped into her by mistake, and her reaction wasn't nice at all. She was wearing a long black dress, an old-fashioned bright red hat, and her perfume was the first nice smell I felt in that house. A sweet flavor was hugging her slim white neck. Her dark-green eyes watch me furiously, but her thin lips formed a smile, while her cold sharp nailed hand grabbed me by my neck, moving my entire body away from her. Before her hand let go of my throat, she breathed something in my right ear. Her sigh was freezing my flesh as you wouldn't expect from a living body. I don't remember what she told me.
 I almost suffocate and fall on the dusty floor. I didn't cry, maybe because of the shock, but I find myself more curious than scared. 
Three years passed since. 
Yet on some days, I can't help myself, one little step followed by another ate the gap, and I am sure I will find myself again in front of those green eyes. Being stared at, frozen in place.
Sometimes, for a few seconds before class is over, I have to get out in the hall and set the materials we use back in the storeroom. That's when I feel the same eloquence on her face headed my way, from the depths of the hall. I never turn my head to see her, but I know she's there. Watching me. It's tempting.
The air's colder than usual as if her breath reaches the back of my head down my neck, quivers run down my bones, and before I knew it kids head out of the classrooms, while she's gone in a blink of an eye.
Later I found out that she hates children from the bottom of her heart, if she has any, no one knows or lived long enough to have a chance to tell us even if they find out the reason. 
Despite that, it makes me wonder, why she gazes her eyes into my soul whenever I am alone? I feel like I am close to finding out.
Beside her although, there are more sinister matters that happen here. I don't remember when exactly I start observing.
No one seems to notice their odd behavior that escapes sometimes, it makes me startled, but interested in a strange way. Shivers are working their way from the depths of my stomach, up to my dry throat until it reaches my burning cheeks.
Only when I try to picture this entire building in my head, a destructive feeling grabs my breathe and I find it hard calming down.
It's like nothing equivalent, tremendous and unusual, scary and old. 
However, at the same time is enigmatic, beautiful, and full of puzzles.
It makes me embrace the unexplained, crave for it, agonizing in stages of starvation for another round of odd things.
The start of the game it's like a suicidal invitation, a sweet deaf tune played by beasts welcomes you inside.
A single fractured sign mutters the name of it, on the right written in vicious letters eaten by dust and infected rust stuck in the mud with its two iron legs: ''Littlewood's hope''. Our orphanage. My lovely home which almost smiles, but a forced crooked smile. Looking down at me, the way you'd look at a tiny rat. 
After the sign gives its hello, there comes the front door, a black tall door.
I always felt that there's no turning back after you entered that door, in the seconds that follow you'll hear a noise, a squeak split into two uneven sounds as if to say: come inside. Sometimes, it's almost like a voice if you listen carefully.
The sound is heard as if the door is stretching after a deep sleep, cracking an eye open to see who's bothering her. The now open door reveals light-grey heavy walls crushed by big windows, mumbling one to another about the new kid who ended up here. A tiny trace of light outside seems like a small blessing, a few good luck wishes for the unluckiest. Anything to make it look like a normal house, but I think most of us know it's not.
When your eyes rise to wander the surroundings ahead of you, in 10 small steps, the kitchen room peeks at you interested in the new mouth she has to feed. It makes me ask myself, why would be a kitchen the first thing someone new sees?
If you go right, the everlasting tongue of the hall seems angry but quiet, if you run it feels even larger, a big tunnel where your soul is fooled.
Your shadow will awake on the clean floor unclear, like its frightened of what might happen if it appears in its all capability. Maybe it will vanish, like dust, or melt like alloy. The air's so cold, sharp, on some days I can see my breath leaving my mouth in small, smoked translucent circles consumed by the atmosphere. 
Until the night hit the sky, the only light that drools on the stage is what the glass of the window let inside. Like a small trap for a naive ignorant butterfly. 
If you go left, twenty long stairs lift your steps to the broken twins. The separation of a second set of stairs into two equal groups of ten stairs on each side of the parallel walls. The broken twin of the right has the fourth stair broken. A pitch-black pit that never healed, from where tiny slithering creatures can gaze at us from beneath the rotten wood.
Four is a conscientious number with a focus on long term security.
Almost unsettling, but engaging, clearly not for our safety but maybe, for something else safety, as a guarantee when one of us gets harmed. Maybe late in the night when no one is around. When you're not supposed to be around that ''something'' might be. It will be a fresh warm snack.
The last stair extends itself to the second floor where-
''Hey, you're not out yet?'' he asked with a small grin on his face.
''They didn't leave yet.''
''So?'' he let out a puffed short laugh while he let the wall take his weight, placing his back on the cold surface. Hands in his large pockets. 
''You know I shouldn't go out unless they leave first'' I whisper slowly, I love remembering myself out loud what I shouldn't do, it makes me want to do them more. He usually takes it as if I replied to whatever he's saying.
I was waiting at the second exit for students, while numerous adults rushed for the teachers and staff exits at the other side of the building. From time to time, some of them pausing to look at me to see if I wait.
''Come on, no one will notice. Look we can get out through the opened window.'' 
He said with a look of ''it will be easy'', pointing at the large window on the left from the spirals stairs, but we both know it won't.
Most of the kids here wait for the bell to ring in their rooms, but I prefer to take the signal from the source.
After the last person gets to shut the last time the door, Miss Patty turns on the bell. I am not sure if I want to miss a day, I never had.
Every Friday, in complete silence after the school's over, the last door's sound echoes in the entire building expanding my lungs with anticipation and patience. Her steps never meet the hurried rhythm, she takes her time, making the floor fear it might get shattered like glass because of her sharp heels that create high short sounds. The same pitch-black stiletto shoes every Friday that I am expecting to hear.
But Mark wouldn't let me have it today I guess. In a way, I don't want to take this worthless effort although, maybe she will notice my absence, what face she will make? she will even notice? It seems good enough for an experiment.
 I take a small glance at our ''escape'' holding my cold coffee.
When you do something you shouldn't, and you don't want to get caught three things count the most: when and how you move, your breathing, and how you act after you've done it.
The window next to the stairs is enormous, twice as big as the others, full view from outside. Black iron frames and spotless glass.
Now, how we move there without acting suspicious, we could make three large steps, almost running but this the time where the first problem comes, when do you move? You can't be sure enough that no one will turn their heads in the following time. It's careless.
A better option is to make it look like we go upstairs, but right after we are a bit out of the view, because of the stairs bending in a spiral, we can jump off and reach for the window. Much better.
I start smiling a bit without my whole will. Mark didn't set that aside.
''Already got a plan?'' his gin was small, but it looked like he had the urge to smile more, he was always the guy with ideas. I am the guy that makes them happen. But back to ''our'' plan, doing something ''wrong'' it's always tricky. Which leads to an interesting thing. When you do something you shouldn't because you were taught is bad or wrong, your heartbeat increases. Why?
Your brain can be split into three parts by their jobs, I will bother you with the biological names of each one another time. 
So, we have the first and the oldest part which its main role is safety and survival, the second: emotional specter, and the last and the newest part: talking and abstract thinking.
By the time we reach the sixth stair and take that jump, my heart was already pounding in my chest. My brain was in the first 2 parts command, feeling my actions as a threat to my life. The elephant.
However, the last part helps us from living in an ancient world, feeding us with rational thoughts. The driver.
Can it be controlled? of course. Do I like answering my question personally? definitely.
The scam is to let your driver take a seat more than your elephant.
Whenever it hits, take a deep breath and exhale make it longer than your inhale.
Although a slight feeling of panic was stretching my neck, I didn't back off. The cold at the touch window looks like it was mocking us: ''you're gonna get caught''. It was cracked open, not completely, my tries of opening enough for us to fit feels like a slow-motion effort eating me alive. Its large mouth almost got stuck, making my elephant go mad again.
And that's when I heard her: the same short high sounds in the hall, getting closer slowly. That's when I almost lose the grip of my control, I kinda enjoy it. The feeling of not getting enough oxygen, the fear I might get caught, the anxiety.
In a matter of seconds, our shoes touched grass and dirt outside, walking to the corner of the building on the left and exhale silently when I heard the bell's ringing. I throw what's left of my coffee careless on a bunch of flowers. Kept the empty mug.
I didn't notice the sweat on my forehead until another breeze ran our bodies.
I wiped off with my right sleeve and get a seat on the ground next to a tree. I turn my look at the second exit we didn't use today. Someone, I assume is new, was there.
Two new rats, twin rats.
 Twins can be identical or fraternal, and this pair has a lot to say.
 A girl and a boy who are twins cannot be the same and identified as identical twins, because that will be the third type, very rare where they are fraternal twins who look the same, my mind it's going to blow up as I get up and take a better look standing near Mark.
''Ohh...something got your eyes?'' he asked interested, and at the same time turning his head in the same direction.
They're identical twins, they have dark-brown hair and green eyes, I found it very interesting, twins are in general interesting human beings because of their DNA. Deoxyribonucleic acid, a self-replicating material that is present in nearly all living organisms as the main constituent of chromosomes. It is the carrier of genetic information.
It's the fundamental and distinctive characteristics or qualities of someone or something, especially when regarded as unchangeable.
 Identical twins have the same genotype and very similar not identical DNA, but for the most part, it's identical. 
It's something stunning in my eyes, like the white and black keyboards from a piano, as the clouds of the sky when it's almost raining or two little drops of water on a window, so alike yet different in deeps of the soul feelings and personality. Changes that speak so loud, and at the same time whispering the same frequency, so alive and overwhelmingly charming.
But not good enough. 
''You know, staring like that will make girls think you're a creep, you creep'' I didn't need to face him to know he was smirking.
''Shut it.''
''You shut it.''
''I'm not doing this.''
''You already are.''
I couldn't help but laugh a bit. Meeting with silence I took a peek. His face was serious but at the same time, a frown meeting his eyebrows. He glanced strangely in my direction.
''Let's break every single rule, then get the hell out of here. I'm sick of this place anyway.''
I stare at him directly in his eyes, after lowering my head thinking, but I like this place.
As soon as his words came out of his mouth, I felt my breath turning cold, startled, at the same time excited as if she had no longer wanted to leave my lungs. My eyesight was blurred. Are we ready for this? no, how bad can it be? pretty bad.
 I could hear a lot of laughs and words in the distance agonizingly piercing the reality.
He was looking curious, searching for my glance back.
Suddenly he got closer, I jump out of my skin internally making me look at him. Never blinking.
 My dark blue iris felt like a raging sea. Hiding things that were never seen before, causing the black pupils to shrink into fear and terror as if trying to hide in the eyeball.
His eyes were black, endless black so dark you couldn't place his pupils, do they hide as mines do?
My breath stops, I swallow hard and my neck feels hot.
''You heard me?''
If we get caught doing something like this, we should pack things and run, what a thrilling thought.
''You shouldn't play in the woods when the wolf wears sheep clothes.''
''Do you want to stay a rat forever?''
The only thing I could do was to let out a burst of broken laughter.
''Anyway, did you bring what I asked?''
''No.''
''No...what do you mean no?'' I replied quietly, instantly switching my mood.
''Follow me'' he mumbles, quickly getting up and watching around, alarmed someone will see us.
I feel a rushed confusion blurring my initial thoughts, but I followed him a bit further entering into the garden. An unwanted warm sweet smell racing into my lungs. Black roses raising from the ground, curiously gazing at my unexpected presence. Somehow they knew Mark better.
What he showed me gives me the greatest smirk I ever had.
In the darkest corner of the garden, where's more shadow than light, he pointed slowly.
He made our grave for tomorrow night. For both of us to fit.
''You're insane, when did you have time for this?'' I asked full of joy.
He looked so proud of himself.
''Isn't ten times better than your lame plan?''
''It is, loser.''
''Let's get in'' he said with excitement. I didn't think twice.
It was not a very deep pit. On all sides, it has a piece of wood firmly pushed into the ground, to make it look more like a large box.
It was hidden well near some trees and bushes.
I lay there like how you would do in a bed, not very comfortable but it works. It's cold and the smell of earth fills my nostrils, while he checks again to see if it's alright, looking like an old man who's making sure he didn't forget anything.
And like any other grave, it needs its cover, he exceeded himself by making it look like any other area in the garden with dirt, grass, and the same patterns of small flat rocks that leads the way around.
It was more like a small basement in the ground for two people to hide.
But it was exactly what we needed.
After he closes it, the darkness consumed our bodies, I couldn't see anything, only hear in the distance, muffled songs of the birds above us.
This is where dead people end, deprived of light, warmth, and everything alive on earth. 
''Do you believe in life after death?'' he asked quietly, even if I am sure no one could hear us if we don't scream our heads off. At the time, I wish I could see his face, what expression does he make, and how his eyes look around. Or if he frowns again.
''Do you mean if I believe in God?'' I couldn't be sure where this exchange of replies was getting to, although I give my honest answer.
''I am not sure, you?''
''Same, I mean, who can be?''
''Someone who believes?''
''Yeah, but how do you get to believe?''
It was the first time when I didn't have an answer.
''Do you think it's a person? a boy or a girl, who was lonely maybe and decided to make us?'' I asked trying to face him.
''Don't be stupid, It won't be a person, it's something else hard to describe, like an entity you can't see now because you're still here.
A mythological entity, I guess.''
''How so?''
''Whatever made us if it's the right version, it's like a huge waterfall far away from us. We are like water that it's good enough to drink. Like the drinking water from the kitchen faucet. However, we are not the source so, in other words, a human body can't reach that level of the source, can't be God because your body stays behind when you die.
''And in your idea how would you go back to the source, like how it says there's life after death.''
''When people die their flesh and body don't go where they head for a reason. We can't be God, no human being is God because it won't be human anymore, it will be an entity but you can't become an entity if you're already the result of that thing. You can't become the source.''
''So in your idea, when the water gets into the ground like people after death, it will find its way to the waterfall?''
''Kind of, but no one knows the way.''
''So you can find out only if you die?''
''Yeah.''
''But what happens next when-
My question was replaced by the night bell's ringing.
When it get so late? we got fired up in the discussion far too much.
He almost gets up to unravel us from the dirt when I stopped him.
He didn't say a thing, he just let his body rest on the ground once more.
I hope Miss Paty didn't count the children today.
You know he started, sometimes you make me wonder what's going on inside your head. You're an alien or something?''
''Yeah, I've come to get you, wanna hangout on my planet?''
Our shitty chuckles give me a stagnant feeling, how weird it will be to hear laughs from a grave. But in a way, I like how it sounds.



© rubickon