Short Stories and Poetry

The Dream Thief

         His fingers twitched at the sight of the discordant shimmer drifting on the man’s shoulder. It wavered shyly towards him, a tentative hello among the thralls. It was likely a slight of imagination, his sleep deprived mind conjuring images in his peripheral vision. And yet as he turned towards the wisp, following the man through the humming city streets as cold buildings loomed, it only grew more saturated in color. The man walked quickly and the fragile thing whipped around gently, loosening like sticky webs being pulled softly. Caleb plucked the thing from the air as it disconnected, it rustled gently in his palm like thin gauze and seemed to settle into his skin. Folding up against the creases in his hand and sinking in deep. Caleb dreamt.

his dreams slipped away so easily from his mind, snake-like as they slid out of his mind’s eye and out of his ears, bursting through his eardrums like so many butterflies. The ones he consumed  twirled around in his head, staying with him; he was always able to remember them whenever he wished. Caleb would pluck them out delicately from wherever they were floating around in his brain and would replay them, eyes glazed over and mouth slightly agape.

         As he walked past people on the streets Caleb could see the wisps of dreams clinging to the people and he would pull them into himself breathing them in and they would flutter down his throat. The wisps were always different in color and in taste from one another. The dreams of the homeless man on Fifth Avenue, Robert, often tasted like whiskey or butterscotch. He would see the man’s childhood, warped pieces of it in the dreams that clung to the man’s shoulders colored golden with blue flecks. The butterscotch flavored ones always included Robert’s grandmother. Gnarled hands reaching into her worn, off-white apron to grasp small, badly wrapped handmade butterscotch candies. Roughly cut maroon plastic was always wrapped around the candies and would gleefully crinkle as he pulled the sticky sweets from them. They tasted like kindness in Robert’s dreams melting on his tongue slowly and wrapping around it like a glove. Caleb didn’t know how he could taste kindness but the candies would make him feel warm and happy as they dissolved slowly in his mouth. Robert’s whiskey flavored dreams were always hazy, light blue in color and sometimes even Caleb couldn’t discern very much of what happened in them, just warmth and sometimes sorrow, but mostly they felt numb and hidden.

         Caleb never felt right, being able to feel and see these dreams considering that they were personal pieces of other people, in a way their dreams were their thoughts and secrets although dreams rarely revealed anything about a person in a straightforward manner. This would never stop him from collecting a few dreams every day his love of letting them flower in his mind and savoring each one delicately as they unfolded often overcame his moral dilemma. Caleb knew that once he stole a dream the owner would be unable to remember it but he loved dreams too much to stop. He loved the way dreams felt when he first experienced them: exciting, new, and wonderful, he would spend hours on a single dream after he collected a few and sometimes a single dream would be enough to last him through the entire week.

         They were fascinating and adventurous, rolling around his mind with various concepts and thoughts, scenarios and ideas. Endless, the wonders the dreams brought him were simply endless. He could live inside these dreams, re-visiting ones he had already seen over and over again, like a personal movie or book, something that no one else around him was aware of, or could ever consider a possibility. The taste of them was just the beginning of the experience that made Caleb love dream thievery so much. When he had first started to understand and use this new ability he used it rarely and when he found out from his friend Danny in seventh grade that stealing the dreams meant taking it completely away from its owner it frightened him. Caleb had stopped breathing dreams for a while afterward but the lure of dreams became too much for him to resist. Sorry Danny, he thought every time he pulled in another one or reveled in a new batch.

         The florist who worked a block from his house always had dreams that tasted like the ocean; salt water saturated his throat whenever he absorbed one of her dreams. The white wisps of her dreams, of Sally’s dreams were flecked with green, the kind of green that made him think of vibrant meadows. Sometimes the green of her dreams were a darker forest green. Her dreams consisted of things that she had seen in the small flower shop or things she imagined could happen inside of it. Many of her dreams were like small romantic plays tinged pink where she would take part in bringing two people together or something like a perfect romance novel. They had a carnival flavor to them as well and sometimes when he reveled in one of her dreams he could taste peanuts and popcorn and catch glimpses of elephants. Often someone who felt like her father would waltz in and narrate the actions of the two lovers to her.

         The young man proposed to her in a soft voice, look at how happy they are all with your help buttercup. I hope someone makes you as happy as those two are right now. I know you will and you'll always have me there. Her dreams tasted salty, and sometimes when he would blur back into reality, he would find bittersweet tears plopping down his chin calmly. Although Sally's dreams ended there with her father telling her such reassuring words Caleb would stream back  into consciousness feeling harsh despair, guilt and loneliness mixed in with the comforted feeling of seeing the old man in the dreams. He was sure that not all of the guilt he felt was Sally's. He knew it was wrong to peek into Sally's mind like that but now he couldn't stop. If he didn't breathe any dreams in his hands would begin to shake violently.

         Nightmares never tasted pleasant, and Caleb did all he could to stay away from them, but sometimes the nightmares would detach from the shoulders of their owners and follow after him, searching him out in the giant lunch crowds. They were always a clear kind of consistency but still looked foggy and whenever Caleb looked at them they would instill a sense of uneasiness in him. They often followed behind him slowly, meandering through the crowd carefully as though they were taking pains to be sure they wouldn’t get accidentally attached to the shoulders of the other people that passed by. He would dive and dodge through the crowd like a madman but more often than not the nightmares would catch up to him, landing softly onto his arms and shoulders and seeping comfortably into his skin. As far as he knew he was the only one with this kind of ability. Absorbing dreams was a thought foreign to the rest of the world. The nightmares tasted horrible, sometimes like bile or curdled milk, sometimes like rotting meat. It wasn’t too hard to avoid them when they were in his mind, he would push them away into a corner and ignore them as much as he could. Still, parts of the nightmares would flash in his head, scenes and pictures popping up at random times whether he was asleep or not.

         They would flash up in his dreams, scenes of mutilated bodies and family members strewn around the bedrooms and homes of the nightmare’s owners, feelings of hopelessness and fear flashing up inside of him unexpectedly, even without the accompaniment of the visuals. Caleb was shaken by the feelings that often accompanied the nightmares the most; his detachment from reality and reliance on the dreams had caused a lack of experiencing bitter emotions on that deep of a level throughout his life. The sudden emergence of such emotions at random would cause him to have cold sweats, his fingers shaking as he felt terrified in his cubicle simply from the outburst of the nightmares. They consumed little of his time at first, seconds, maybe minutes out of a couple of months, but the nightmares were so attracted to him that the time that they consumed in his life gradually began to increase. Caleb didn’t know why these nightmares were so drawn to him, but he suspected that it was because their owners would disregard and ignore them on purpose, not even trying to remember them like they did for their dreams. The ability to forcibly reveal themselves to someone who was helpless against them must have surely been a siren’s call. The nightmares craved the attention that Caleb would unwillingly be forced to give.

         The nightmares eventually began to devour him, swallowing up his time and thoughts and life and even influencing even the most pleasant dreams that he consumed, tainting them with their hardness and anger. Robert’s grandmother would hand Caleb chunks of bloody fingers wrapped in newspaper, twisted into the shape of a candy wrapper, Caleb would watch in horror as he would put the finger into his mouth, the finger still tasting like kindness. He had no control over the actions that happened in the dreams he was merely a part of them, like some kind of television show that he was the main character of. He kept thinking about the finger, how it looked as he put it into his mouth nonchalantly the dull nail and the small specks of dirt under it. He could see how it had been cut off at the first joint, the raw flesh and bone peeking out of one end.

         One of the worst nightmares he had yet experienced was one he didn't even remember picking up. It would kick off in a small room with shattered glass and bit of wood everywhere and he could feel himself frozen. A man stood to his left with a hunting rifle pointed down at a woman who was backed against the wall and sobbing. Caleb couldn't move and his fingers gripped the edges of the doorway, terror shaking in his bones as a scream finally,  finally  managed to tear its way out of his throat. Daddy no! But every time Caleb saw the beginning of the dream: the plush blue carpet and the smell of burning chicken-noodle soup he knew it was all useless. The scream that he felt would save the woman's life would be useless. The man would turn to him and smile, eyes widening maniacally as he pulled the trigger and sending brain and bone tissue flying all over the walls. A Jackson Pollack made with human instead of paint. Daddy still wore that smile to the end and when he turned the gun on himself Caleb knew the smile would still be there.

Caleb couldn’t discern the dreams from the nightmares anymore; they began to blend in his head into a mash-up of human horror house feelings and images, frankensteined together like a fifth-grader’s craft project. He wanted to feel the warmth of dreams; it was what he craved and began to obsess over. He yearned to crawl back into the comfort of them and to counteract the rampage of nightmares that had overtaken his mind; Caleb began to consume dreams heavily. Every dream he saw became a part of his mind, melting in with the rest of himself. He breathed in countless wisps of them everywhere he went. For every nightmare that latched on to him, he devoured ten dreams. Sometimes he could feel them cluttering up his mind, chattering in there like an unhappy crowd, all whispering together, all calling for his attention. His migraines began then, a sharp ringing accompanied by the always constant chatter of the dreams and nightmares that was taking over his brain. He took Advil and Aleve and Tylenol, and when he realized that those weren’t doing anything but muffling the sharp, high pitched tones the migraines brought, he began to experiment with drugs, every kind that he could grasp and take a hold of. His psychologist and doctor would prescribe him codeine, vicodin and percocet and when those weren't enough to drown out all of the pain and noise in his mind Caleb would drown himself in cough medicine.

He would lay for hours on his bed, talking to himself and wandering over the dreams that he had collected that day. The haze of the opiates helped to block the anger of the nightmares easing his mind into a false sense of comfort and safety. The first jolt of nightmare of the day was probably the worst it always startled him putting him into a feverish state of panic as he attempted to block it all out again, reaching for his phone, his pills, the nearest dream, anything to alleviate the horrors of those nightmares, anything. The haze that was his life still wasn’t enough to numb out the nightmares, brutal in nature they eventually found a way to force themselves through the opiates, worming into his being like maggots in a corpse. He would cover his eyes as though that would help him block the nightmares out, running around his house like a madman and banging on the walls, helpless. He could think of nothing to ease the pain of having so many distorted and horrific scenarios played out in his head.

Caleb leaned against the wall, exhausted and doped out every pill in his home was gone and he didn’t have the funds to keep up his habit. As his last high wore off, the nightmares and dreams began to chatter in his mind again, begging for his attention. The migraines started soon after that responding to the uproar of chatter. He became anxious, he couldn’t afford anything and although there was always the option to go out and steal more wisps of dreams to alleviate the pressure building in his head there was always the risk of more nightmares, the additional dreams would also cause more chatter in his mind, and he knew the withdrawal symptoms from his opiate use would kick in soon. He slid down the wall and curled up, legs to his chest as he cuddled his head in his arms, dear god, he only had one full day, around twenty four hours before the withdrawal would kick in. He knew what it was like he would start sweating and shaking and he knew the cacophony of his mind would only get louder, his body would get cold then hot, switching occasionally, he would feel nauseous and hungry, and his chest would feel as though someone had set it on fire.

He didn’t know if he could take that along with everything else, the additional pain would probably drive him crazy. He began to sob out of sheer despair, the nightmares and his wonderful dream thievery had brought on such a monumental change in his life. How he could possibly deal with something so undefeatable was a clouded subject to him, Caleb wouldn’t even know where to start. He sat with his back against the wall for hours, numbing out whatever he could with sheer will until he simply couldn’t take it anymore. The anger of the nightmares in his head began to swirl around and it was soon the only thing he could remember and think of, heavy thoughts and fear rushed through him like a tornado. God his head was going to burst! It felt like someone was taking an exacto knife to his head, precise small cuts all over the grooves of his brain. Soft tissue giving way to cold steel as his synapses fired off bullets of electricity, destroying masses of tissue.

The pain and stress brought on the onslaught of his withdrawal, which had rested deep inside his body all doped up from the opiates Caleb had consumed. The monstrous agitation of it began as soon as it awoke. Caleb’s body flashed up hot in a millisecond, flames shooting through every vein in his body as his heart palpitated from it all. He gave in and stumbled outside, a dream, any kind of dream, he thought. Anything to appease this unbearable pain, god please, he begged to thin air, the dark and dampness of the city around him closing him off from everything. The city was dark and empty and his hopes were dwindling as he looked around, there were no colorful wisps of light and color to be seen but still, in his complete desperation, Caleb stumbled around the streets. The cool asphalt reflecting his tortured visage in the pools that had formed earlier, had it rained earlier? He questioned himself, and couldn’t recall hearing the sound of rain as he was so far removed from the outside world now. All he could remember was his dim room and the sensation of his body high and all of his wonderful dreams. Yes, dreams, that was what he was doing here now, that was what he was looking for.

God what he would do for a dream now, even one of those salty ocean dreams from Sally would comfort him in their bittersweet flavor. He looked and looked and finally god had answered his prayer. He spied Robert, sleeping down an alley amongst the garbage from the day, piled next to him and a small curiously peach colored wisp dangling from one of Robert’s ears. It flapped around softly and the fact that it was still attached to him disturbed Caleb, but this perturbation was minimal in comparison with the desperation he felt. He would do anything to relieve this horror, this deluge of nightmares that he was facing. Caleb pulled the wisp into himself, breathing it in and it flowed to him, stretching as it pulled against Robert’s mind. He could feel Robert frown and shift a little in his sleep, becoming more aware of the man the closer the attached dream became and the proximity startled Caleb. He tried to let it go, breathe it back out and toward Robert again but it was too late. The dream kept crawling toward him steadily, when Caleb backed away the dream crept closer.

God, no. He thought, backing away horrified at this discovery, he turned and ran but the dream followed him doggedly. It followed him directly with nobody else around to get caught upon and sped up as Caleb sped up. The amplitude in his head rose like spikes and he felt the frequency of the noise in his mind heighten, Caleb grasped as his temples in desperation as the drone of noise crowded out his thoughts. He turned to look at the wisp, the anxious feeling in his chest intensifying as he felt the warmth of the dream on his back growing like a monstrous breath. It was so much closer than he could have ever imagined, the small size of it having grown to a terrifying proportion as he fell, stumbling on the asphalt, his footwork clumsy from his fear. The dream bore down on him and Caleb felt it flooding into his mind, flashing through head like drumbeats. He could feel Robert and knew that the old man was dying in his sleep in the frigid spring air as he lie on the street.

Caleb’s brain was going to burst; he fell on the road as his vision blurred in and out, a street lamp flickering on the other side of the street. He couldn’t feel his fingertips or the cold gravelly street under him as he slowly fell into a coma. The dreams had taken over his life and all he could do now was watch them and the nightmares, distort together in the haze of his mind. Caleb could hear distant rumblings of reality, things that didn’t relate to the haze of dreams that was his world now. In the distance he heard the start of the day in the city as people bustled by him on the streets, sirens in the midst of Sally’s circus and eventually the quiet beep beep of his heart monitor in the hospital. He could hear murmurings of nurse that attended him occasionally, the shuffling of her feet as she entered his room and refilled his fluids and her soft breathing as she shuffled out.

The dreams began to meld together in his head, splicing up and condensing as though the more that time passed, the more faded the dreams and nightmares became, needing to rely on one another as they weakened. Soon all of the noise in his head began to lessen, blending into a small bundle that took up less and less space; Caleb didn’t know how long that had taken. His sense of reality had been shot and his sense of time was questionable, but when he woke up reality was blinding. The white of the hospital was shocking in its new quality, over the course of his coma he had seen nothing but dark and color and this lack of both of these things felt so new to him. The nurse shuffled in casually and looked at him shocked, he was moving and this was also something of a new experience for her. The two of them looked at each other in amazement when Caleb began to jerk uncontrollably. His arms and legs violently shaking as his eyes widened in fear the nurse ran out of the room and returned with a doctor. He heard them taking as electricity pulsed through his body, the doctor ordering some medicine and the nurses running around madly when it stopped.

His shaking decreased as he breathed in sharply the air hitting his lungs like bricks with every breath. Caleb looked at the doctor with fear asking, “What was that?”

         The doctor responded in a careful manner with his brow furrowed. “Well, mister Johnson, is it? We believe that you just had a seizure, myoclonic to be specific.” The doctor’s words were slow, as if allowing Caleb to catch his breath.

         “Seizure?” He asked. “I’ve never had a seizure before. Why would I have one now?” Caleb started to laugh hysterically.

         “Well,” the doctor answered frowning, “that is what we need to find out. Do you have a history of seizures in your family, Mr. Johnson?”

         “No, of course not! At least not that I’ve heard of.” Caleb righted himself on the bed and placed his face carefully into his palms. The doctor hummed in thought.

         “You're and interesting case. We got the drugs out of your system but you still act as though you're having massive withdrawals. While you were in that coma your hands would shake violently every so often. We'll keep you here and run some more tests.”

         “It's the dreams, they just take over and I can't think or move and – ” Caleb said.

         “Dreams? Well, you just woke up and had a seizure so you're understandably confused. It's been a while since you've functioned without any  drugs so I'll talk to you when you've recovered a little more.” The doctor said.

         Caleb stayed at the hospital for the next few weeks during which he suffered through eight more seizures, myoclonic the doctor had said. They gave him CAT scans and tested his brain with other non-invasive methods, hoping to find out the reason behind his violent seizures and sent him home after the tests with medicines that didn’t work. His headaches and the pressure in his mind were gone but instead of it Caleb had seizures and fits of anger that were unusual to him. The doctor that had tended to him called him two weeks after Caleb’s release and explained to him that the electrical signals in his brain were disrupted, they were discharging abnormally and they were sure that he was now epileptic, the changes in behavior being characteristic of epilepsy. What do I do? He asked the doctor, and the man told him about a surgery, a cerebral commissurotomy he called it.

         The corpus callosum would be cut, the doctor explained to him, it's the bundle of nerves that connected the two hemispheres of your brain and this would prevent the abnormal signals from reaching both sides of his brain. Caleb froze his hand shaking again and agreed to have the surgery done. He rubbed his temples with quivering fingertips when the blob of dream-nightmare in his mind popped up in his mind’s eye. Caleb felt his fingers stops shaking and pulled the bubble of senses closer to himself and felt the stress melt away.