Dark Memories

Everything is dark—still, except for the light from the television. It’s just as it was when I drifted off to sleep only static has replaced the movie I was watching. The flickering lights around the room cast a bluish hue over all things lightly colored: the rug, the couch.

The flickering lights remind me…no…I don’t want to revisit the dream where I...No! Stop.

I straighten the pillows on the couch in an effort to busy my mind with other thoughts. Standing will be a challenge in my current, just awaken state, but the spike in adrenalin caused by the dream is willing me to do something.

Successful in diverting my thoughts, the flickering lights recapture my attention and I long to make it stop. I search blindly around the couch, my hands overcompensate for my eyes in the dark, and I try desperately to locate the remote. There’s something about the flickering lights that draws me back to that place, the dream.

Unsuccessful in locating the remote, I hold my hands over my eyes in an effort to block the light, but the creases between my fingers allow the light to continue its assault and I am forced from my haven, up, and to the source.

Gingerly, I stand and is it the blood rushing to my lower limbs or the fear that causes my head to feel light? I take a deep breath, willing warm still air to calm me, and I walk to the source of the flickering blue lights.

My eyes have adjusted to the dark and the contrasting light, and I reach out my hand. The static my hand causes when it brushes across the screen startles me. I retract my hand as if the shock is real and dangerous…it was just a dream.

“This is silly,” I think to myself. I reach out and face my fears as I trace the smooth glass, warm from running all night. I wash my hand over the screen, causing the static sound to follow me. I command it, willing the sound and the light trail this way, and that way.

I played with him like that…in full control of his pleasure, drawing him this way, then that way, so close to ecstasy, yet so far…teasing. I traced my hands over the mountainous hills his pecks form and through the soft curly hair over his chest, the delight partly my own over his strong, beautiful chest. I circled my fingers over the area I believe to be his heart. Lying on his stomach, my cheek warmed by the heat his body radiates…dangerous. I listen to his heartbeat as it quickens at my command, and I am in control…of more than his heartbeat, but also the gentle moans escaping from his mouth.

Remembering the last time we were together, instinctively, my nails replace the soft pad of my fingertips and I dig, gently at first, at his vulnerable skin. I recall how cold he was toward me the last time we met and I pull at his chest hairs, causing mild discomfort that mimics mine when I think about the day I told him, “I love you.” He didn’t respond. He merely smiled that smile, that knowing and condescending smile that I have come to abhor.

I resist the urge to take a handful of hair and pull it. If I did, maybe then his smile will fade and I’ll have his full attention and we can stop playing these silly games. Maybe now we can get to the business at hand.

My hand…I refocus on it in a fist, the pain my nails cause, biting into the flesh. The flickering lights ever present, the white noise re-enters my consciousness. My hand, now sweaty causes pinkish-blue streaks across the hard smooth screen, and I long to jump in and run away from the present in an effort to fix the past—to at least relive certain moments. Choose differently. Is there a pathway here, at the flickering screen? I search in vain for the portal. My tears intermingle with the sweat streaks on the screen, and I feel around for the off button, slightly larger than the other buttons, and off to the side on its own. Upon locating it, I turn it off and the noise, the memories, the longing, the light all cease to exist…for now.