Lucid

It only really makes sense if you start with the table, and barely then. But let’s start there. There was a square table with a white linen cloth. Four chairs, four place settings and tiny silver platters, one to the right on which rests a tiny vanilla cupcake. Just one cupcake. You don’t know why.

You sit at the table facing your mother, with your sister to your left and your father to your right. Except it’s not your family, not really. But they’re proud of you. Or they will be, imminently, after something else happens that you’re extremely anxious about. But we’ll get back to that. We need to start with the table, remember?

The table sits in a white room with columns intermittently interrupting the space, making it seem smaller than it really is. Or larger, if you anticipate more beyond their sharp corners. There should be more tables, if this is a restaurant. But you’re not sure it is. Accents of red bloom in the corners of your eyes, but everything is white. The shadows, maybe? But where are the lights?

“Are you with us … Sigmund?” You ask, twisting in your chair to address a blond man standing at the hostess podium behind you. You squint at his name tag, newly pinned to a freshly pressed shirt, to get his name right. You thought it had been something else, but the syllables evaporated on your tongue the moment the name tag caught your eye. He’s training, and the apron-wearing woman standing at the podium beside him narrows her eyes, irritated at the interruption. She says nothing.

“Um, no,” he mumbles. First day, tough job.

You turn back, unsettled. “Where’s David?” you ask your not-family. Who’s David? They don’t reply.

The white walls feature flat-screen TVs, tastefully spaced but difficult to see in full between the pillars. They’re playing memories, predictions, of Sigmund and you. You’re happy. It’s sunny. It’s cinematic. You can’t see where you are as you laugh up at him and tuck your hair behind your ear. You don’t remember this, but they want you to.

“We’re so proud of you,” says your not-father. He looks satisfied that his investment has paid off. His family gets to dine with white linens and silver platters and all it cost was one daughter. And you’ll be fine, probably.

Now this is where it gets fuzzy — the part that happens next. You shouldn’t have questioned it, but you did. “Where’s David?” someone asked. Maybe it was you, but probably not, because you grabbed the cupcake and shoved it in your mouth in a blinding moment of rage. You didn’t even remove the wrapper. The cake was moist — no, dry — crunching in the half baked paper. The frosting was sweet. You hate vanilla.

Another cupcake rested on the silver platter to your right. There had been one and you ate it and now there’s another. A waiter had been next to you, momentarily, but they hadn’t mentioned a cupcake. You’d ordered dinner, probably. There were no windows, but the setting sun of the cinematic not-memories and the luxury of the linen napkin on your lap means it must be evening, certainly. You must be celebrating, certainly.

Why is the table empty if you’ve ordered dinner? Why has no one spoke? Where is David? You pick up a glass flute and throw it against one of the columns. “Can’t you see this isn’t right?” you shout. Your mother casts her eyes away, enthralled with your father’s elbow. He glares at you, a sigh held in his chest. Your sister knows, but she won’t tell. Her face is blank.

You get up from the table but the glass is gone and you’re sitting again and a single cupcake rests on the silver platter to your right. Behind you, Sigmund learns how to properly manage a wait list at an establishment with only four guests who cannot leave.

And that’s it, really. That’s all you have. The fear swelling in you like a sneeze. It bursts with every shattered plate and each crunched wrapper and the chair crashing to the floor behind you but then it’s building again, the red shadows and the white walls and the silver platters and you’re seated at the table again and you don’t know how and you don’t know why and your family is so, so proud of you and you know it doesn’t feel right and where the fuck is David. Who’s David?

She wakes in a dark room lit only by the green pin light of the air conditioner, blasting cool air over the kicked-off covers. A warm dark shape rests beside her, a breathing shape with a nest of brown hair but it looks black because it’s dark, remember? She wants to get close but maybe she’ll lose it, this thread of story this piece of imagination this potential to create since her waking mind clearly cannot, so consumed by bills and lists and shopping carts.

The shapes and shadows and sentiments swirl, dizzying, beyond her closed eyes, until she bravely reaches to the right and finds — not a cupcake, but a notebook and pen. She pulls open the binding and she thinks it rips, so rarely touched it is. She scribbles notes of it all, the table and the not-family and David — who the fuck is David — and then she closes the book and of course she has to pee.

The green of the air conditioner light leads her to the green of the alarm clock which reads 3:53 am. She stumbles to the bathroom, fear of what’s real and what’s not clouding the forefront of her mind. She flushes, washes her hands. Risks a glance in the mirror and hopes to only see one person. Reality grants her that reprieve but her eyes are dark shadows holes in her skull dark shadows holes that haunt until she tilts her head ever so and the white appears and phew okay yes it’s just her, it’s fine.

Steps through the living room, kisses for the cat curled circled on the couch, steps to the bed. She permits the warmth of the covers, tells herself the truth that feels like lies and the fear swells in her like a sneeze.

“Bless you,” mutters the shape beside her. “Sweet dreams,” she mutters, cuddling close and burying her nose in the brown hair that looks black in the dark, permitting the warmth of another body to tell her a truth that feels like lies and the fear swells and swells and subsides into sweet, subtle dreams.