I wasn’t sure if it was the stress around me relating to wedding planning or house hunting or because I’d recently actually talked about my past, but that night I had a nightmare. I didn’t get them too often anymore, but sometimes I was forced to relive the worst day of my life. Trapped, my back broken, in terrible pain, but unable to focus on that as my attention was instead solely on the sounds of my parents being murdered. Yes, I was trying to play dead because if they knew I wasn’t, they’d kill me, but…I couldn’t just ignore those sounds. I couldn’t even open my eyes. Part of me wanted to, and part of me was terrified to. I did, later, long after the silence fell and I was sure they were gone, but seeing my parents and confirming that they were dead hadn’t helped. If anything, the memory of the sounds terrified me but the memory of those images broke me.
I woke abruptly, shaking and sweating. I couldn’t cry in cat form, but I wanted to. I was all alone in my trunk room, and for a moment I stared at the picture of my parents, barely visible in the darkness, before that just made my heart break all the more.
I got up and left my little room, stretching my paws for a bit before I paused in the hallway, looking over at the door to Amelia’s room. She always kept it slightly ajar in case I needed her, but I didn’t want to invade her privacy, so I’d only been in there the once when she’d rescued me from the party people. Hesitantly, I crept over to her room, slipped in the door, and then with a light hop, landed on the foot of her bed and curled up. Amelia gave me warm happy feelings. Maybe if I slept on the foot of her bed, the nightmares would leave me alone and I could forget about them.
I was almost scared to sleep, though, despite that hope, so I was still pretty awake when Amelia rolled over in her sleep and bumped me with her feet. She woke up, confused about the resistance, but when she flipped on a low light by her bed, she spotted me curled up there, no doubt looking a little like a deer in the headlights – I wasn’t sure if I should run back to the living room or what. She’d kind of caught me doing something I wasn’t sure was allowed, though it strictly hadn’t been forbidden, either.
“Ari?” She sounded sleepy, but automatically reached for me and pulled me in for a hug. “Are you okay? What are you doing in here?”
I tucked my head into her shoulder and kind of curled up there, taking some comfort from her body warmth.
This woke her up more, though, and she gently set me down and stared intently at my face for a minute, as if she could figure out how to read my mind. “Did you have a bad dream?” She asked at last. “You look kind of sad and shaken.”
I was surprised she’d gotten it right in one guess, but then on the other hand, bad dreams were what woke people up more often at night, right? They didn’t tend to happen during the day as much.
I nodded a bit and curled my tail around my paws.
“Oh, Ari.” She hugged me again, but before I could settle into her hug, she set me back down, stroking my head gently. “You’re always welcome to come to me if you have a bad dream. I’ll make you some hot chocolate or watch a movie with you or whatever you need. You want me to tell you a story while you go back to sleep? Maybe it’ll help you find good dreams this time.”
I wasn’t a little kid to need stories read to me at nighttime, but at the same time…no one had read me a bedtime story in years. I kind of felt choked up that she was offering, and curious about what she’d tell me, too, so I nodded again.
“Okay, let’s see.” She sat up straighter and thought for a bit. “Oh, I know! This is a story about twins who keep getting confused for each other and it makes a whole big mess of things all over town.”
She launched into the story, animatedly telling me details about the town and putting on a different voice or facial expression for each character. I figured out at some point that this was one of her beloved Shakespeare plays when she lapsed into the funny-sounding words again, but I didn’t even care, because this was fun. It was an abridged, impromptu, one-person show just for me and I loved it.
I was so much into the story that I didn’t even notice when she started slowly petting me or when my eyes closed. I vaguely remembered hearing her whisper “good night, Ari” and kissing the top of my head and then I faded back into dreams that this time were filled with silliness and running around in circles thanks to mistaken identities, the dark dreams from earlier forgotten.
~~~~~
“Amelia told me you had a nightmare the other night,” Zahara informed me out of the blue. “Was it about your aunt?”
I was watching her stretch while sitting on a park bench, but no one was nearby to listen to her question or notice that I was responding, so I shook my head.
Zahara thought for a minute. “Your parents?”
I nodded this time.
Her eyes softened. “I’m sorry about them, Ari. And that you have bad dreams about them. Someday maybe you’ll get to tell us all the good stories about them and maybe then if you dream about them, it’ll just be about the good stuff.”
I considered that as she started jogging along, me loping easily at her side. Ever since moving in with my aunt, I hadn’t had the leisure to really think about all the good years with my parents. I’d initially been focused on my back healing and on grieving, then on unraveling what was going on with my supposed illnesses and my aunt, then on how to escape, then on whether or not I needed to run away again, and most recently, while I had been more able to start thinking of them again, I’d focused more on the last day with them. But Zahara was right, I had nine amazing years with them before that. Maybe, even if I didn’t shift back again for a few more years, I could start telling them some of those memories, anyway, via email. I wanted to share my parents with my new moms and let them share those memories, too.
Like the time Dad hid from Mom in cat form because he didn’t want to help wash the car and five-year-old me pretended I had no idea where he was, but was giggling too hard and looking at his hiding place to really keep the secret. Or when Mom punched a hole through the entire wall because she was mad at something some acquaintance had said about mixed couples and Dad kind of stared at the hole, then at Mom, who was looking a little guilty at the splintered wood and drywall dust everywhere, until he blurted out he’d fallen in love with her again. I’d complained at them about being mushy, but I was kind of impressed by Mom, too.
I had a lot of good memories with my parents, actually. Those last ones – they were awful, and they would always haunt me, but I could remember all the good times and appreciate them. I was thankful that Zahara had reminded me of that.
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