The Memoirs of a Forgotten Man

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Part Four

“I remember having the dreams often as a child. I believe I was about five years old when they first occurred. I'm not exactly sure, but it was around then. I had them for a few years. Probably until I was about ten. Then they just seemed to stop.” Alicia listened attentively as I began to describe the dreams to her. There really wasn't dreams in the plural. There was only the one dream. It just happened many times. Over quite a few years.

I had never spoken to anyone else about them. I haven't even mentioned their existence to anyone else. They were my secret. My own confusion to carry with me. At least they were as a child. They seemed to have disappeared from my awareness for the last few decades. I guess they never went anywhere. They just became a part of my suppressed past. An existence buried due to it's difficulty and my inability to fully comprehend it. I think we all do that to some degree. And once it's suppressed we forget about it. But it hasn't forgotten about us. It leaves little tell tale signs of its presence. For example – the deja vu experience I encountered when I first saw the child's body. The unconscious speaks to us in a language we usually fail to understand.

“It was just the one dream. It never really changed. I don't know that there was really all that much to the dream. But it had an emotional intensity that has stayed with me to this day. I recall waking up from the dream screaming. In a cold sweat. And that wasn't normal for me. Apart from this particular dream I never suffered from nightmares. I didn't scare all that easily. At least I tried to give the adults around me that impression. So for something to get through my defences like this, to have me terrified in the most outwardly noticeable manner, it must have been something of significance. That's what I believe.”

“And do you have any sense of what that significance could be?” It was a calculated question. Probably a question born from Alicia's many years of analysing other people's issues. It was a question that cut to the chase of why the dreams bothered me so much. And it was a question I could not answer. And that's what bothered me. I have looked at this dream from every angle. I have gone back over it with a fine tooth comb, seeking out the details. But there aren't any. Not really. There doesn't appear to be anything to it. Not that I can see. But I'm looking with an investigator's eye. Alicia will have a different way of looking. Or a different way of interpreting what it is she sees. This is my hope.

“No, none at all.” I looked at her directly. Almost pleadingly. But as always from behind this mask I know I carry with me always. It has been my protector for so many years. And I know it will just get in the way here. I do know that. But we are creatures of habit. And I'm sure Alicia has seen it all before. “I have searched for that significance. For the hidden meaning in the dreams, but if it's there then I have failed to see it.”

“I wouldn't think of it as a failure,” Alicia gently corrected me. And she was right. The language we use that we don't even notice. “There would be a reason you haven't been able to observe the deeper meaning in the dreams. Why its emotional impact has been so powerful. It all depends on just how deeply you have buried it. And the deeper you have buried its true meaning, the more significant that meaning is to you. We do not do these things lightly.”

“That's the investigator in me. I need a solution. A reason why. So I can file it away and move on. But that just isn't happening here with this situation. With my own situation.”

“Which is why you have come to me. Just think of this as part of the ongoing investigation. Sometimes you have to work with experts in other fields when investigating a case. Is that not true?” The thing with going to see a police Psychologist is that she gets it. She understands the mindset. At least Alicia does. It doesn't seem to be too much of a stretch for her to look at things through my eyes. It saves on all that getting to know each other stuff that would have been the case elsewhere - “so tell me about yourself.” I hate that question. Alicia already knows about me. Even if she doesn't know me. The way she has been looking at me, the questions she has asked, and hasn't asked. The way she has let me talk. Probably analysing my body language. But what she is definitely doing is reading between the lines. And she can because she already has knowledge of my background.

“Yes, this is part of the investigation. Although this feels like a cold case, given how old it is.”

“You were saying earlier that the dreams made a reappearance. Tell me more about that.”

“Yes they did. Recently, perhaps over the last three months. Since I started to work on my most recent case.”

“And was there anything different about these dreams compared to the earlier ones?” Alicia asked.

“The emotional intensity wasn't there. I was aware of the emotionality of the dream, but I didn't feel any impact from it. The dream was the same.” There didn't seem to be any rush to Alicia's enquiry. And not in a bad way. She had a methodical, patient approach to her questions. I could sense it. And appreciate it. But it occurred to me that I hadn't even described the dream. And she hadn't pushed me to. Not yet anyway. It was a puzzle, and she was picking out the easier pieces to get a sense of the overall picture. The details will present themselves in time, I guess. But this was just me analysing my analyser. The mind of the investigator trying to understand how this all fits together. And why it is this way, and not a different way.

“What is the gist of the dream?” she asked me. She either has exceptional timing, or her mind reading skills are impeccable. Or she lead me to the thought in the first place.

“It's simple, really. I'm standing in the middle of a room. A bare room. In the first incarnation it was bare. Four walls, me, emptiness around.” I took a moment to breathe deeply as I started to recall, and describe the dream. I was aware as I was telling Alicia how the description would never do it justice. But it was the second part of the dream that had me petrified as a child. And I wish to god I knew why. “Whilst I am standing in the middle of the room, I shrink drastically. Or the room enlarges enormously. One or the other. I believe it's me shrinking. And it's that sense of disappearance that has all the emotional impact. Well did have. When I first had that dream as a child.”

“And when you were having this dream as a child did this ever change? Or were the details always the same?”

“Always the same,” I told her. “There was a slight change in the newer version. The one I started to have again recently.”

“And what was that change that took place?”

“There was a piece of furniture in the room. To my left. Like a sideboard you have in a hallway, to leave your keys on. Something like that. And more importantly there is a door. Directly in front of me. The newer dream seems to emphasise these items – the sense of disappearance seems to be less noticeable.”

“You said 'more importantly' in reference to the door. Why is that?” Alicia asked me.

“Because I seem to be staring right at it. I am aware of the sideboard to my left, but I am looking directly at the door. Almost like I am mesmerised.”

Alicia took a moment to consider all that I had just told her. She looked at me with her piercing blue eyes. I hadn't noticed just how clear they were. It was like I was being invited in to view the workings of her mind. To the deeper recesses of her own analyses. The more I looked, the more mesmerised I felt. An entrance was opening up in front of me, although I couldn't see through the mist that lay before me.

She gently brushed her blond hair from her shoulder, as she straightened up in the chair she was seated in. Clasping her hands together, fingers interlocked, she told me, “perhaps we need to discover what is on the other side of that door.”

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This fiction is my own work, written for Steemit
Image Credit: Unsplash.com

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Bad Trip	My Sister's Keeper
Chapter One	Chapter One & Two
Chapter Two	Chapter Three & Four
Chapter Three	Chapter Five & Six
Chapter Four	Chapter Seven
Chapter Five	Chapter Eight
Chapter Six	Chapter Nine
Chapter Seven	Chapter Ten
Chapter Eight	Chapter Eleven
Chapter Nine	Chapter Twelve
Chapter Ten	Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Eleven	Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Twelve	Chapter Fifteen
Short Fiction	Chapter Sixteen & Seventeen
Bang Bang You're Dead	Chapter Eighteen
Where Did the Time Go?	Chapter Nineteen
Run From the Screams	Chapter Twenty
Saved By the Rain	Chapter Twenty One & Twenty Two
I Think I've Remembered This Before	Chapter Twenty Three & Twenty Four
A Mother's Love	Chapter Twenty Five
	Chapter Twenty Six
	Chapter Twenty Seven & Twenty Eight
	Chapter Twenty Nine & Thirty
	Chapter Twenty Thirty One
	Chapter Twenty Thirty Two