A waking dream

Last night I had a dream about a dream I used to have.

I was small and I was scared. She came almost every night, that rotting woman from the bathtub in The Shining. Even as a five-year-old I had been struck by the beauty of the nude woman in the bathroom, and then suddenly she was grotesque and horrific, and she visited me most nights.

So I was small and I was scared. Tucked deep at the bottom of my bed, securely folded into the sheets, with a coffee mug and a small television to ward off sleep, I would await the sound of "1...2...3." The numbers would appear in the air, red, at the sound of the bodiless voice warning me of her arrival. At "3" she was there, and my attempt to hide was never successful. She would always corner me and tickle me, cruelly mixing the glee of playing with the fear of her rot.

I would run downstairs and into my parents bedroom, a place of mystery and privacy. I would open the door and there they would be, or I presumed it to be them. Dark shapes, with no definable characteristics, broken only by a bright orange glow where mouths with kisses and kind words should have been. I would crawl between these shapes, the smell of burning cigarettes in my nose. I was allowed space but the space was cold, and there was no comfort.

I awoke from this dream of a dream and a memory--it's always difficult to distinguish which was which--and was confused by seeing my small face staring back at me from the darkness of my own bedroom, and the sound of my small voice telling me that the dream had scared him. He laid down between us and I knew that he needed to be warm, because I had been so cold. But he doesn't like the covers like I do. So, although he didn't know why I needed to, we held hands, and I could give him what I didn't get, and we all went down to dreams together.