Written by abb92
I work in Makati, my family lives in San Pedro, Laguna, a municipality in the south which is around 37km from where I work. For several reasons, previous family situations, toll fee rate, gas price, it was necessary that I rent a place near my office. This means that I only come home on weekends.
So for four months now I’ve been on this arrangement…go home to my wife and kids on weekends and spend the nights on weekdays in my rented 5 sqm room. Its cozy, a small single bed neatly hugging one corner of the room. I have an electric fan at the foot of my bed, firmly locked at the base, by the wall and one bed foot, almost immovable. A water heater for my hot water for coffee in the morning, placed just beside the door and always half filled with water, two coffee mugs on top of a clean rag just beside the fan base, a medium sized plastic pail on one corner of the room for my dirty clothes. My clean clothes hung around the room, my cellphones always plugged to the charger before I go to sleep. I would like to go on describing my rented room, but I guess you have an idea by now.
Then it happened one night, and it’s not a sex story.
For reasons I still can’t explain now, I found myself in a dimly lit huge hall. Dim lights, coming from the ceiling corners, barely illuminating what is inside the room. Even then, I can still clearly see a long table in the middle of the room, around 2 meters in width, the length of which I cannot then see and till now I cannot ascertain. It was so long that I can’t see the end of it. It’s either because the room was dimly lit…or it is because it’s draped in black table cloth. I slowly walked towards the table, not knowing what I wanted to see or what I wanted to know. Approaching the end of it, I paused…took a deep breath, and then went on all fours to peek under the table. It was when I lifted the black cloth to look under the table that everything went evil….
A force, so strong, suddenly made me lie on my back, parallel to the tables’ end, a force so strong, started dragging me under the table, my hands trying to hold on to the nearest table legs my feet hitting the legs of the table on the other side, I was being dragged at a speed and force, that when I tried to grab on the tables legs, it only made them tumble from where I pass…..i was screaming at the top of my voice….I am being dragged to a place, to a hell I don’t know….i have to get out …how?….i have to escape…how?…
Then it occurred to me…I have to wake up…it’s just a dream….it’s just a NIGHTMARE….
But fuck, It wasn’t just a dream it wasn’t just a nightmare….and I woke up from it….but what I saw when I woke up scared me even more, blood on the floor….blood on my bed sheet, blood on my pillow….my right index and ring finger bleeding profusely from deep lacerations….i have a deep cut just below my knee…2 cm wide and 2mm deep….also dripping blood….my neck is aching…my back is aching…I have bruises on my left arm….
The fan locked by the wall and bedpost at my bed end is now disheveled at my bed side, broken in several parts, beside me on the floor. My kettle, is now under the bed, with water spilled all over….one of my mugs…the thicker one….broken….my cellphones disassembled and all over the place…..
I’m awake…but I’m now more scared than when I was dreaming. I wipe the blood…from my wounds…from the floor…and my white towel is starting to take the color of red. I quickly looked for my phone, assembled it and called my wife. In a trembling voice I told her what happened, my body is shaking in fear, she was as scared as I was, she asked me to come home. I don’t know what happened…but I want to come home……That night, I went home… to San Pedro…. I drove at a speed very much lower than my usual speed, I drove with trembling hands, At home I had my wounds cleaned, which was still bleeding then….discovered more bruises in my back, my left leg just above the ankle swollen….drank beer and whisky to numb the fear and the pain…and wrote this….its 3:30 am…
Now I have questions whirling in my head…..why did the dream manifest itself physically?…..how can the things around me be thrown around and destroyed?….why do I have the wounds?….why do I feel the pain?…why am I under the bed?…..why is one of the bed post broken?….why am I in pain….?
