Dreams

Reclined in his backyard, on an old rattan day bed, Peter dreamed.

He had not planned to fall asleep. He just wanted a couple of beers, to sit in the afternoon sun, to breathe the cool herbaceous summer air. To relax before Martha got home.

But it had been a long day and a difficult year and an arduous life, and he felt like he was getting old, tiring quickly. And now, as though to prove the point, he had fallen asleep, his second beer lying spilled in the tall grass, next to his dangling fingertips.

While he slept, Peter dreamed shallow liminal dreams. Some part of his mind held on to an awareness of space, of his body on the day bed, of the reaching grasses walling him in. But his dreaming mind was also adding details. Little embellishments. And now it added a tree to this world, and he dreamed he was sleeping under that tree, and that it was full of fat ripe apples. He dreamed the tree was swaying, like it was dancing in a Disney film, and that the sun dappled through its leaves, played on his face, made the world fantastical.

It was a good dream. It reminded him of childhood, when things were simple.

In those few minutes, Peter felt happy and rested, and the world seemed like a good place.

He woke when he heard the front door slam.

She always slammed the door. An introductory aggression. He sighed, but it took him a while to appreciate he had woken. Maybe because of the tree he had dreamt of.

Which was still there.

In the garden.

Full of fat ripe apples. Red and wholesome sun-kissed-looking apples. Like they’d gotten polished up for an ad.

Exactly like he had dreamt them.

Peter blinked. He rubbed his eyes. He pinched himself because he had heard that’s what people do to check they’re awake. There was something about the beer can next to him and the spittle he had to wipe from his chin that persuaded him he had stopped dreaming.

And then came Martha, and all thoughts of warmth and mottled light and youthful innocence disappeared.

‘Sleeping?’ asked the shadow over the day bed, stealing the sun.

‘Strange...’ mused Peter.

‘Wish I could nap in the middle of the day,’ said Martha, even though she often napped in the middle of the day.

‘Do you see the tree?’ asked Peter.

‘Sleeping while there’s a world of things I’ve been begging you to do,’ she said. ‘Like cutting this grass,’ she said, swept her arms extravagantly.

‘It’s never been here before,’ said Peter.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘The tree,’ he said. ‘It’s new. We’ve never had a tree here. There wasn’t a tree here when I came out earlier,’ he said, pointed. ‘Look! It’s massive fucking tree!’

He could sense her hesitation. Could feel her looking at the tree. But he knew what she would say. That she wouldn’t forfeit an opportunity to contradict him. Even when the world sprung trees in the blink of an eye.

‘Of course it’s always been there,’ she said. ‘You don’t think it appeared out of thin air?’ she said.

Peter turned, squinted at the sun flashing through the red hair attached to the shadow that was Martha. She was still looking at the tree. He could see her frown and could sense her doubt. ‘Seriously?’ he asked. ‘Take a minute and think about. There’s never been a tree here before,’ he said. ‘It’s a simple fact. It’s not an opportunity for point-scoring,’ he said, watched her flinch with anger.

‘It’s here, Peter,’ she said. ‘So it must have been here a long time. You’re not very observant, you know,’ she said. ‘Have never been.’

‘Do you remember this tree?’ asked Peter, watched her nod with over-exaggerated confidence.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s a big tree. It’s been here since we moved in. Has always been,’ she said.

‘You’re lying,’ said Peter.

‘Screw you,’ said Martha.

‘I think I dreamed it,’ said Peter. ‘I’ve told you about the things I’d dreamt as a child that also became real,’ he said. ‘Silly things. Toys. Once, a puppy. A bicycle. Things that were just there when I woke. Thirty-three years ago,’ he said. ‘Last time the comet was passing.’

It seemed to him he could hear her eyes roll.

‘That’s crazy,’ said Martha. ‘You’re obsessed with that comet. It’s because of your mother,’ she said. ‘You’re still trying to validate her delusions. To stand up for her,’ she said.

‘My mother–’ started Peter.

‘Your mother was crazy,’ said Martha. ‘Batshit.’

‘She said it’s the comet,’ said Peter. ‘She said it comes every thirty-three years, and when it comes it makes our dreams come true,’ he said.

Martha laughed. A genuine little cackle. Shook her head with pity. ‘Your mother killed herself,’ said Martha. ‘She killed herself and left her children with an alcoholic father who raised a bunch of weak over-imaginative children,’ she said.

‘My mother killed herself when Verna died,’ said Peter. ‘Blamed herself because of the postpartum. Said she’d dreamt Verna died, and when she woke Verna was dead. Didn’t matter what the biopsy said,’ said Peter. ‘She blamed herself. Said it happened to her father, too, every thirty-three years, when the comet came. Said none of her sisters got it. Just her dad. And her. And then me,’ he said. ‘You know this. We’ve talked about it,’ he said.

Martha stared at him through angry little pork-eyes. ‘Listen to yourself,’ she said. But her finely honed tone also spoke and said: do you see how you hurt me, how you make me suffer, what I have to put up with? ‘It’s a good thing I care for you,’ she said. ‘Anyone else would have called the nuthouse,’ she said. ‘Like they should have done with your mother.’

‘Martha,’ said Peter, took a slow long breath. ‘Tell me, honestly, this tree wasn’t here yesterday. A fully grown big-ass tree full of huge red apples. I would have known. You know it wasn’t here,’ he said.

But Martha turned and walked away, said, ‘Trees don’t sprout up fully grown overnight, dear.’ She laughed derisively and shook her head and slammed the door on her way back inside.

******

Peter dreamed of her often.

This woman at work.

Sandy with her long black hair and her gorgeous unaffected smile. Sandy with her kind gray gaze. Her fine little figure. Like a doll.

He dreamed of the way she laughed, and sometimes that laugh echoed in daydreams in sunlit waking hours. Like a promise from another world. From another life. From a place barred up against his yearning heart, a door slammed shut by fate and bad choices, or both.

It was the way she made him feel, he knew. Like he was a man a woman could want. Could desire. Someone deserving of kindness, of love. Even when he didn’t cut the grass or cleaned the gutters or made a lot of money, like the guy next door with his sleek sedan and sleek tall body and shiny helmet hair.

It was like she had taken residence in his head. Where they could be together. In daytime fantasies. In nighttime dreams.

There were days Peter went to the office, so ill he could hardly stand, white as a sheet, just because he knew he would see her, and needed to feel the way she made him feel. Sometimes, when she wasn’t there, he felt like he could weep with disappointment. Like all color and life had drained from the day.

It seemed to him there was a connection between them. Many what ifs. Like in, what if this was what I was meant to have, but I messed it all up by jumping the gun and getting married too soon? What if, he often wondered, I could just walk up to her and ask her to dinner and she said yes and we had a great time and became lovers and fell in love and were happy and good and kind to each other?

Because she seemed so full of kindness.

And there was nothing in the world he longed for more than kindness.

What if.

And he really thought Sandy felt the same. He thought she gave him a bit more of that wonderful smile than she gave others. That it lingered longer. And sometimes he thought her eyes held hints of their own fantasies, and he thought that, maybe, he lived in her dreams, too.

His dreams of Sandy often made him hard, even though they did not seem particularly sexual. Dreams as simple as walking down a moonlit street, holding hands. Or a dream where he was cooking, and she was laughing and everything felt warm and happy and golden and rang with life and love and a gorgeous simplicity. In this dream she gave him that smile, but with something of a promise in it. For later. For after dinner.

But also a promise that went far beyond that.

Maybe that she would smile at him like that when they were old, holding hands on a porch somewhere, worn but satisfied.

So, this night, Peter dreamed of Sandy again. While the apple tree swayed outside, its fruit lying rotten at its roots.

With strange clarity, with a heart full of longing, he dreamed of walking up to Sandy and asking her out. He didn’t know what he said in the dream, but he knew it was smooth and suave, just like the guys in the movies, and he knew he was nervous like a teenage boy, but that it didn’t show, and, if it did, that she didn’t scorn him for it.

And, in this dream, she smiled and said of course and didn’t mention anything about him being married, and they went for lunch, staggering their exits so no one would notice. It was a wonderfully naughty dream that started with hasty tacos from a food truck, like they well understood that time was short and none of this was about food. The dream ended with wonderful, frenzied sex in a nearby motel, with whispered promises of many lunches to come, with a sense of wholeness and hope.

So, when Peter woke that morning and showered and went to work, and Sandy smiled and winked when no one could see, he knew they would have lunch together.

He thanked his stars, in a manner of speaking.

And a certain comet, in particular.

******

‘What are you so happy about?’ asked Martha, a couple of days later.

He was in the kitchen, cooking Bolognese. Something he thought he was really good at, but that Martha referred to as man-food, even though she could consume ample amounts of it.

And, he realized, he was grinning. Foolishly.

‘What about that tree?’ asked Peter, to nudge the conversation away from his inexplicable and unacceptable happiness. ‘Changed your mind about it? Still think it’s always been there?’ he asked.

In response, she gave him her best deadpan expression. It was a really good one.

‘What do you dream of, my dear?’ he asked, and laughed and did a little jiggle-dance.

She said, ‘I’m happy to see one of us have a little bit of joy left,’ and walked out.

Slamming the door.

******

Martha had gone. As she often did. Taking a break, she called it. Got into her old blue Nissan and drove off.

To his great joy, she did this quite often.

She had sent him a text. ‘Gone for a couple of days,’ it read. ‘Visiting Mom,’ it said.

He read it with a grin, didn’t respond, made a mental note to get vodka and cheeseburgers for supper.

When he got home, she wasn’t there. Two suitcases gone. That should last her a week, he figured.

Bliss.

******

The next morning, somehow finding its way through a wild hangover, a thought struck.

It was a gamble, but Peter thought it might work.

It occurred to him he had never dreamt of winning the lottery. But he thought he could make himself dream about it.

It sure was worth a try, he thought.

And so, on his way back from work that afternoon, he turned into a service station, filled up his car, bought milk and red wine and microwave pizza, bought a lottery ticket. He had never bought a lottery ticket before. He did not believe in luck. Not for him. Never had. Not even as a child. Luck had always seemed like a thing for other people. Lucky people. People whose baby sisters didn’t die, whose mothers did not kill themselves, whose fathers did not live in an alcoholic haze. People whose wives could stand them.

Happy people.

But now, it seemed to him, it wasn’t about luck.

There was a comet overhead.

He sat in his car and stared at the lines of random numbers, at all the freedom and hope they represented. He rubbed the piece of paper between his fingers, spoke the numbers out loud, put it to his nose to smell it, gave it a little lick. He tried anything and everything he could think of to get an image in his mind that might spill into the subliminal.

He went home and charged his tablet and watched hours and hours of YouTube videos about people who had won the lottery, and how it had changed their lives, and all the great and grand things they had done with the money. He was careful to skip over the ones where they had messed up, had squandered it all, the cautionary tales of fools. He had a bottle of wine. To help him sleep.

From time to time, he looked at the ticket and spoke the numbers out loud, and then he jotted down the jackpot amount, over and over again, focusing on all those zeros. He wrote out a budget with all the things he would get, Googled some pictures to aid his imagination, thought of his life surrounded by such things. Then he went back to the videos until he fell asleep on the couch.

But, that night, Peter did not dream of winning the lottery. Instead, he woke with a fat ginger cat sleeping on his lap, even though he’d never had a cat, didn’t like cats, was allergic to cats.

He fed the cat canned tuna and rubbed her back while he watched her eat. Then he dropped her at a shelter, said she was a stray, just appeared from nowhere.

He bought another lottery ticket, did it all again. Then again the day thereafter. He kept it up until he could think of nothing else but winning the lottery, until it felt like he’d won already.

Then, one night, in a dream crisp and clear, Peter dreamed of winning the lottery.

And there were many zeros.

******

‘Europe?’ she said and laughed in a way that made him pull her closer.

They were spooning, and he marveled at how they seemed to fit, like pieces of a jigsaw, made by some creator, flung far and wide, finding each other. He smelled her hair and stroked her smooth skin and fine angular figure. Sunlight spilled through the windows, shone bright on white linen.

Like a dream, thought Peter.

‘Europe,’ he said. ‘Fly over and stay a year. Do as we please. Take it day-by-day. See where we end up,’ he said. ‘No itinerary. Five star and first class all the way,’ he said.

She giggled and squirmed and turned to face him. She looked at him in a way that made him feel like he could say anything, that he’ll always be okay in her eyes, even when she thought he was being whimsical, full of silly fantasies, like a boastful teenage boy.

‘Never mind the money,’ she said. ‘Which we don’t have. What about our jobs?’ she asked. ‘When the year’s over. Back from Europe and broke,’ she said. ‘What then?’

He smirked. He felt like a million dollars. He had reason to.

‘Never mind our jobs,’ she said. ‘Is Martha joining us?’ She turned back around, snuggled up to him. ‘You’re a silly hamster,’ she said, because that was what she had taken to calling him of late.

******

The comet streaked overhead.

He stood outside in a shivery winter breeze, grinning, smoking a joint.

He could see it was fading.

Behind him, the apple tree stood sickened by blight.

Almost done, thought Peter. One more dream.

And it was an easy one.

It was a dream involving an old Nissan on a night drive back home on surfaces polished smooth by rain and bitter cold.

He closed his eyes and imagined.

******

He was annoyed when they knocked on his door in the dead of night, just a couple of hours before daybreak. He blinked and rubbed his temples like that would drive away the beating headache from all the whisky he’d had.

This could really wait until later, it seemed to him. Until after breakfast, maybe.

He got up and opened the front door and the police officers stood there with a kind of practiced severity, blue lights blinking in the background, neighborhood curtains stirring. Quite the cliché. Exactly the way he’d imagined it.

Far away on the dark horizon, the comet blinked like a star, almost gone, taking its magic elsewhere.

He watched the young officer nearest him, cap in hand, swallowing, struggling to find the right words, probably trying to remember what some training manual said.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he thought he’d save her the trouble.

‘I know,’ said Peter, ‘I dreamed it,’ and he wiped away an unexpected tear, wondering where it had come from.

THE END

Bio: Daniel Burnbridge is a South African author of speculative fiction, with work published or forthcoming in several magazines and anthologies, including Journeys Beyond the Fantastical Horizon (Galaxy’s Edge), Amazing Stories and Aurealis. He is the winner of the 2023 Mike Resnick Memorial Award for best science fiction short story by a new author...

E-mail: Daniel Burnbridge

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