A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read.
Strange Dream
I found myself in our old house.
It was definitely our old house and the living room of it. I recognized the comfortable leather sofas and armchairs, the coffee table that always reminded me of a sleigh, the old TV not far away. Of course, I recognized it, having spent a third of my life there.
Des entered and I immediately looked up at him. He looked a few years younger, but that wasn't the strangest thing about him... It was the look in his eyes. I'd never seen him look at me with such cold disgust.
"Des..." Huh? What happened to my voice? It sounded so thin...
I looked down at my hand. Why is my hand so tiny? I slowly slid my eyes to the tiny figure reflected on the TV.
"I'm disappointed in you," Des's cold voice drew my attention back to him.
"I'm sorry..." I apologized.
"You are weak, Shaytan," he spat in disgust. "I hate the weak."
My brother has never called me by my full name...
"Des, please," I whimpered.
"You let Alistair die even though he was always by your side!" he stated. "You just turned your back and ran away!"
"I... I didn't want to," I replied desperately, "I wanted to save him!"
"If you really wanted to save him, you would have stayed and fought," Des' eyes narrowed. "Is that what I taught you as a hunter? How to run away with your tail between your legs from the enemy?!"
"No..." I whimpered.
"And what about your girlfriend?" he spat, "You dare to say you loved her when you watched her die?"
"No... No!" I protested. "I wanted to save her!"
"But you failed!" he stated, "Her death is your fault!"
I got down on my knees.
"And what do you do now, when your half-brother is dying?" he asked, "You just shake like a leaf, and keep telling yourself that you can't do anything."
"What can I do?!", I cried.
"Don't you see!!!" he shouted, "Everyone around you is going to die! Just because you are weak!"
"Stop it," I cried. "Just stop it..."
"But you know, Shaytan, that's not why I hate you," he said with icy calm, and I looked up at his towering figure above me, "You made our mother die! Her death was your fault, yours alone! Why did you have to be born at all?"
He wrapped his fingers around my neck and squeezed me with such an overwhelming force that I was unable to fight him.
"Are you afraid?" he asked coldly, "Are you afraid, Shaytan?"
I closed my eyes and prayed for it to be over. I prayed for death because the pain that shot through my chest was more terrible than anything I had ever felt. Yet, as I was teetering on the edge of fainting from lack of air, the grip on my neck released and I instinctively gasped for breath.
When I opened my eyes, Des was gone. A woman stood by the window, watching the tranquil landscape stretching out behind it.
"Mum...?" I moaned in a hushed voice.
Her icy gaze found me instantly. She stepped up to me and slapped me. The imprint of her palm burned painfully on my face.
"You're not my son," she snapped, "and I'm not your mother! Don't you ever call me that again!"
My mother frighteningly towered over me, and I felt so small and helpless under her hateful gaze.
"Are you afraid?" she asked, "Are you afraid, Shaytan?"
I felt my eyes widen. Isn't that exactly what my brother asked me?
Then the next moment, just like Des, she was gone. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again, she was gone. I was alone in the apartment. I knew, I felt, that no matter where I looked, I would find no one in the house. By some sudden impulse, I decided to look around outside the apartment, but when I stepped outside I was not greeted by the usual sight.
Opposite me, the water of a pond rippled gently as the gentle breeze occasionally ran across its surface, and a weeping willow hung its branches on the bank. I heard a door slam behind me, but when I turned around, I saw a forest where the house used to be.
I started towards the lake. The breeze blew pleasantly, stroking my skin and ruffling my hair. It tried its best to comfort the willow tree, but without much success, it looked just as gloomy.
The water seemed crystal clear, and I felt like touching the mirror-like surface. Slowly I reached out toward the surface, but when my hand touched it, I jumped back in fright.
For a moment, the water seemed to turn garnet-red with blood. I looked in shock at my trembling fingers, glistening with transparent droplets.
When I bent over again, I found the water in the pond normal again. I was getting really scared. I knelt down and prepared to repeat my earlier attempt.
My palm disappeared into the pleasantly warm water as I moved my fingers in it, the mirror-smooth surface broken by rings. I wanted to slap it on my forehead. I'm sure I was just imagining things.
I pulled my hand out of the water, but the next moment fingers were wrapped around my wrist. Frightened, I tried to free myself, but its invincible grip would not let me. For a moment I froze. Under the surface of the water, I saw the body that belonged to the hand.
The air was stuck in my lungs. It was him, no doubt, the first I had killed, my first victim as a hunter.
Young hunters prove their determination to achieve their goal by publicly executing their first victim. The man was a vampire who attacked humans, sucking all their blood and leaving nothing but corpses in his wake. They caught him and threw him in prison, only to have me be the one to end his life. Even though he begged, I cut his throat with a decisive slash and let his lifeless head fall to the ground — a cut that was still there on his headless neck.
"No!" I groaned, "Stop, leave me! Leave me alone!"
I tried in vain to pry his fingers, but he would not let me. The next moment another hand was on my wrist. Jo? She looked at me with the same face I remembered from the moment of her death. More fingers joined the previous ones. Alistair stared at me. My mother also locked onto my hand as she bore her hate-filled eyes into mine.
"No, stop!", I cried.
My eyes widened: the depths of the lake were full of corpses heading towards me, so many I couldn't have counted them, yet I knew every one of their faces. I had finished each one of them.
Then the hands pulled me into the water, and I struggled as hard as I could, there was no way I could stay above the surface. More arms gripped my clothes and pulled me down towards the deep, unstoppable. My lungs were pricked by a thousand and a thousand needles, my eyes stung, and my consciousness grew duller.
I watched the rays of sunlight breaking on the surface of the water and the bubbles that occasionally burst from my lungs, misty-eyed from lack of air and impending fainting. It was all over.
The next moment, though, before the darkness enveloped me, I hit the floor hard. Coughing, I tried to catch my breath again, and when my lungs finally seemed to calm down, I forced myself to look around.
I was lying on the marble floor of a huge room, which reminded me strongly of a chessboard with its black and white colored tiles. Around me stood two rows of strange creatures. With their small stature, they could not have been more than a meter tall, all wearing the same white uniforms and carnival masks. Meanwhile, I also managed to ascertain that I had regained my original size.
"Welcome," I heard.
The voice came from the throne opposite me. A child in white was sitting on the throne, he too looked small, but he was human-sized. His black hair was quite a contrast to his white clothes similarly the mask that covered his face made his pale skin look eeriely pale. There was almost an elegance, mingled with haughtiness, in his bearing. I felt like laughing derisively. What kind of ridiculous masquerade ball had I got myself into?
"Where am I?", I asked.
"You are dreaming," he declared, with great grace.
It was only later that I understood that he had not deliberately answered my question.
"Oh," I said, "I am dreaming."
He nodded.
"And why do I dream of attending a masquerade ball where everyone is a dwarf except me?"
The guy didn't like it very much that I called him a dwarf, and hissed angrily to let me know.
"I didn't say that none of this could be real," he said with a threat in his voice, "Why are you so sure that if you die here, you'll wake up in real life?"
I folded my arms in front of my chest and looked at him as unbelievingly as possible.
"Because one of the characteristics of dreams is that they have no connection with reality?"
He sighed.
"And now comes the part where I'm having tea with fluffy pink unicorns and dancing on rainbows with elves at one end of it, burying their gold?"
Another tired sigh.
"Is it too much to ask you to behave normally?" he inquired, "It'd be advisory to behave when you are facing someone who can decide your life or death..."
"In a dream?", I raised an eyebrow, "No way!"
The boy then resigned himself to losing, gave an exhausted sigh, and then waved me off.
"I've had enough of you for today," he said superiorly, "I'll see you again tomorrow."
I grunted triumphantly.
"Go now," he waved his hand dismissively again, as a nobleman does to a servant who got on his last nerve, "Your bloody cocoa is getting cold."
As soon as he said that, my eyes opened and I sat up in bed with my heart pounding.
It's been three days since that particular night, yet it was the weirdest nightmare I've ever had — and there were a lot of them, I don't know when I've had so many shit dreams. I shrugged and left it at that.
As usual, Rolo woke me up with a mug of cocoa. That's what I found strange: he acted as if that night had never happened, even though I knew he was the one who had suffered the most. I didn't push it, even though I wanted him to talk. I knew that there were things that there were no words for.