Cruel Morpheus Dreams

Longfellow Darke suffers from the god's treatment, maybe?

The rain was falling heavier when the car pulled onto the road from the side street. Although she had driven this way for the last year, she never had, before this night, in such heavy rain or at this time of night.

“I never knew there were any streetlights,” she said to her husband. “Every time I go this way, it’s in the daytime.” She was a little nervous: it was difficult to see the road.

“Watch it dear,” her husband said as he saw the large hole, left by recent construction. Now, along with the rain and the poor visibility, she had to contend with road work. She was more nervous than before.

“Careful, hon.,” her husband said as the right front tired dipped into a small hole, causing the car to jump slightly. He rose from his seat.

“Are you okay back there?” he called back to their three-year-old son.

“Yes daddy,” he said. He was happy, content with his playing with his cars they purchased at the mall. His father turned and saw he was fine. The car lunged forward slightly: she hit another pothole.

“Everyone okay,” she asked. Her son and her husband said they were, and the car was fine as well. “That was a big hole.” She decreased the car’s speed, making it easier for her to watch the road.

A flash of lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the road. The sudden light gave her time to see the cone that had fallen in the middle of the road. She swerved to miss it, but, in the process, caused the car to hit a large hole.

“Jesus Christ,” she whispered, audible only to herself and to her husband. She thought she had damaged the car. She carefully took a mental inventory of the car’s movements and sounds. Nothing was out of the ordinary. She relaxed as she saw she was out of the construction area. She looked over and gave her husband a smile. They made it through. The rain even began to lighten. They were out of danger. Then it happened. It was just one sentence for the back seat, but it would change their lives.

“Jesus Christ Mommy, be careful.”

He awoke in a sweat, again. He picked up one of his pillows and threw it across the bedroom. He lay back, put his hands over his face, and screamed. He knew no one would hear him: he was alone in the brownstone, like he has been since her death.

Longfellow Darke stared up at the ceiling and wondered why he was having the same dream for the last month. Not every night, but well enough to make him question his sanity.

He didn’t know whether the ghosts were playing with him, as his great-aunt’s attorney had warned back in college when he moved in, or something else was inside his dreams. Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, had come for the netherworld and assumed residence within him; that was a thought for sure. The god wanted to play with his mind, wanted him to lose what stability remained from the long two years of grief he suffered.

“Not today,” he whispered to himself. The writer shook his head with self-disagreement and grabbed his glasses off the nightstand. He sat up, rolled off the bed, and made his way to the ensuite to start his day.

Longfellow Darke, author of novellas and novels under three pen names, looked at himself in the mirror and thought that he didn’t look like a successful writer. No, with the unkempt pepper and salty hair, he looked like one of those hardboiled detectives he created in high school, like the stereotypical tough life lived men in the late night black and white movies that she, his late wife, loved.

He slipped under the hot water and immediately began to cry. Why was he dreaming of Vanessa, the attorney he married, taken from him unnecessarily? She was pregnant, six weeks, and told a day before when the shots from the jealous lawyer took her. The dream was the mean trick someone or something was playing on him.

He swore again, slammed his fist against the wall, and screamed, “Why?”