Forgotten Dreams.

Forgotten dreams.

I ask myself what it means to be insane. Is it to forget who you are? Is it appear to others as someone unfamiliar to them? Is it a deterioration of the mind? Is it when your cognitive abilities no longer present themselves? Or perhaps it is when they are too strong and overwhelming? Is it when you can no longer bare your reality and it is torturous?

I feel like all of these answers partially describe my state as I struggle to write these notes.

Sometimes when I walk I feel like my legs are getting sucked into the ground and I get slower and slower and I see my destination, but cannot reach it. Other times I sit at a table and reach for the fork, but the table stretches and the further I reach the longer it becomes. My daily life consists of such things, but I wasn’t always this way.

It all begun years ago, on a quiet farm, far away from the city’s turmoil. I was the youngest child, I had two brothers, Tom and Jude, one sister, Glinda, my parents, Mary and Scott, and grandfather Robert.

They were practical people, rose early, worked hard, ate well, went to bed at a good hour. I loved them, but I was so different from them. I loved to read, something my father and grandpa Robert called a waste of time, something worthless dreamers do. However, when I had the chance, I cut through the forrest to reach the town and visited the small library they had there to check out a new book and return an old one. I always had to hide what I was reading, for it would bring me a whipping. I was already slapped around and pushed around for being weak and contributing little on the farm, I did not want to invite more punishment. My sister, Glinda, often took pity on me, she would try to raise my spirit, but I suppose she went about it the wrong way, because she always told me that eventually I’ll improve at farm work and will no longer want to read. I was totally alone, with my dreams.

One night I snuck out and went for a walk near the woods, it was then I saw a flash and heard and unfamiliar sound behind a hill. I crawled on top of it and saw a strange dark floating energy in the air, it went in circles and got smaller and smaller and eventually disappeared. My heart was jumping out of my thin chest, but I saw something there which was left behind. It was a small black bag, I timidly walked up to it and with my weak shaking hand I opened it and looked inside. There were black seeds there that looked exactly like sunflower seeds. I dared not to try them for I saw where they came from. I tied the bag and took it home. I left the bag near the door behind my shoes and went to bed. All night I had horrible nightmares of beasts with tentacles coming from space and tormenting me.

When I woke and went to have my small breakfast, my brother Jude have me a knock on my back and shook the black bag that I found in front of my face. I was horrified, he thought it was because I tried to hide it for myself, but my fear came because the beg was empty. I asked him if anyone ate the seeds, he laughed and said that he split them up between everyone, and that this should be a lesson for me about not sharing findings with family.

Petrified I went and ate outside, alone, hoping that nothing bad would happen to them.

Father made me work in the field that day, I was exhausted and went to bed early.

The next morning when I went in the kitchen no one was there. I looked out of the window and saw all of them sitting in a row next to the pond, quietly. I came out and then my brother Tom turned to me and motioned for me to be silent. I went back inside the house. They spent the whole morning there, sitting, but then went to work as usual, however I was very startled and an eery feeling was starting to creep over me.

That night I went back to the hill, but I found nothing there. I was scared to find out what would happen the following morning, and well, I did not have to wait that long. On my way back home I saw that all the lights in the house were on and there was a figure that looked like my sister walking towards me in the dark. Could it be that they freaked out because I snuck out? That was my first thought, but I was very wrong. As Glinda came up to me her face looked long and disfigured, her mouth was stretched out upwards and her eyes rolled back into her skull. I screamed, but was frozen in that spot. Glinda’s head, face and neck stretched like rubber and fell of exposing many tentacles pointing into the sky and moving around. In my absolute horror I managed to run, better than ever before in my life.

I entered the house and saw that all of them were like that! They let out a screeching noise and followed me.

I ran, the terror I felt that night warped my mind and mentally sent me to another place. I ran and never looked back. I don’t know what happened to my family, for I will never go back to that area.

Ultimately it was my fault, because I brought the seeds home. The horror continued for all of these years and didn’t remain in the past. The guilt ate me, but also the fear of what I did not understand, of what they have become.

I used to have dreams, but now I have forgotten them all. Perhaps that was the true definition of insanity?