Reveal

If there was one reassuring thought about nightmares, it was that their terrors could usually be forgotten upon waking. But for Rebecca Graham, that mercy was lost in a tangle of bed sheets, and a scream caught in her throat. For her, waking only brought clarity, as every gory detail surfaced to reality.
Gasping for breath, Rebecca was desperate to pull herself from the tendrils of sleep—if only to remind herself that none of it had been real.
Or maybe it was real? It certainly felt real to me, said the nasty, doubting little voice in her head. It always liked to put its two cents in, but it was those two cents that always sunk deepest into her fears. Rebecca groaned trying to ignore the part of her that believed the voice was right.
The nightmare was always the same. It was always about Veronica, her twin sister, and always left behind the visible markings of its appearance upon her skin. What hurt the most, though, was seeing her lost twin sister’s face again and knowing it would forever be denied to her in her waking life.
After the incident, visiting Veronica in her nightmare had been Rebecca’s only comfort. Even after the nightmare had become scary enough to frighten Stephen King, she couldn’t help wanting it to come back every night. But now, after six years without a hope of finding Veronica, the nightmare had become a painful reminder of Veronica’s lasting absence—and of Rebecca’s unfathomable loneliness without her.
She hated the hot tears that warmed her cheeks as she greedily choked down breath after agonizing breath. Her lungs felt as though they were still on fire from the flames that had engulfed her in the nightmare.
I guess it isn’t everyday one experiences her own death and then lives to ponder it, she mused.
Considering how she’d died, Rebecca thought maybe she was handling it well enough … if only she could breathe.
She wiped back the matted hair from her sweaty brow, but every movement seemed impossible because of the shaking in her hands. The fear and images still felt so clear and freakishly lifelike in her mind’s eye that it was hard to believe it hadn’t actually happened.
The nightmare had started haunting her sleep during the weeks following Veronica’s disappearance, but it had miraculously been absent for the past nine months, she’d hoped it was gone for good.
No such luck.
Its terrors had returned and with a renewed and feral vengeance because, this time, the nightmare had more to reveal.
Rebecca knew the nightmare was trying to communicate something to her—the sheer consistency of it proved that—yet years of therapy and psychoanalysis had brought her no closer to finding answers.
The nightmare had affected every facet of her life, from sleep to relationships—so much that, for a long time, it had been her reality, and her waking life had been the dream. She used to obsess over every frightening detail, trying to make sense of any of it, but it seemed so otherworldly that the rational side of her brain told her it was merely her fear that drove its reappearance.
Yet, still it had returned—even after the meds and therapy.
The urge to weep swept over Rebecca in one giant wave of desperation. She’d been optimistic for the first time in six years, thinking the absence of the nightmare had meant it was finally time to move forward with her life. She’d thought with yesterday’s high school graduation that the end of childhood would bring with it a sense of some happy future still awaiting her. The past nine months without the nightmare had fueled that hope, but she should have known better.
Disappointment raked her heart as she realized there was truly no moving forward with her life without the only person that could make it whole again.
An empty feeling of hopelessness had nestled deep within her years ago, and crying about it now wouldn’t change that simple fact. So Rebecca hardened herself, knowing there was no satisfaction in tears; she’d already cried enough to fill an ocean. And besides, the stubborn part of her refused to let the nightmare unhinge her any longer—not when the alternative involved involuntary incarceration and antipsychotics.
Never again, Rebecca thought.
She would suffer no further hospitalizations and no more pills. Instead, Rebecca did as her therapists advised and took large, cleansing breaths.
Today, of all the days, Rebecca groaned, is the wrong day to fall apart. If her parents saw what a mess she was right now, they would immediately drive her to the doors of the loony bin themselves. Then they’d hop on a plane to Antigua and let her rot in that hospital for little psychopaths all summer.
Rebecca took another labored breath and then another; it was helping. The crisp, summer morning air was calming as it drifted in the open windows of her dorm room. The contrasting bitter and sweet aromas of the nearby cafes brewing the city’s morning coffee drifted in with it. Rebecca sighed at that small concomitant effect on her body, as the pain tightening her chest lessened. Not too long after, her breathing became less labored, and the panic attack was over.
Placing a hand over her chest, Rebecca swallowed down the thought of how it felt to be stabbed to death—skewered like a kabob and roasted over a pit.
Even the light of day couldn’t strip that part of the nightmare from her mind. She groped for the area just under her heart where the blade of the burning sword had exited her rib cage; the skin was tender to the touch.
The sword had been beautiful. She thought back, remembering how she’d marveled at the way the flames licked at its surface, almost as if it were made of the flames. Yet the glint of steel could be seen under all the bright colors of the flames, and it shone like brushed nickel. It was even harder to believe in the scenario that led to the sword being thrust into her back. As the phantom ache from the wound still lingered, though, Rebecca felt that all-too-familiar feeling of foreboding. Her death had been so violent and savage that even now—awake and in the safety of her bed—it seemed imminent.
Other images from the nightmare began to claw to the surface of memory, tearing at the wall of denial she was so delicately building—the way her blood had looked as it dripped from the point of the lethal sword and how the heat of the flames had moved from the sword into her body as if it were poison. It had felt like molten lava as it killed her, burning her up from the inside out. How could such a fictitious weapon scare her so completely and to her core?
What disturbed Rebecca most was the way she had admired the red swirls of her own blood as it streaked across the surface of the blade. It was horribly beautiful, like a canvas painted with the essence of her life.
“It was only a dream,” Rebecca chastised herself, chasing away any thoughts about death that mesmerized her. She took a deep breath and loosened her viselike grip on the bed sheets. “Just a bad, bad dream.”
If only that annoying voice in her head would stop arguing its opposition. Stop lying to yourself, it said. You know the truth, and that was not just a bad dream.
This voice terrorized her with doubt—doubt in reality, doubt in the meaning of her nightmares, and doubt in believing that Veronica’s disappearance wasn’t her fault.
Deep down, Rebecca knew that inner voice had a point, and she couldn’t fight the guilt any longer. The nightmare wasn’t real, but the familiar connection she once shared with her twin sister—a connection that had allowed them to tap into each other’s feelings, emotions, and physical woes—was ever present and very real in the dream.