The following dream was about my dad who has been dead for nearly 6 years (at time of this writing), and this was the only dream I can recall that I've had of him since he passed away. It was deeply unsettling, as it felt ominous and just... wrong.
I was dreaming about the neighborhood I grew up in as a child. The world was in a reddish hue, and the overall energy was that of anger and aggression. I was playing with other children, and I knew that they were angry and manipulative in the games we were playing. We rode our bikes to a nearby abandoned brewery that was next to a cliff that dropped off into a river. Aware of what games they were playing, I became careless as I angrily chased the others around. I lost my balance and fell off the cliff into the river below. Just as I was about to hit the water below, I woke up...
~~~~~~~~~
I found that I was now an adult, much older than I am now, perhaps in my 50s or 60s. It was night, and I was living alone. My house was in the same neighborhood as my childhood one, but it was the only house around that was still standing. The world appeared to be a shadow of itself, dark and cold and silent.
The atmosphere and energy was dead, and my home sat silent and forlorn. I was isolated, uneasy, anxious, and angry. It had been many years since I had allowed anyone in, and I knew that no one knew if I was alive or even existed at all. I was merely existing in exile, having long since been a background character in everyone else's life stories. My lonely existence was futile and forgotten, pointlessly patiently awaiting a promising paradise that would never arrive.
For years, I had been having the same recurring dream of my childhood, angrily falling off of the same cliff over and over again. Now an angry old man, I was fully content leading a solitary "life" - if you can call it that. I never went out, because there was no one - NO ONE - who ever invited me anywhere or made me feel genuinely wanted. I was ostracized by both self-imposition and by a society who believed I was guilty of being a predator. I was content with my isolation and seclusion. At least I had peace.
As time went on, I began to observe nuances in the appearance of my home, and I began to feel an eerie unseen presence watching me. This feeling grew into paranoia which amplified my anxiety, but I was unable to put a finger on the source. Occasionally, I would find objects in strange places or articles of clothing that seemed to vanish. Other times, I would find decks of playing cards or random magic trick props placed throughout the house, and I had no idea how they got there. When my father was alive, he had been into magic as a hobby, but he has been dead for many years. Was some unseen stalker playing a cruel trick on me?
Some nights, I could hear a faint rustling in my bedroom walk-in closet. My closet was full of clutter, including items from my childhood. It was disorganized, so I decided to remodel it and get my clutter organized. The more progress I made on the closet remodel, the more often I would hear disturbances in the darkness, and I grew increasing unsettled.
I never closed my closet door, as I saw no real reason to. The door opened inward, concealing a variety of garments I had hung up. One night, as I was laying in my bed in the dark, I could see into my closet. There, behind the closet door, I could barely make out the shadow of a humanoid figure that seemed to blend into the garments.
For hours, I stared at the figure, expecting it to move... or something. I finally worked up the courage to get out of bed and see what it was. I flicked on the closet light, and cautiously pulled the closet door away from the garments. I pushed the hanging garments aside, revealing my dad standing behind them in the dark.
Both horrified and mystified, I saw him as he was during the last several months of his life. He was pale and sickly, nearly a mere skeleton. He had died of cancer, and here he now stood, suffering and in pain, and there was nothing I could do.
We hadn't spoken since about a month before he died, and that was many years ago. He stood there, staring at me in deathly silence. Was this his ghost, or the imaginative shadow of this dream?
"Have you been trying to make contact?" I asked, assuming he had been the one moving things and making noises.
He nodded, but remained silent.
Having had no one at all to converse with, I suddenly felt a desire to express my feelings, as I knew he would listen, as he had done in life.
"Where have you been?" I paused to see if he would reply. He remained silent, so I continued.
"Where were you when I actually needed someone to comfort me after you passed away?" Again, no reply.
"Where were you when I bought my first house? Where were you when I needed someone to talk to when I was feeling lonely? When I was accused of being a predator and ostracized by EVERYONE for being unconventional? Where were you when the woman I truly wanted to be with had chosen someone else? Where were you when I tried killing myself?"
He stood there, motionless, and then he morphed into a sickly reflection of myself. Then, I realized that I was staring into a mirror that was hidden behind the garments. I could feel a fiery fury flare up within me. I knew this was only my imagination. A disappointing reminder that I was truly alone, and that my own company wasn't enough. There was no one there to listen to me, and my dad was dead in the dark. He had been there for me in life, but that era was long gone.
As I gazed at my sickly reflection, I became aware of the time that had passed by that I had spent hopelessly waiting for a dream that would never come, and that time I would never get back. In wrath, I smashed the mirror. I picked up a shard and I stabbed myself in the heart. Blood sprayed everywhere, and my closet became a bloodbath of my pierced heart. I was done with this hell.
Fading away into oblivion, I began to feel a sense of relief. I finally felt free.
And then I knew I would never wake up.
Not this time.