Taken Care Of

It played like a movie. I saw it from multiple perspectives -- seeing the events of their lives through camera lenses. :: I drift in their car, from somewhere in the backseat, as they drive through this small town. They are looking for their little girl who had disappeared a little while ago. She was supposed to be in this town -- why else would they be here? They wear worried looks on their faces as their eyes drift out of the car windows -- looking, looking, in desperation, and with hope. The natives of the town were all out doing small town stuff. Tending to lawns, puttering in driveways, ... There are smiling, friendly faces everywhere. It is a happy place. A surreal kind of happy. Almost made up. The scene shifts. It is night. The tired couple is checking into a motel for the night. They are haggard. They want sleep. The clerk is hurried. Not sure if the clerk is male or female. It does't matter. Details. I follow the couple from my vantage point from behind them, just above their heads, as they are ushered hurriedly into their room. The door slams. The clerk disappears. Scene shift. The couple are asleep. They haven't changed. They just collapsed into bed. There are lights shifting outside their room window. Moving wildly. Jagged. Feet are being dragged. There is scraping. The room door is tried. It's closed. The door is banged. The couple wake up with a start. They see the light. The hear the noise. The distance between them is reduced, but they don't feel safe. There is fear on their faces. The scraping continues. From a distance they hear a scream. People are moving outside. Lots of people. But they're moving quite unlike normal people. Scene shift. Outside their room. People are moving around -- they look half asleep. Wandering randomly. Trying doors. Desperate to get into rooms. Scene shift. I'm in another room. A little girl is lying in bed. She has the covers pulled up over her nose. Her eyes are darting wildly. Her breathing is rasped. She's afraid. Her room door is open. She looks to be in a hospital room. She hears the noise out in the hallway. Feet are being dragged. A silhouetted figure stops at her open door and peers in. It hears her. It breathes in hacking breaths. It jerks away from her room, dragging itself down the hall. It seems to have forgotten how to bend its limbs. Scene shift. The happy parents are hugging their daughter in the morning. Dad has her in his arms. She's wearing a summer dress. It's light brown with flowers. She's happy. She's going home. They're leaving this little town. Dad and Mom thank the hospital staff. The staff are giving them happy smiles. The smiles are surreal. It's TV smiles from the 50s. Dad, Mom and daughter are driving away. As they drive through the town, the scene is the same as the day before. Only now I'm seeing it from the little girl's perspective. From this new lens, I see the cracks in the happy small town facade. The smiling faces are fake. Some are sickly. Pale. Dead. Some are desperately alive with fear. Fear of the sickly neighbour. A man is tending his lawn. His arm falls off. He curses, picks it up and throws it onto his porch, continuing to tend his lawn with one arm. A billboard bids a found farewell to visitors of this town and invites them to come again soon. Scene shift. It's night. A different Mom, Dad and daughter. It's the same small town. They're in their house, the doors are locked. They're desperate. Happy. Scared. Desperate. They hold up a little brown dress with flowers on it. The little girl is not afraid when she sees it. She grins and squeals, "A Taken Care Of!" Dad pulls it over her head and she puts it on. Outside, lights begin to move. Those who walk at night are out and about. From inside the house, I see a silhouetted figure move like film being run too fast. She wears glasses and has her hair in a bun. I think of Mary Poppins. Her silhouetted figure stays outside the little girl's window, as Mom and Dad drag themselves to the door and leave the house. They are sickly corpses, and they leave their daughter in the dead of the night. Safer that way. The little girl goes to sleep with a peaceful smile on her face. Her guardian angel vigilant outside her bedroom window, while Mom and Dad goes out to hunt.
Dreams so easily drift away. A while back I had this notion of keeping a dream diary. It worked well for a little while, and then the diary was moved from beside my bed to somewhere else, and well ... who knows where it is now. The dreams that I did record though, I remember mostly, to this day. This morning I woke up with this dream still fresh in my head. Which was surprising, as they don't stick around long enough ... granted some of the details have now disappeared from memory.