Of Death & Deathly Returns

I spend my nights like Bjork in Michel Gondry music videos.

Last night, I was in a house, my house it seems, full of unfamiliarity. Dark nooks and crannies stored carton boxes, stacked up high. I wandered around, looking for my missing father and my missing sister. I was worried, but my mother, who was hovering nearby, wasn’t. They had been gone for days, and I knew something untoward had happened. I was sure of it. And when I flipped through the day’s papers, there was it – bold headlines announcing their deaths.

It was frightening and I tried looking for their bodies. Mother insisted that nothing was wrong, that they are just away and will be back soon. “But the papers. Look! It says they’re dead!” I muttered, full of fear.

And I wandered around the strange house, hearing all sorts of voices in my head, saying things like “they were here. can’t you feel them. feel them sweep past you in their grief? neighbours hear it all. they hear voices. they saw shadows. They’re still here…”

Trusting those voices, I searched harder. I went up the dark flight of stairs, with my unconvinced mother following behind. It was then, at the top of the stairs, that I heard a noise. A strange noise that shook me because I know then, that they must be there, inside the room. I halted and stared into the dark room. I made out two bodies, lying on an elevated platform on the left side of the doorway. The little body was my sister’s and further in, my father’s weighty corpse. I walked in and knew it at once. My sister had drowned in the bathtub and my father had killed himself.

I wailed in disbelief. Mother disappeared and three giggling Filipino maids appeared out of nowhere, like the three witches of Macbeth. I sent them off to call the cops, “and whoever should be here”. Someone knocked. It was the obituary people. I filled in forms.

Downstairs, my grandma appeared, as if for reassurance. She wasn’t what I remembered her to be. She was short, reaching up to barely my shoulders. And she only had one eye. Still I realised how much I missed her and hugged her impulsively. “Ah Ma!” I wailed. “They’re really dead!” And she smiled knowingly and pointed to her right eyeless socket. “I have no eye,” she said.

The Pirate puts it down to my “unresolved guilt” as the doctor had pronounced. Now if only Mr Muo can help me decipher this dream.

Filed under: dreams