The Dream Last Night
Short Fiction Story
I saw an oriental man, the most illustrious in the town crossing the plaque that resembled the one few meters away from my home. Suddenly, he was attacked by few muggers wearing garish clothes. First smothered by a gag, he was stabbed brutally in the back, spurting blood all over. The petrified passers-by shot scandalized looks and jolted away in fright. Writhing, the wretched man stumbled unceremoniously on the road midst his wares that splayed all over. His icy glint betrayed pain imbued with indignation that he would come back to avenge his murderers and perhaps the immoral spectators who after abandoning him, were now simply chattering away.
Minutes after he died, a girl who must be his future betrothed came taxing through the chilly fog, unwary of the stones that lacerated her bare feet. It was only when the hitherto silence was broken with wails of loud cries.
She stormed towards the strangers who stood in absolute delirium. The girl asked them vehemently if they witnessed anything. But the nonchalant denial signaled a sordid comradeship among them. She tried to wheedle some information in a humble tone, but they were implacable. Their frenzied looks made it difficult to understand if their withdrawal was a novelty or they too, in some way were accomplice in the crime.
At the same time, a small crippled boy with somber expressions walked his wheelchair towards the girl. Entwining his hands were with his mom’s, he meekly confessed that while his mom was haggling over with the street vendor, he saw the murderer shouting at the man “it is your vengeance for casting your lewd eyes on my girl” and stabbed him. Before the boy could continue, his mom recanted his words with a brusque rebuff but her gaze had a conspiratorial element that confirmed what the girl inferred.
It was clear that the man who tried to woo her lately was infuriated with her denial for marriage and killed her fiance. On one hand, her eyes were alight with rebelliousness and her heart was overflowing with wrath. But on the other hand, she knew that the inconsequential sacrament of vengeance shall not bring back what was hitherto pristine. Nothing that she would solidly try to do would be palatable enough for the invincible destiny to recant.
It would be vain for her to lament interminably over the loss of an already decaying love which evoked nothing but solitude. Now was her time to look at life beyond the captivating frontiers of her dead love.
She contently pulled the watch from her dead lover’s body and stowed it as the souvenir of her love that shall keep her company to remind of her once banal, humdrum life.
***
I woke up from the dream with a strange intimidating weariness. A stench of slime and putrefaction pervaded the room. Was it the sleek red jellyfish which collapsed in the aquarium? The glimmer of sunlight fell on my bedside table under which my watch shone bright. It was the same watch I saw in the dream.
Was I tipsy last night? Or was I reading the tome on murder mystery? It must have been a slack moment since I did not remember when I dozed off. But I was frenzied in my somnolent state, in that god-awful dream. Was it me who was killed? The more I tried to fend off the dream, the more intently I thought about it. I had a hunch that the girl in the dream was an ally of my murderer – her ex-boyfriend, like a serpent preparing to spit its venom. Was I the one to receive the stinging whiplash of betrayal from a wayward lover?
I wish I could tell her in the dream that she could have to repay for the immoral decision of giving away the future when the past resurfaced by accepting her lover’s demise, that my soul would not be redeemed because of her fallacy.
‘I need be careful of my girlfriend’. A witty thought evoked from the dream!
When I trudged towards my washroom, the stench got discomfiting enough to make me throw up. The next moment, my hair prickled, my face cringed in fear and my blood dried. I felt like plummeting from a height into an avalanche of black water and spanked my head in disbelief when I spotted my own dead body near the basin.
