Every now and then I have extremely vivid dreams that feel so real, I've been known to make a phone call afterwards to check on someone. I'm not usually superstitious, but I get freaked out once in a while. Anyway, I thought it might be amusing to write some of them down so we can see just how messed up my head is at night.
I'll begin with Felicity.
One night I woke up at about 4 or 5 AM, a cold sweat had soaked my pillow and I was arrested with abject terror of whatever might be lurking in the darkness on the other side of the bed sheets. The rational part of me knew already — some lazily strewn clothing, bedroom furniture, and our cats — but the part of me that had been terrified by hallucinations in my sleep was certain something more sinister awaited. The terror was reaffiremd by a hundred or more memories of being terrified in similar situations as a child.
I turned on the light. I knew it would wake Chrissy, but I needed to properly wake up and recover.
"What's wrong?" she yawned.
"A bad dream; a nightmare. That's all," I said.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, "what was it about?"
Chrissy has learned to ask for details ever since the first occasion I had a nightmare while she was nearby. That had been in a lovely hotel in Reno around the first time I met her dad. It was a particularly vivid nightmare to the point I called my parents to quiz them about the quality of the electrical system in their house. However, we'll leave that piece of insanity for another time, back to Felicity.
"It was messed up," I said, "it was a CCTV screen showing my grandma's old bedroom, but decorated as it is now; as it was when we stayed there this summer. The CCTV camera seemed to be somewhere above the window, zoomed in on the top half of the bed, towards the headboard. There was a little girl lying there on the left of the bed. Maybe 6 or 8 years old? She wore pretty floral dress, mostly white with small pink roses or something and a some sort of ribbon as a belt, white socks that stopped an inch or so below the knee, and patent leather shoes with a shiny buckle. Her hair was long and light brown, mousy, maybe dirty blonde, something like that. I had the feeling she had blue eyes but they were closed the whole time. Her arms were by her side, I think, they could have been clutched at her waist. Maybe both. She was dead. It felt as though she was dead."
"That's fucked up," said Chrissy, making sure I was completely aware of what I already knew.
"Right? I don't know when, but at some point in the dream, it stopped being CCTV and we were there in the room. You were there, next to her, or someone that I felt was you; I don't recall seeing you. The weirdest thing is, I knew her name was Felicity. I didn't recognise her, I don't recall anyone in the dream saying it, but I knew."
I paused. Thinking about the completely strange but vivid dream and then said, "Who the fuck is Felicity?"
We both chatted a while, which turned into laughter as we quizzed one another, "Who the fuck is Felicity?" Eventually, I calmed down enough to drift back to sleep and dream of something less disturbing.
We still don't know who Felicity is1 or why I would have dreamed of someone called Felicity at all. I have only ever known one Felicity in my life – a girl with whom I went to primary school. Memories of her would fit the right age range, but it didn't seem like her and I had not even had a conversation about her in over 20 years. For now and maybe hopefully always, this remains a creepy mystery, but just in case, I leave you with that burning question; who the fuck is Felicity?
- perhaps was [↩]