They always started the same way.
She was sitting at the table in the kitchen, the round one with the crooked leg that makes the whole thing wobble. She was sipping cold coffee, the taste and texture like sludge sliding down her throat.
"This," her psychologist would say. "is indicative of your fears."
He didn't know what true fear was.
While sitting at the table, coffee in hand, she would watch herself in a mirror. It was precisely at eye level. Sometimes it seemed to ripple, ever so slightly, whenever she would turn her head away.
The dream always started this way.
Though she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw everything. It was as if she were peering through a kitchen window, watching herself struggle to swallow coffee, even as she watched her reflection in the mirror. With the panoramic view, she would watch the door behind her open and the darkness would creep in.
It was thick, like tar and it radiated with heat. It oozed into the cracks in the ceramic floor and pumped from the holes in the violet wallpaper. She would watch herself in the mirror, seemingly glued to her chair with no place to run. She would watch from the window as the darkness congealed into human like shapes and slid across the floor.
"This," her psychologist would say. "is indicative of your relationship with your mother."
It was true that her mother had abused her. That she had forced her to sit at the table, eating cold and, sometimes, rotten food that she had refused to eat days before. Sometimes she would make her sit and stare at her face in the mirror, sometimes for hours. She only did that after she'd beaten her though.
"Look at the bruises flowering on your skin." she'd say, slapping her hard across the mouth. "You look so pretty."
This was normal. For years, she couldn't look at herself in the mirror, except in her dreams. In the dream she was glued to her face.
Usually, around this point in the dream, she could startle herself awake and away from the suffocating darkness. In the quiet stillness of her childhood bedroom she would hug her knees and whisper to the darkness that she would be a good girl.
This was something she had not told the psychologist. She had been living with the darkness for years beyond when her mother had lived. And, when her mother committed suicide in the basement, she had stayed in the house with the corpse for at least a day before calling the ambulance. In the cool shadows of the basement, she watched her mother's body tremble with the weight of sins.
She kept the house because there was no other place to go. And her mother would be angry if she left her behind.
The dream started over as soon as she closed her eyes. Always the same.
She sits at the table. The round one with the crooked leg, all of the world around her wobbling on uneven ground. She stares at her face. Funny, this is the first time she has seen it un-bruised. There isn't even a cut. Why is she staring at herself, when there is no imperfection to make her beautiful?
From outside the room, she can see the creeping darkness. It flows, like molasses, shifting into figures not quite human and not quite alien. Something feels off.
She watches herself take a sip of coffee, slugging it back like a shot. She feels it, like hot coals, slithering down her throat, tripping her gag reflex. She sputters, but doesn't quite spit it all up.
The darkness glides closer and closer; evolving, shifting, changing and undulating. Its hands wrap around her throat, choking her. It slams her head into the table, cracking the crooked leg against the ceramic floor with the percussive resonance of gunfire.
Looking up, she sees her face is bleeding. Bruising begins around her eyes; the years of bruises branding her purple and yellow against the violet wallpaper. The darkness slams her face into the table again.
The table breaks under the force and she feels her face begin to cave. The darkness forces her to the floor and the ceramic seems to swallow her.
Her mother looks at her, smiling.
"Look how pretty you are."
