Bedful of Moonlight by Raven Held (audio ebook reader .txt) 📕

Bedful of Moonlight


‘Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.’
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth


One


“Sleep. How I loathe those little slices of death.”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American poet, 1807 – 1882)


When people get hurt, they only have themselves to blame.
You don’t believe me; you think that’s the sort of thing only a cynic, or a ridiculously unforgiving person, would say.
It’s true, though. The extent to which people get hurt depends on how much they allow themselves to.
I should know.
The night after I told my mother I loved her, as we watched My Fair Lady for the millionth time over tacos, she packed up her bags and left. I only received a distilled explanation from my father the next morning.
And the second time I ever told someone else I loved him, the response I got was a vacant stare back up at me as he lay still on the slick grainy road, silent and gone.
So, you see, I know what I’m talking about. Loving someone is not only an investment; it also gives someone power over you. You would have to take out a piece of yourself and place that in someone else’s hands. If they leave – when they leave – you too will be left incomplete forever, irreparable. Like chipped marble.

*

In a way, moving to Wroughton (I still haven’t quite figured out how best to pronounce it) Estate was like hitting the Refresh button for me. The best way for the nightmares to stop, the best way to mend that hole at the base of my heart. The best way to shake off an old life and rebuild another.
No-one knew about the nightmares, especially not Dr Oliveiro; I only told her I couldn’t sleep.
After everything had happened, one of the things my father made me do was visit a psychiatrist. Dr Oliveiro and I spent the first session talking about the dreams I usually had before, and the dreams I had now. She gave me a notebook at the end of the session and made me promise to record down every single detail of my dreams faithfully.
I made up some crap for a couple of entries, just to see if she was a quack. She responded to the usual vague ones, like being chased and jumping off a cliff, like some wannabe-Freud. Her interpretations did not disappoint.
“Being chased,” she said thoughtfully, as though it was rocket science and she was the only one who could possibly know the answer. “What do you think that means, Kristen?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think it means that you are trying hard to cope with the situations in your waking life. And jumping off a cliff possibly means you’re feeling overwhelmed and unable to control what’s happening in your life.”
It was like she had swallowed Dream Interpretation for Dummies. After that, I never really bothered with my dream journal; I just wrote Dreamless for most nights.
But I was hoping the move would mean that I did not have to continue with my fruitless therapy sessions anymore. That was, however, wishful thinking, because dad clearly saw therapy as the only way to save his daughter, never mind that it had, so far, not appeared to help her one bit.
On the night before the move, I had it again, the same nightmare that had been plaguing me since everything started. Or ended, depending on how you saw it.
I stood at the same spot, leaning against my bicycle, staring at the glistening road and enjoying the cool needles of rain on my skin as I waited for Blake to get the cup of strawberry yoghurt I suddenly craved. Wet weather did not stop me from wanting something cold and sweet.
I heard the same song, Silence by Beethoven, blaring like a portentous bell from someone’s car, as Blake emerged from the 7 Eleven, a hand in his pocket, another holding my yoghurt. Raindrops settled upon his hair.
I saw the same smile Blake shot me as he walked towards me, stepping out onto the wet, grey road. Even on an atypically cold day, I could slip right into him as though nothing was out of the ordinary. That was what being together for a year and a half did for you. Nothing had to change; you saw routine as part of your life, and you didn’t see it as a bad thing.
“They ran out of strawberry,” he said from across the road. The air was so still from its weight that there was no need to raise his voice. “I got you mango instead.”
Disappointment must have registered on my face (didn’t he know my second favourite flavour was raspberry, then?) since Blake shrugged apologetically.
“Did you want the raspberry?” he said.
I nodded grudgingly.
I realise now how stupid it was to get so hung up over the flavour of yoghurt, but right then, my perspective was a little skewed.
“I just thought you would have known,” I grumbled.
He shrugged easily. “No problem. I’ll get you the raspberry.” He ruffled my hair, kissed me briefly and headed back.
I never got to have that raspberry yoghurt.
When Blake stepped out on to the road the second time, that was when I experienced, first-hand, the proverbial end of the world.
I was about to go after him, to tell him to forget it, that I’ll take the mango yoghurt, whatever. But I had never gotten a single word out of my mouth, because a horn had blasted through the cool air.
Blake would have laughed at me for ducking as though a plane had swooped overhead, if he had the time. But he only had time to push me out of the way before the screeching that followed.
In my dreams, it was as though my brain knew that was only the time it could intensify every sensation. Every screech of the wheels jolted me hard, and the sound of my scream raised even the hairs on my skin. The taste of bile never left my mouth, even when I woke up.
The image of Blake’s broken body making an arc through the air and landing with a gut-churning thump on the slippery ground was what made me first lose it. Everything else took place too quickly for me to register what was really happening.
I could only stare from where I laid, the side of the road, with water seeping through my jeans and a vague hurt stinging around my elbow.
When the van was thrown to a halt, it was already too late. The shatter between air and metal was deafening.
Blake was almost gone by the time I reached him.
I would have been gone that day, too. I should have gone that day. I would have been with him right now. It wasn’t fair that he had to leave while I got another shot at living. But to stay here and pretend all was normal was not much of a life, either.
Everything should have ended that day.
He had left me behind. And now there was no more routine I was familiar with.
Sometimes, I was able to blame my mother for what happened. Because if she hadn’t left, I wouldn’t have been in such a bad mood the next day and Blake wouldn’t have tried to lift my spirits by going on a bike ride with me and getting me yoghurt.
But it was only on a handful of days that I was able to blame someone else. Most days, the truth was unavoidable. Blake’s mother had good reasons to blame me. If I hadn’t been so spoilt, if I had never had that stupid craving for yoghurt, if I hadn’t sent him back for stupid raspberry-flavoured one, everything would have been different.
If.
I guess I will never know.
That was not the end of my dream, though. It didn’t just end at the accident. Afterwards, my mom would be standing at the other side of the road. I would watch as she picked up her bags, ignoring my sobs and cries for help, and left, not even sparing me a last word.
I would sometimes wake up from these nightmares, retching, my sweaty limbs tangled up in the sheets, my hair stringy with saliva, my throat burning and my eyes watering. There would hardly be enough time for me to hold on to something before everything came surging up from within. As if the memory of bile in my mouth was not enough.
It was only recently that I came to realise that these dreams were more of a recollection of that day than actual nightmares, because everything in my dreams happened exactly the way it had, only louder, brighter, more relentless, less forgiving.
Maybe a part of you never slept, never sought any reprieve. Maybe replaying an indelible memory was your subconscious’ way of punishing you, forcing you to face that moment alone over and over again for all eternity, for as long as you could stand. The punishment for loving.
So it was on the night before the move that I hid away all reminders of both my mother and Blake. I would start, I told myself, a new chapter where my battered, recycled heart would never falter in its new lifeless rhythm.

*

The first thought that came to my mind as we drove through Wroughton was that the place was entirely too bright. It was strange, but I thought it might be due to all that greenery that the quiet little estate sat upon.
“It’s only temporary,” dad said, as we pulled to a stop before a nondescript house that looked just like all the others we had driven past. The way he said it was as though he was promising a child this won’t hurt one bit before proceeding to yank out a tooth.
It somehow felt surreal that I was standing on someone’s front porch with my father, accompanied with all our worldly possessions. My old life with Blake and both my parents seemed like a whole world away now, in this strange new estate.
One month was how long it took for the change to set in, how long it took for us to switch to an entirely different life.
After my mother’s departure and Blake’s funeral, my father set about doing everything he could to keep us both afloat. While he packed all of my mother’s possessions and even all the pictures of her, into boxes, and pushed them out of sight, I did the same for Blake. Save for that one picture of us in his father’s car, every other trace of him I had hidden in the darkest part of my room. It was the only way I could pull through the rest of my life without him.
Phase two of the reconstruction of our lives entailed the selling of our old house and the renting of a new one in Wroughton. I was like my father in this way. For us, the best way to come to terms with loss was by burying it, not destroying it.
The last phase included sending me to therapy.
Dad figured there was something wrong with me. On the night of the funeral, I had woken up screaming, the fifth time in a row since the accident, reeling from the same old nightmare.
I wanted to tell him how talking