Recalling the Dream
The Black Void - Episode 5243
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“KALA!” Jacques jolts upwards, gasping for air. It takes him a few seconds to take in his surroundings, but he quickly realizes he’s back in the bedroom with the message on the ceiling. Cough …cough… Ka…ka…Kala. Kala…Kala…Ka-“. He suddenly stops, wondering why the hell he’s uttering Kala. He sits up against the bedpost and takes in more, longer breaths. What the devil happened to him? The playground, the bank, the mansion, the ghost city, the landed ship, the water…all are fresh in his mind as if he’d just visited them minutes ago.He felt very wet, like he had been…underwater. Trembling, he looked down at his clothes: Dry, except by… Oh…of course. he thinks. Even in his state of fear he can’t help but feel stupid. It’s sweat, and it’s leaking from his armpits like a puddle.He finally catches his breath, throws the covers off himself and staggers towards the door. He has taken his first step out of the room when he comes to an abrupt halt: The playground, the school, the city…He’s seen them before in real life. And he knows where they are. He thinks for a moment. “I need a cup of coffee.” He says aloud. Remembering the coffee machine in Gerald and Rosie’s house, he exits the 7th house.… By the time the coffee is ready (And for some strange reason, he wants it black today), the oven clock says 11: 46. He estimates he had been searching for five minutes before he lay in the bed and it took fifteen minutes get to Gerald and Rosie’s house and prepare his drink. That meant that he’d been asleep around ten minutes. His watch agrees with this estimate. Yet Jacques’s state of body and mind isn’t in agreement with these modern day devices. The dream felt like as though it had come and gone quickly like a passing train, much quicker than ten minutes. Despite that, he feels exhausted, like he’d gotten far too many hours of sleep.However, he is in no mood to rest. He has somewhere to go. Exuma he thinks as he rests in one of the living room’s recliners, sipping his coffee every now and then. Exuma. That was the city he saw in the dream, and he knows it well. It’s the largest of the three cities on Cat Island just 8 kilometers from Loire. Because it holds all of the super markets, banks, schools, and other basic necessities, it’s frequented often by residents of the surrounding smaller islands, such as Jacques’s. The playground in his dream is that of St. Javier Elementary school. Jean attended it for a year, but getting him from home to school each day became such a hassle due to the distance that Jacques and his wife decided that was better he was homeschooled (for the time being).The landed ship also looks seems familiar and Jacques knows why. It is extremely reminiscent to the one he’s seen in the blockbuster movie The Titanic. And for some obscure reason, the Titanic-like Ship had crashed onto Exuma’s shores into its city. Under better circumstances, the thought of a behemoth ship resting atop a beloved city where he’s shared so many memories and which held so many friends and family. But in this damnable world, a world where people vanish without a trace, where apparitions of his family exist, and where dreams are as vivid as reality, a ship stuck in the middle of a city doesn’t seem so odd.And somehow, he knows that the other places he encountered in his dream were also in Exuma. He Knows, not assumes, like when you swear having seen an actor in another movie but can’t recall which. Perhaps he’d seen them before and they were simply gouged in his head, unable to be reached by conscious memory. Or maybe it’s something else: Someone or something gave him the knowledge. Just hours ago, he would have laughed at the suggestion. But after discovering the black void’s existence, the idea seems plausible. No, this new sudden knowledge doesn’t send him chills either. What does send him chills was the girl in the dream. Her face horrified him. The only other person he’d seen with a face like hers was on one of the passengers on, ironically the Black Void tour. She’d been in her late twenties or early thirties, had untidy blonde hair, a black tattoo of a crow on her neck, and most noticeably of all, had been very fat. She’d been so fat that she’d taken up two seats in the The Story Teller. Initially, Jacques had been cold towards her because her fatness had lost him an extra seat to sell. But his anger died quickly when he saw that she was not enjoying herself: During the whole tour, she sat with her head down and watery eyes. He thought she might weep at any moment. When he asked her is something was the matter, she simply whispered ”No. Nothing is wrong.”About a week later, Jacques saw her again, on channel 7 on the Bahamas news network. On that breezy summer day, the fat woman, whose name he found out was Samantha Swift, was working in her Cubicle in a 100-story at Running Rivers Insurance when she got up to use the bathroom. But instead of going down the hallway, she took the elevator to the top floor. The building she worked at was large enough to be used as multiple businesses, and the top for just happened to be for apartments. She knocked one of the doors at the end of the hallway. Amy Munson, a stay-at-home mom who at the time had been reading while her baby was taking a nap, opened it. “She asked me for some water” said Amy to the TV reporters after the incident. Her eyes had been red and she seemed to hold her baby more to comfort herself than it. “I was very confused and very scared and would have closed the door had it not been for her face. She had the deadest expression I’d ever seen, like she hadn’t slept in days. So I invited her in. I set her down on the couch, went to the kitchen and got her water. I expected her to chug it down, but she drank it slowly and gracefully. When she finished, I asked her ‘what’s the matter?’ She told me ‘It’s nothing. Nothing at all…’ But I’m no fool. I had noticed the way she’d been glancing at my balcony all the time she’d drank her water, and it wasn’t to enjoy the view. So I, out of God’s goodness, took her by the hand at said ‘It’s OK dear. I’m here for you. Talk to me: I’m a good listener.’ She pushed my hands away and said ‘It’s nothing…and there’s nothing you can do to help.’ I was at loss of what to do. Then an idea came up-“Mrs. Munson took a Kleenex from a box nearby and blew her a nose “-And…it seemed like a good idea at the time. I said ‘How ‘bout some wine dear? It’s imported from France and very sweet and very strong.’ She paused for a moment and nodded. I rushed back into the kitchen. I was just pouring the wine when I heard a door slide open. I turned and saw her at the edge of the balcony. Before I could say anything…she was gone.”So, could this be the case? Suicide? Samantha and the girl’s faces match in appearance, from the eyes to the mouth. It would explain what Kala… Kala…that’s the girl’s name. Kala. The same force that told him that the mansion and bank were in Exuma tells him this. That explains why he awoke screaming it.…was doing in that abysmal ocean bottom. Yet as Jacques repeats this to himself, it feels wrong, like a student telling himself that the homework won’t be due tomorrow yet in reality it will be. If she was going to kill herself, why choose drowning, one of the most painful ways to die? Jacques sighs. Sitting here on his butt is only going to get him guesses. He has a gut feeling-Unrelated to that force giving him new knowledge-that the answer lies in Exuma, on that playground, in that bank, in that mansion, and at the other locations.By now is coffee is drained. He gets out of the chair and brings the cup to the sink, glances at the oven clock and looks out the window. 11:57 and the sun’s still as bright as ever. That leaves him plenty to get to and from the city. He would just pack some stuff-some tools and basic necessities- and be on his way.
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10/31/2008 6:01:04 PM
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