Vinnie was just a small boy when I dreamed an entire cake had been smashed into his face. Well, in the dream he was a boy—maybe 5 or so—but in reality we were already adults. A couple years later when we were celebrating his sons 3rd birthday with cake and ice cream and his son dove his face into his cake, I suddenly recollected the dream I’d had years before.
It made me smile.
Vinnie is a good brother to me and we were always quite inseparable. That’s why one dream that I’d had on more than one occasion growing up didn’t make much sense to me:
There’s a building. A school perhaps. I’m inside a car. Windows rolled down. Daddy is there, but not Vinnie.
I had the same dream more than once and I always felt a little off whenever I woke remembering it.
Does that happen to you? Do you dream about something vividly and then forget about it until something in real life happens to bring you back to that dream? Or is that just me?
Because the unsettling dream that Vinnie wasn’t a part of came back to haunt me recently: I was sitting in my Toyota with the windows open waiting for my daughter to exit school. It was Tuesday and on Tuesdays we have to band together so I can whisk her off to gymnastics. I heard the school bell ring, but instead of seeing the school building she attends, it was the building from the dream I’d had 15 years ago.
Daddy is there. He’s talking to little girls. And he’s walking toward me and the car with little girls by his side. The door to the school opens and a little girl looks directly at me and smiles and runs toward me.
It’s my little girl.
The flash from the past is gone, but I’m left feeling a little off… more than a little, actually.
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this bit of flash fiction brought to you by the fine prompts at
and 
Unsettling as intended. Tightly woven. The dread builds and ebbs and ends with an apprehension neither the speaker nor reader can identify. Well done.
thanks so much LaTonya!
Okay. This was seriously creepy and seriously awesome. I do dream like this which made it hit home all the harder. Excellently told tale of fiction, Christina! thank you for linking up this week. I enjoyed this intensely and immensely!
oh Gina, I’ve missed you!
seriously, I wrote this yesterday but was kind of disturbed by it myself, so I let it simmer over night before hitting that publish button this morning.
Good foreshadowing with the dream. It gave everything a creepy edge.
thanks Tina!
You’ve really captured that unsettling line between dream and reality, the way our subconscious sometimes tells us things we aren’t ready to know.
thanks Angela!
Oh I liked this, liked the use of the word and the feelings it conjured for me.Unsettling yes for sure and yet, it was so well written.
I often have premonitions, dream things before they happen and it always makes me uneasy for a day or two wondering if it really happened or not.
thank you so much for linking up.
thanks Kir!
How wonderfully creepy! It sort of puts the reader on edge. It also raised questions the reader can’t be sure he/she wants answered. I like it!
-Alicia Audrey
heck, *I* don’t even want them answered! 🙂
thanks Alicia!
This was fascinating. The second dream was especially creepy. It makes me wonder what the deal was with her father, and the girls…if it was just a dream, or maybe some repressed memories that she wants to forget in order to protect herself from the emotional harm.
you know, I felt rather disturbed after I wrote it–and I kind of think it was going to the repressed memories thing. I’m not sure I even want to touch this character again.
That’s a tad disturbing. Very nice work!
🙂 thanks
Ugh… I only remember the “bad” and/or “disturbing” dreams. Never the fun silly ones. Luckily I don’t get the creepy feeling of dreams invading reality. That would be… just plain scary.
the creepy feeling of dreams invading reality is the only non-fiction part to this piece. and it IS creepy when it happens. i’m glad I was able to convey that here.
Ooh, I really like the mysteriousness and disturbing feeling in this piece. Well written and intense. Great work!
awesome thanks a lot Suzanne
I love your voice. It commands attention without calling attention to itself. The story itself, I can relate to also. I’ve often had realizations that the place I am is something I dreamed about long ago. The perspective is different so it takes me a minute to recognize it, but when I do, it’s a very strange feeling.
thanks Linda; glad you enjoyed it.
This is great. It reminds me a bit of Steven King’s short story about deja vu. Except, honestly, I think I like this story more! When I was done, “a little off” was exactly how I felt, and I had to go back and try to unravel that feeling, but it still resisted me. Which you don’t usually want a story to do, but in this case, it seemed to me that that was the whole point. Excellent.
wow thanks SO much
Wow! Way to write outside the box. Interesting how our subconscious speaks to us, isn’t it?
thank you! and yes. YES!