I’m not a dreamer. Sure I have things I want to do in my life, but I’m talking about the dreams you have while asleep. I wake up most days and don’t recall any dreams if I had them. I also don’t have any evidence that dream walking, or vision quests are any more real than a good old acid trip. Bringing both those things up is my way of saying that what happened to me on that floor was out of my realm of reference. Something new. A dream that felt real, and I remember it clearly.

I woke up to the Velvet Underground‘s “Sunday Morning”, playing on an old cabinet based record player in the parlor I feel asleep in.

I knew it wasn’t real, something about how the light blew out the windows, and the breeze from them told me it wasn’t real. The room smelled less cleaner and more smoke, the type that might come from a fireplace. I sat up. No fire. Julian sat on the kitchen counter just outside the parlor doors. Henry sat next to him. They were eating popcorn, fangs so long it was hard to shut their mouths. Other vampires paraded like ants in front of them, each one carrying a book out the door, or returning from the direction of the basement to get another one. Comical in their lack of features except their over large fangs.

I got up and followed them down into the library. It seemed like the steps went deeper, and every three steps the walls changed colors, slowly building until the last few steps were a deep blood red. Suzanne sat in the middle of the floor clutching a pile of books, crying. Matches burning on top of them. Isabelle was handing the books to the faceless vampires as they came down. Both of them had on dresses, not from this time, possibly the sixties, bright flower printed, and cutting just below the knee. Suzanne looked at me, “I can’t stop them, I can’t burn them.”

Isabelle looked up and smiled. A genuine smile. “Don’t worry Alex, we got this. How about you rest a little longer, we won’t be long.” She took my arm and led me to the freezer. Somehow the music was louder in there, but it was really cold. The door shut behind me leaving me alone but not in the dark. The light was still on. I turned around to see if there were any other doors, and when I turned back to the door, my father was there.

I never met my father. He died when I was just a baby. I hadn’t even seen pictures of him, but somehow I knew this was him. This man in his twenties, dressed in a suit. He frowned slightly and then kissed me on the head. He said “no” and I was confused. He kissed my head again, this time longer. When he pulled back he said “know” and I knew.

You know that feeling in dreams where you are doing something you can’t do in real life, or getting something you don’t have, but it feels so real that you know when you wake up it really will be? It was like that but if that feeling was the thing, not being able to do something, or thinking something was real, but that feeling of the endless potential for dreams to come true when you wake. I knew that at that moment to be as part of me as my arm. As my hands.

I looked down at my hands. I needed to get out of here, to share this feeling with Henry. I reached out toward the door, not really caring that my father was no longer there. The moment I touched the door the music stopped and there was a pain in my hand as if it was freezing off. I screamed, and that scream woke me up.

It woke me up but I didn’t forget that dream. I didn’t forget that I knew. That I still know.