Unthinkable, but not undreamed (solo)

Verdy was dreaming. What she was dreaming about she wasn’t quite sure- being asleep and all- but even in her sleep she was fighting it, wrestling it away. She knew, without knowing, she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about it, whatever it was. Her face was flushed and her legs kicked under the covers. When you can’t win, run.

It started spasmodically, one leg by itself, a gap for several minutes, then the other. Suddenly she was no longer running from it, it had caught her, pinned her underwater. Relief turned to panic. She had to swim. She was sinking, her head was going under, she couldn’t breathe. Whatever it was she was trying so hard not to think about was wrapping its fingers around her, dragging her down. Forcing her to look at it for what it was. She could feel the water leaking into her lungs as she tried to inhale.

She knew what it was.

Struggling to escape. The surface was so faraway, then almost in her grasp, then gone again. Her fingers brushed the underside of the water, but her face did not reach the air. Bubbles of the awake world swirled against her body. The hum of a clock, someone’s deep, shuddering breaths, were they her own?

With an almighty dream-kick she awoke midair between floor and bed. The sheets tangled around her body, squeezing like it’s fingers. The grasp of the unthinkable. It was Off Limits. Not to be thought of, much less dreamed. She coughed away the choking feeling and unwound her body from the sheets. The covers on the bed were re-arranged and she climbed under them up to her chin, before tossing all but the lightest blanket and the sheet to the floor.

She would not think of it. She would think of Andy, and the Alchemist, of rain on the street and grass in the park and anything else that didn’t sport piercing blue eyes.

It was not the sweat of feat that dampened her skin.