Dream Myself Alive At Christmas, Page 2

  I dropped the phone. Kelly was dead? She can’t be. Not Kelly. Not my Kelly. Not my beautiful dear Kelly. I was shaking, my lip was quivering, but I just felt numb. My whole body just felt completely devoid of all emotion, like it wasn’t really there anymore, like I wasn’t there anymore. Was my life over as well? The pain inside my chest was unbearable. It felt like my heart was shattering into a thousand tiny pieces. It hurt so bad I felt like I was dying myself, on this same despicable spot where I stood, locked in horrifying time.

  I dropped to the floor. I wanted so badly to cry but couldn’t. I just lay down in complete and total silence, curled myself into a childlike ball and died inside.

  Our life had been so perfect. It had been our three year anniversary. I’d been preparing a surprise home cooked dinner for the two of us. I’d cooked her favourite jalapeno-infused chilli chicken dish with boiled potatoes, mangetout and baby corn; and I’d made blueberry and white chocolate cheesecake for desert. Kelly was a sucker for anything with white chocolate in it. It was her number one passion in life. Well, number two after that Irish actor Colin Thingamajig’s bum. I am rubbish with celebrity names, but I’d always accepted I was number three behind Colin’s bum and a milky bar.

  I’d lit candles. Hey, this was a big deal for me. I wasn’t exactly the romantic type. If there was a ‘Romance for Dummies’ guide book, I needed it. In fact, I tell a lie, I actually searched online once and couldn’t believe there was. I wish I’d bought it now; just one of many if only’s…

  We met in late August. It was the end of summer. I was coming out of the Adriatic Sea in Stoja, Croatia, not looking like Daniel Whatshisname in a Speedo, while she was lying on a hotbed of lucky pebbles like a total goddess in heat. She laughed at me, stumbling on the rocks and nearly falling over and grazing my ankle, which stung like a dirty bitch for days as I may recall.

  If I had known buying water shoes would have been advantageous in saving my humility and grace in front of a girl as stunningly pretty as Kelly, I’d have certainly splashed out the 50 Croatian Kuna I had been saving for an extra beer that night.

  As it turns out though, then we may never have spoken. And I used the money to buy her a beer that night, so it was a total win-win for me.

  She agreed to meet me for a drink in the Jack of Spades pub in Pula, though this hadn’t been my earnest suggestion. The smoking ban enforced in pubs in England, hadn’t reached Eastern Europe and she could barely breathe for passive choking. The Romanian band singing “rolling on a river” in badly broken English was deafening ear poison to say the least. We could barely hear each other. Oh and did I mention it was her least favourite song of all time ever?

  I heard that bit, which she blurted out loudly whilst simultaneously managing to spill half a pint of local beer on a rather scruffy, bearded and pierced in all the wrong orifices Scandinavian, who just happened to be the band Death by Disco Ball’s number one fan. He had also heard her dissing them, so we had to make a quick getaway. We left the bar and went for a walk around the nearby Roman Amphitheatre.

  “This is so pretty,” Kelly said, carefully minding her step around the dark unlit pathway that trails around the back of the Amphitheatre.

  “I mean in the daytime, it is.”

  It was after midnight and the street lamps were few and far between. I conceded that she was certainly as pretty under the moonlight as she had been sundrenched, earlier that day. We made our way down some steps and found ourselves by the port where several lavish yachts were docked, and which was pretty much deserted at this time of night. The moon’s reflection glistened in the steely dark waters of the calm sea at night, as did our own. Admiring it for a second, I glanced back and caught Kelly by surprise.

  “Mind if I kiss you?” I asked.

  She didn’t have to say anything. I could see the answer in her eyes.

  Those same eyes I thought I’d lost forever were staring back at me. I studied her face intently, like my life in the moment depended on it. Everything I’d ever felt. Everything we’d ever shared. Each of the thousand tiny shattered pieces of my broken heart felt like they were slowly coming back together. My heart was beating again. And I could feel hers was too. But how could this be? The love of my life, the girl of my dreams, was here again, with me, within reach. Yet this was the same woman I had laid to rest just little more than a few months ago.

  I was happy and elated and worried and confused. It was a mixture of feelings so abundantly overwhelming that I was rendered a total mute. I couldn’t think of what to say, or what I wanted to say. All I knew was that I was with Kelly again and I felt like I was home. And it was a place and a feeling that I never wanted to leave or lose again, that I couldn’t lose again.

  Slowly the words came to me and while catching my breath I whispered:

  “How can this be?"

  Chapter 2.

  From an airy aqua blue to a stony concealing grey, the skyline definitely told us we were back in England again. It was the middle of September and we had been back from Croatia just over a fortnight and were missing each other terribly. Kelly was back in Leeds and I was at home in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was not exactly a million miles away but it sure felt like it.

  We had been inseparable those last few days in Pula, basking in the last of those warm engaging summer rays. But now it was back to life, back to reality, and back to quickly cooling temperatures. Sadly, the rain in England doesn’t fall mainly on the plane. In fact it hadn’t stopped raining since the plane landed. And it was more than just drizzling today. It was pouring down, or as we say here in England ‘raining cats and dogs’. And rabbits and guinea pigs by the looks of it.

  I was of course too proud, too macho – and too stupid – to be seen with an umbrella, so I was getting completely drenched. My new designer shirt was wet through. Not likely to impress Kelly anymore, I thought as I got on the train. I couldn’t wait to see her again. It sounded stupid. It had only been a mere two weeks, but it felt like forever, so I’d quickly arranged a weekend in Leeds to catch up. Got home and got wet was about as much as I would have to relay.

  And did I mention I had the serious holiday blues? This wasn’t even a light turquoise any-sea-other-than-the-north holiday blues; it was full on electric, bordering on navy.

  The train departed and I texted Kelly to say I was on my way. The rain thundered heavily on the windows and looked positively frightful. I was cold and wet and looked like a drowned rat that had just been battling a tsunami. But I was smiling.

  This was something I was sure I would never do again and was in fact probably for the first time since Kelly died.

  “Are you…”

  I hesitated, stuttering, still in profound shock.

  “…real?”

  Kelly didn’t answer. She just took my hand and led me away, out of the darkness and into the light: through thick terrain, across oceans, over mountains, and for what seemed like thousands of miles.

  It felt like we were flying as supersonic as Concorde. I barely had time to catch my breath and then suddenly we were there. Back in Croatia again, back in Stoja, and back where it all began.

  We stood on the beach in the shoreline, hands clasped together, staring into each other’s eyes, the waves crashing around our ankles. We weren’t wearing water shoes, but somehow it didn’t matter. We didn’t lose our balance on the pebbles. And best of all, the unbearable pain of living without her was gone.

  I felt an abundance of relief. Kelly may have died, but I had her back now, back within my grasp. And I was never letting go again.

  “I have missed you so much,” I said, nervously trying to fight back tears of pure joy.

  “But I was always here,” Kelly simply replied, calmly smiling at me. “I never really left.”

  A giant wave crashed over us and suddenly we were home again, dry, curled up on the couch together watching a movie and eating pizza. It was like the last few months never happened, like they’d been erased from all existential memory.


  The movie was one of those straight-to-DVD abominations that usually star a has-been from yesteryear and they’d delivered the wrong pizza, but we didn’t care. We had each other again and that’s all that mattered.

  By the time the train arrived in Leeds, the rain had finally stopped, the sun had come out and my new shirt had miraculously dried and wasn’t looking half bad after all.

  Kelly was waiting for me on the platform. I don’t know how she did it, but she seemed to get more beautiful with every breath she took. Only Kelly could close the heavens and cut a monsoon short. She just had that way about her. Wherever she walked sunshine and light would follow. She grabbed my hand, almost as excited as I.

  “Hurry, I’ve parked on a double yellow line. I don’t want to get a ticket.”

  We quickly made our getaway. It seemed like old times. Except this time the president of the Death by Disco Ball fan club was not in hot pursuit.

  We had a blast that weekend. We went to York. She showed me the sights. I saw where she grew up, met her family and friends. Everything just seemed to click. But before I knew it the weekend was over.

  I was gutted I had to leave and needless to say it was still raining when I arrived back in Newcastle. We talked on the phone every day for weeks and met up most weekends after that. Either I went back to Leeds or she came to me.

  The day she said she would move in with me, here in Newcastle, was the happiest of my life. And from that moment on, she never left my side.

  We did everything together: ate, slept, breathed; and plotted to conquer the world.

  My hobby was restoring old stereogram record players from the 1960’s and 70’s and Kelly helped me make it into a fully fledged business.

  At first we set up an online store, but when we discovered there was actually a market for it and business picked up, we got our very own shop in town called ‘Stereo Grahams’. I had to pretend I was called Graham to the customers but it was just too good of a euphemism to pass up on. I’m a genius, I know.

  However, Kelly was the real brains behind my creativity. She just complemented and completed me in every single way. We even took up Spanish together, determined to educate ourselves further and learn another language to enhance our future travel plans.

  “Hola! Mi nombre es Zac. Una cerveza, por favor,” was about as far as I had gotten, but she seemed to pick it up quite easily...

  “Buenos días, Mr Knight.”

  I awoke and came crashing back to earth with an unsavoury thud. It was my Chilean housemaid Maria. She came to clean my flat twice a week.

  The movie ‘Octopussy versus Rhinoshark’ had been so bad I had fallen asleep on the couch. The menu screen of the DVD must have been playing on repeat for several hours and the pizza lay, half eaten, still in the box.

  But Kelly was gone.

  Chapter 3.

  The waiting room at Dr. Irving’s office always reminded me of autumn, which just happened to be my favourite season.

  The interior décor was a perfect blend of every colour you would expect to find on fallen leaves at that time of the year. From the caramel brown settee to the cinnamon rust coffee table adorned with a firecracker red vase full of burnt orange begonias. Even the polished bronze nameplate on the door bearing the emblem ‘Dr. Stefan Irving’ seemed at home with the colour coordination.

  And that’s exactly how it made me feel. I pondered if that were the intention for a moment. It worked every time. Even at my most stressed and darkest moments, it always seemed to have a way of chillaxing me out.

  I’d come to see the doc about what happened the night before with Kelly; being with her again, together on the beach, and then waking up alone.

  I could still feel her warm breath against my neck and smell her signature Le Sexe de la Femme scent. But my elation at our reunion was seriously jarred by the devastating thought that it might not have been real. However something told me otherwise. And I was clutching onto that feeling for dear life.

  Now all I needed was Dr. Irving to confirm it, confirm that I wasn’t in for a mountain drop of a comedown and to confirm that I wasn’t going mad, again.

  I’d gone mad once before in Dr. Irving’s office. It was a few weeks after Kelly died. I took it hard. I wasn’t coping well at all. In fact, I was a Class-A certified mess.

  A friend suggested that I see a psychiatrist to help me try to come to terms with her death, and Dr. Stefan Irving came highly regarded. But his none orthodox style of questioning that first time we met released a rage in me that had been a long time coming.

  I took my temper out on his stainless steel waste paper basket. Nearly broke my big toe in the process and cried like a newborn baby, although that wasn’t really anything to do with the self inflicted foot injury.

  I’d felt so numb and vacant since that terrible, fateful telephone call. I hadn’t been able to shed a single tear at the funeral. And now here in Dr Irving’s homely yet somewhat hypnotising office, I broke down. And I mean broke down. We’re talking 12-year-old girl who’d just been told One Direction had split up. The tears of a clown. Dr. Irving nearly drowned.

  “Zac, it’s good to see you,” Dr Irving greeted me with a firm shake of the hand. In fact it was always so firm it always made me wince a little.

  “You’re looking well, if a bit edgy,” he added, never missing a beat.

  “Stefan, it happened. It finally happened.”

  I forgot to mention we were on first name terms now. He had helped me through such a dark tunnel in my life that we’d kind of come out of the other side as friends. I say kind of as I didn’t know a great deal about him. Other than that he was a great listener. Not so much a talker. But I guess that’s in his profession.

  “What happened?” asked Stefan, a little perplexed. It had been a few weeks since I had been to see him.

  “Kelly,” I blurted out in unrestrained excitement.

  “I saw Kelly.”

  I forget if it was my sixth or seventh appointment when he first mentioned it to me. It had been a few weeks and I didn’t seem to be getting any further forward in coming to terms with my grief. I just couldn’t accept that life could go on. Not without my precious jewel Kelly.

  Dr. Irving was worried about me.

  “You just don’t seem to want to move on,” he said, ashen-faced.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” I replied, as nervy, angst-ridden and teary-eyed as ever.

  “I can’t come to terms with it. I can’t accept that I am never going to see her again. I can’t accept that Kelly is gone forever.”

  And that’s when Dr. Irving paused for what seemed like a lifetime, deep in thought. I could tell he was in debate with himself. And then he just said it:

  “What if I told you she might not be?”

  “You saw Kelly?” Stefan remained as cool, calm and collected as he always was, despite the seeming madness of what I was saying.

  “She came to me. She was waiting for me. She was there.”

  As I said it, I could only imagine they should probably lock me up and throw away the key. Stefan didn’t say anything; he just rolled his eyes and gave me a deep questioning look, which penetrated the very core of my soul.

  “It was exactly how you said it would be,” I said, hoping this would alleviate any tendency Stefan had to call the men in white coats.

  The steel in his glare softened and melted into what I thought was becoming a smile. Now I was the one doing the questioning: Did he believe me? Did I believe me? Was I going borderline insane?

  Something in his eyes assured me I wasn’t.

  Dr. Irving surely had my undivided attention. I was grasping at straws. I was desperate. He could have said anything to me at that particular moment in time. Anything that might mean Kelly was not gone to me forever, and I was sold.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, definitely intrigued.

  “I’ve been doing some research,” he replied matter-of-factly. “Do you believe in the reality of dr
eams?”

  It normally didn’t take much, but I was confused. Was he teasing me? Was it a trick question? Was I building my hopes up for a massive fall?

  That’s when he pulled an old book out from the top left hand corner of his bookshelf and showed me a quotation by Rene Descartes, a great famous French philosopher, from 1596-1650:

  “How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events—that I am here in my dressing-gown, sitting by the fire—when in fact I am lying undressed in bed? As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep. The result is that I begin to feel dazed, and this very feeling only reinforces the notion that I may be asleep.”

  It kind of struck a chord with me. I used to think dreams were simply the brain’s way of processing and deleting random thoughts from the subconscious.

  Not anymore.

  Chapter 4.

  Now what Dr. Irving hadn’t told me was that he was an Oneirologist.

  No I hadn’t heard of that either, but apparently it’s a doctor that specialises in the scientific study of dreams. He’d been studying them for quite some time and saw a way, through them, to lead me out of a darkness I’d found myself seemingly trapped in, back into a light I didn’t believe existed anymore.

  My initial reaction was WTF, but I was so desperate for a sign of hope, any sign, I managed to momentarily suspend my disbelief. The term clutching at straws seemed more than appropriate.

  “Have you heard of lucid dreaming?” he asked.

  I had no absolutely clue what he was on about.

  “Have I heard of what?” I spluttered, almost choking.

  “It’s a form of dreaming, but being in control of the dream.”

  I was beginning to suspect Dr. Irving was as cloud cuckoo as I had become.

  “The trick is to wake up in the dream.”

  Now I really was confused. Ahem. Come again?

  Dr. Irving could see that he was trying to speak Swahili to a deaf Englishman. Or he may as well have been.

  “How can I put this in a simpler form?”