Buttercup

 I had a nightmare.

The couch I sit on is old, worn, stained in some places. There is very little light in the room I am in. Dark curtains hang in the windows, blocking sunlight from entering. There are pictures on the walls. They are hand drawn sketches, and they are unsettling. There is one of a man, peeking from behind a tree, his expression blank. Another portrays a woman, pulling a fetus from a gash on her stomach, surrounded by wolves.

There are lots of books, walls lined with bookshelves of varying sizes and designs. I approach one of the shelves to read the titles and I am startled by movement, a snake, patterned red and black, winding itself through the slats that run the side of the shelf. I reach forward and the snake slides over my palm and around my wrist, wrapping itself around my arm like a living, breathing ornament.

I move to the kitchen, open the cupboards, take a look inside the refrigerator. There is not much in the way of anything to eat, nothing to put together what most would consider a good, wholesome meal. 

The room is quiet, still. Never has the laughter of a child echoed through the halls, never will an intimate conversation be whispered in hushed tones with a lover in the bedroom. I am, however, not quite alone. There is the snake, bound securely to my arm. There is something else, too. I see nothing, hear nothing, but I know, there is something else.

I see it, then, slinking around the corner. The snout appears first, the teeth of its upper jaw exposed. It crawls forward, its large, lumbering, armored body moving from side to side, followed by its long reptilian tail. 

The alligator’s yellow eyes turn to me, and it comes for me.

I woke up, early morning sunlight streaming through the open window. The bedroom surrounding me was decorated in shades of ivory, sage, and blue, the quilt that covered me a patchwork of yellow and white.

Home.

I opened the bedroom door, stepped out and into the hallway. The walls were occupied with pictures of a smiling, happy family. I followed the sound of voices, laughter, and made my way down the hallway, hesitantly, afraid of what I might find when I turned the corner.

What I found was a man and two children, sitting around the large, pine dining room table, breakfast in front of them.

My family.

"Good morning, honey," my husband greeted me. He patted the chair next to him. "Grab yourself some eggs and have a seat."

I moved around the table, giving morning kisses. I started with my husband, moving next to my son and then to my daughter. 

"Good morning, mommy," my daughter said. Her hair was in pigtails and she smiled a big, toothless grin. My son grunted in response to my greeting, his eyes glued to the phone in his hand. He was a teenager, too cool for his family.

"Oh, and I made your favorite," my husband said, raising his coffee cup. "Pumpkin spice.”

I could not deny the joy this brought me. I poured a cup, removed a plate from the cupboard and added some eggs, a piece of toast, and joined my family at the table. After breakfast, I set to packing lunch boxes, my children's, my husband's, and my own, filling them with leftover vegetable lasagna from the night before, apple slices, a box of raisins, and a homemade, gluten-free blueberry muffin with flax seed.

Lunches packed, I took a shower and readied myself for the day ahead. I was a third-grade teacher in an elementary school. I loved my job, working with children, shaping the minds of the future. I dressed quickly, eager to get moving and out the door, pulling on a pair of cropped jeans and a pale pink blouse I'd purchased yesterday, on sale, at Wal-Mart. I slipped my feet into my shoes, white Crocs.

In the drive way, we said our goodbyes and my husband climbed into his Camry, pulling away while I loaded the kids in my minivan. We listened to a family-friendly station on the drive to school, singing along with the radio.

I arrived to my classroom just in time for the for the first students to begin to trickle in. I sat at my desk, grading papers, allowing the students the chance to converse before the morning bell rang. I had a great group of students this year, well-behaved and eager to learn. I looked up from my papers, thinking about this, my beautiful children, my husband who had just recently received a raise in his management position at the bank, our upcoming vacation to the Grand Canyon. My life, I thought, is a dream.

A wonderful, perfect dream.

"Ok," I said, clapping my hands to get the class' attention. I picked up the ceramic owl perched on the corner of my desk, a gift from a former student to honor our school mascot, Hooty the Owl.

"Who is ready to learn?"

I had woken with a start from this nightmare, my heart pounding in my chest. The images of the yellow and white quilt, the minivan, Hooty the Owl lingered in my mind. I shuddered, thinking of my husband in his dress shirt and tie, his sensible haircut, so pleased with his choice of pumpkin spice. Who likes that shit, anyway?

The kids, the gluten-free muffins, the family-friendly music. It was horrific. It was an omen, what my life could have been, what it could still turn out to be if I wasn’t careful.

I'm in the kitchen, now, Cora wrapped around my arm, her head resting beneath the shade of my hair. Buttercup is making her way in to join us, hungry for breakfast.

"Hi, big girl," I say, patting the top of her head, stroking her rough skin. "Did you sleep well? Any bad dreams?" I think of a nightmare an alligator might have. "Did you dream you were a common lizard, trapped in a terrarium in a classroom?"

She mutters a low, guttural, growl.

I stand, prepare to make her breakfast, the nightmare beginning to fade.

"Why would anyone want to go to the Grand Canyon, anyway?" I ask aloud, pulling the carcass of a pig from the refrigerator. "It's just a big fucking hole."

I set about chopping the remains into bite size morsels with a large cleaver. Oh well, I think. No reason to dwell on it. It was just a dream.

A horrible, miserable dream.