Men on Horses
Next to me she is breathing, maybe snoring slightly, and I let myself go limp against her warm body. She stirs, rouses. “Why are you awake?” she murmurs, eyes scarcely open.
“Just a nightmare.”
She’s so peaceful now, drifting back to sleep in three deep breaths, but she has no idea that just a moment ago she was running with me through a pine forest away from men on horses, men with torches, men with masks and gruff voices. She doesn’t know that before that we were in a supermarket, of all places, fluorescent lights and magazine racks, when suddenly the men came charging at us.
My nightmares are usually about scary men trying to kill me, about being helpless and weak and vulnerable. It’s been like that since I was a little girl-- boogeymen chasing me down the street and through parking garages (parking garages have always creeped me out). I wonder what actual scary men’s nightmares are like. What do they have to fear? Perhaps larger, scarier men, or maybe beasts or monsters, or dehydrating in a desert, or falling from a cliff, or misplacing their wallets. Maybe they have nightmares about losing the people they love. I’m sure they fear too. We all fear. We all sleep.
I lay awake as the men on horses fade to dust, dissolve into my mind like mulch into a garden bed. Then, before I know I’ve fallen asleep, I am awake, sunlight beaming through the curtains.