I have a dream every couple of years that visits me like an old friend I've lost touch with. Only we never were friends, and all they bring is confusion and half-forgotten memories dredged up from my subconscious.
It always starts the same. It's night, I'm in a small boat, the propeller is broken so I'm rowing over choppy waves, and I see it in the distance. A small island, barely 1,000 meters across. In the middle of nowhere, as always.
I don't dock, or land it on the beach. There is neither, only rocks and the island that's getting eaten up bit by bit by the ocean. Somehow I make it on solid ground and follow it's one road going straight down the middle.
There aren't much buildings and what used to be buildings could be seen half poking out of the water surrounding the place. It was sinking, slowly. Something wanted to desperately drag this island back down to Hell.
The road was covered in pebbles and framed on either sides by thick, low-hanging trees, their branches as droopy and hopeless as the rest of the place. You only see a lampost that miraculously still had flickering light once.
There still stood a chained in abandoned factory on one half of the island, and a dilapidated school and a house on the other side. Either a noise would attract me to the factory, a hissing of my name, but tonight it wasn't.
A herd of animals had frightened me towards the old houses. It's always the same, they threaten to bite and gnaw. They must've been starving for years. I run and open the first door I see, and find myself inside a school.
Inside was even darker than outside without the moonlight, so what light I had came from a tiny flashlight in my hand. Chairs and tables were in disarray, and a thick layer of dust and mold from the waterlogged buildings nearby covered everything.
There was one room, however, on the second floor that was free from cluttered broken furniture and darkness with light seeping in through the windows from an unknown source outside. It was the dancing room.
I'd remember how every day, from sunup till sundown...thirteen girls were made to dance until their feet bled and their knees and ankles were bloody and scraped from falling down too many times to count.
I could still see them, in two rows, with that... One... Girl. Always in the center, alone. Because she was perfect. Her dress, skirt, stockings and gloves were dyed red. If she fell, she got back up immediately.
It was a dye of her own making, I knew. When they danced, everyone kept their eyes shut. Not because they knew all the steps of this one dance by heart, but because if you couldn't see, then SHE couldn't get to you.
The teacher. A stern, tall, draconic woman always dressed in black like a nun fresh from taking her vows. They all loved her, and loathed her. Their protector, their teacher, their tormentor, their murderer.
One by one, I'd watch the girls fall. The music that would start playing from my memories was always loud enough, but not enough to cover the sounds of bones breaking, muffled whimpers, and the gurgling of blood seeping out from necks.
I kept my eyes shut. When your eyes were shut, she couldn't get to you. When your eyes were shut, this could just be a dream recurring. Not a memory buried. Buried along with that bloodstained red dress.
Every time I opened my eyes once the room had gone quiet, she would always be standing there. The girls were always gone, except us. Me in red, her in black. Only my red was a coat and suit I wore with pride.
The dyes, for once, wasn't from all the cuts, burns, bruises, slaps, blisters, and surgeries that she'd gifted me. They were from a bottle, and was a brilliant red from collar to hem. She'd smile, like she was proud.
I'd killed her once, in another dream. Let the clothes I wore taste blood other than my own. She'd laughed as she went down, the whip she always used to correct our postures impaled through her heart.
This time... I forgave her. Watched her sharp features sag, her dress grow looser, and her expression grow from it's malicious, haughty smirk, to a soft, wrinkled face of sorrow and regret. I always fell for it.
She'd hold me and I'd hold her. Tell me in a shaky voice that I was always her favorite. That everyone could have done better to be like me. As if I didn't have twelve kinds of blood on my hands staining my hands.
When she'd finally grow quiet and limp, I'd lay her in the center of the empty room where the otherworldly light could touch her. I hoped when the daylight finally came, it would send her off with one last warm embrace.
I'd close the doors to that empty room of memories and walk out into the foggy morning sun. She's right, they could have done better. They could have escaped, and lived. Instead, they turned on me, and died.
My last stop is what remains of the cemetery at the highest tip of the island, a small hill, as if it would protect it from the glutinous waves. Half had already fallen into the rocks below. Coffins hung half out, half buried.
In two...neat rows...were twelve graves. Twelve graves with rotten ballet shoes tied to their gravestone crosses. Twelve names I'd forgotten, chiseling worn from weather and time, but twelve faces and voices I carried with me every day.
I'd place a red rose on each grave and send a silent prayer that the ocean ate them up faster. So I wouldn't have to keep coming back. So I wouldn't have to remember, over and over, and over again and again.
Remember how I put twelve people out of their misery only to be left the only one alive, right as a chance came to escape. They could've held on. I could've held on. I could've also joined them, yet...I was too much a coward to.
That a dream ends when you wake up is a lie. It ends when it no longer comes back. When you can file it away and ultimately forget it ever existed. It ends when it becomes just that. A dream you once had.
In the fog and the rain, on an island crumbling, where the sun can't even touch it, I pray...that this would be the last time. I prayed that the next time I found myself in a small boat out at sea...
That the island would be gone. Sunken in the depths, or overtaken by the tides. There was never anything to come back to it. Not anymore. I hoped. I begged. I screamed it to the wind whipping my face. I wanted to be free of the sins I didn't commit.
Because this was just a dream...right?
[I have dreamt this dream twice before. I always chose to do something different. It's like being stuck in a video game you forgot but play again for old times sake. I can't wait for my final playthrough.]