I only dream in black and white. It used to amuse Nana - back when she remembered who her granddaughter was. ‘‘You are a stickler for the rules, aren’t ya’’, she had laughed one morning, after a long-winded retelling of my first ‘old movie’ dream, and her tone had made seven-year-old little me incandescently angry.
‘‘Am not’’. I threw my spoon on the floor, as if to prove it.
Nana would annoy me, primarily because she would annoy my mother, but soon I came to realize that she was simply an annoying person. She was expansive, loud, arrogant and opinionated. She would make objections to people’s personal items and/or choices. She would criticize the way a person raised their child in front of said child - never mind that she left her own children to travel the world for three years (and eight months), culminating in a massive divorce. The freedom with which she did everything - the way it poured out of her like expensive perfume, the way it didn’t care for other people’s lack there off - was what offended me the most.
For the freest person in the world, to be made hostage by her own mind was the cruellest of ironies, worse only than the fact that I was never able to tell her how much she was envied. By everyone around her but by me, most of all.
‘‘You probably knew’’ I whisper, hoping that Nana would hear me in our private universe.
She doesn’t. Or, she can’t. Her mind won’t remember how to dream the dreams we shared.
There is a soft change, almost imperceptible. A shift in the trajectory of the wind, a raise in temperature, sighs that I’m not longer alone. It doesn't surprise me. I am the queen of my own mind, after all.
‘‘Why is it in black and white?’’ The voice, when it comes, is velvety and soft. Adult. Disinterest. Assured of itself. I turn my head to look.
The woman is probably in her mid-twenties as well. She is beautiful. Her hair blond, almost white, short, only extending to her shoulders. White dress and leather boots. Big eyes that seem cold and judgmental. Full lips that look bitten. Biteable.
She looks at me, ‘‘Did you just call me biteable?’’, there is the ghost of a smirk on said biteable lips.
I feel my face heat, but then I remember that this is a dream. My dream. ‘‘Yeah’’, I say, and only forty percent of that confidence was forced.
She rolls her eyes and looks away, but she licks her lips, which I consider a win. She hunches over the bench I am sitting on, looking ahead. ‘‘Why is it in black and white?’’ she repeats, and her tone indicates she doesn’t like having to do so.
I follow her eyes to the deserted streets of Noting Hill. I shrug, ‘‘My grandmother would say I’m unimaginative’’
‘‘Are you?’’ Her voice is closer. I can feel her warmth on my left shoulder. I can smell her sweet perfume.
‘‘I imagined you’’ I whisper, turning my head to her, my lips curling into what I hope is a flirtatious smile, ‘‘I don’t think a boring person could imagine you’’
She raises one - unplucked, bushy, beautiful - eyebrow and smirks. Her eyes shine with what I could only assume is mirth.
I shake my head, sighing, ‘‘I can’t pull even in my dreams. Jesus’’
The woman laughs loudly, and I look at her again, proud that I am able to at least amuse her.
She reaches for my chin and pushes it forward, her cold and soft fingers forceful. I feel a chill going down my arms just as she bents to press her lips against my ear.
‘‘You’ll do’’ she murmurs. The sound, sent and feel of her make me close my eyes, but as I close them here, I must open them there.
I wake up. Back on the plane.
Why am I on a plane?
The sky outside the window is light blue and beautiful. I see, through the clouds, waves of grey mountains with a little white on the top. Why am I on a plane?
My forehead hurts from clenching it, and suddenly I remember.
Liliad.
