Simplicity

I don't think I can explain it, but I have an irrational fear of windows, and I'll try my best to explain it.

When I was a child, I would have the kind of dreams that would be enough to torment me. I'm not sure why I remember this just now, but one of the dreams had involved a window. Most of them did, to be more clear. And to be precise, it wasn't the kind of dream you would just wake up and think, "that was a dream. That was a dream." It was the kind of thing where you would wake up, and mentally ask yourself, "why me," but have no explanation for yourself, either because you were tired, but never pushed yourself to think "maybe that happened. Maybe I'm curiously devoted to a window." Or something like that.

There was one that I remember somewhat vividly, one that I had back when I was living with just my siblings and grandmother.

It was a rough, dark Summer night, and I, like always, had helped my siblings with creating the bed on the floor of the trailer before settling down for the night, just watching some television before drifting off to sleep. My grandmother didn't have enough change to buy a house, nor buy separate beds. She also didn't have enough change to buy materials so she could willingly add onto the trailer, so that we could all sleep in separate rooms, so that meant we had to create a "bed" on the floor in the living room out of blankets, pillows, and towels. Looking back, I can't see what we found wrong with the rooms at the end of the hall.

It was a rough night, let me remind you, and it was warm, so that led to night-terrors for me. I was the worst of the four of us that would have the night-terrors, and I never knew why. Curiosity didn't seem like something to blame, nor darkness, nor sleep deprivation. Don't even get me started on morbidity.

The dream started off fairly simple, and this is as best as I can describe it: It started off with me walking along in a flowerbed outside a large, lit house, well-kept. I eventually laid down in the flowerbed, as the wind blew past me and ruffled my shallow locks. I kept myself relatively clean all the time, and I still somewhat do, so it was no surprise that I got up willingly, checked my dark shorts and light shirt for any grass burns, as I remember falling sometime in the dream before that, even though there were no mentions of this in the dream. My dream persona straightened his back, and started walking towards the house. There was a curious head in the window, notably the dream persona's mother, who had smiled when noticing him.

The persona put his hands in his pockets, before reaching to the doorknob, and pushing the door open, all while greeting his mother as she pranced to the door and scooped him up, teasing him about his short height and how careless he was, out in the front yard, like mothers tend to do. Instead of the persona smiling and hugging his mother, he frowned and pouted. She poked his nose, and let him go, and he went to his room rather calmly, as it was an early afternoon and he needed to relax and play video games, like children do.

I always had a fear of windows, as I mentioned, and the dream persona shrunk to prevent having to look at the window at the end of the hall, shivering slightly as he did out of sheer terror from the window, although his fear about it was notably different from mine; whereas mine was a minor phobia like my fear of water and heights, he loathed windows, so much so that he forced himself to keep the blinds in his room shut at all times, and to tape them shut to prevent them from moving. It stayed like that for a while in the dream, really, because my dreams were somewhat consecutive; all of them were five days apart from each other it would seem. Anyway, back on point.

He made it to his room and made sure the tape was steady, shaking all the while when he had to peer out of the window in the middle of the day; it was worse at night, though.

A gust of wind behind the blinds wafted them up, snapping the tape as they did, causing my dream persona; my doppelganger; to flinch, his eyes beginning to fill with tears, before the room in the dream... changed. He wasn't in anything drastic, like a torture chamber, the trunk of a vehicle, underneath dirt, in a coffin; it just transitioned to another location- a trailer, like I use to have- randomly. The window separated and was much shorter, so it was just two small windows, consecutive and in place with one another.

The child cried, uncaring for what happened to the window, but instead for his mother. What came instead was not the boogeyman, and it wasn't some irrational creature. It was just... an elderly lady, with the same features as his mother... He looked at his mother, and dashed into her arms, "Mommy, mommy...the window's open, mommy... Remember that nest outside...? The window's open and I could hear the bees...Mommy, the window's open...I can see the outside..."

The elderly lady rubbed his back with wrinkled, rough hands, "It's okay, honey.. Don't worry. Mommy will solve the problem."

And that's what she tried to do. The child got off and sat to the side, watching like a vicarious animal, waiting to strike. The lady withdrew a wooden spoon, and a knife, before cutting down the nest and hitting it off of the remaining supports. The bees exited the nest, clearly agitated, and attacked the lady, stinging various parts of her face and arm. Within due time, six maggots had been released on her arms, biting at the deceased skin, and at least thirty bees were attacking her, like a pack of hungry lions. The lady tried to push the window closed, and succeeded- on her arm. With gravity and death working against her, and with the window closed enough to catch her arm, there was a sickening snap of tendons, and a tear in flesh, before the lady fell on the child's bed, without an arm, and with thirty-four bees on her face. She was deathly allergic to bees, after all. I woke up then, reminded of my mother's fear and allergy of bees.

Well, I guess that's my explanation. And remember, I have an irrational fear of windows.