Dreamscape
YUANNE VIADO
“You can try to hide it, but you know
You can’t run from yourself”
There was a time in my life when I decided I wanted to run away. Barely aged eleven-years-old, I had no particular destination in mind. This feeling took root in my legs and sprouted like a weed. It crawled up my spine like vines on a tightrope. It left my fingertips always aching for more.
Some said it was a stupid dream, reiterating my mother’s words at my eleventh birthday party. Others said it was reality and “that’s just how it is when you grow up”. But I like to think it was magic.
I remember how my mother looked at me as I blew out the candles with an awkward laugh. Her eyes were full of something. It was powerful and I hadn’t quite understood what it meant. I just knew that whatever she felt in that moment, it probably wasn’t anything good.
The light in my mother’s eyes burned into my skull. It turned my throat to ash and my stomach into acid. I still remember that vision to this day, like a film still kept in my back pocket. For a while, those brown eyes followed my every move, watching in silence like a hawk.
Over the years, I made every effort to distinguish myself apart from my mother: in our words and actions, even in the way we dress ourselves. It went well, I think. Save for our eyes.
*
Around the age of thirteen, my sister left. As the heat of the day faded behind the horizon, the Moon dragged the stars in her wake. The cicadas had erupted into song, harmonising with the streetlamps. I couldn’t help but watch from my bedroom window as my mother spoke with Josie. Her shoulders shook as Josie backed away from her, dumbfounded. She dumped her duffle bag in the back seat of her Integra and continued her sentence.
They spoke some more, yet I couldn’t make out their words nor read their lips from where I was perched. A small breeze flew by and I heard my assignment papers ruffle behind me from the draught. The paper was due the following Monday and I had made little progress. I couldn’t think of anything else during that moment.
I watched like a fly on the wall as Josie rounded the front of her car, waved a small goodbye in my direction, and drove off. I remember how my mother took a deep breath and wiped her face with the back of her hands. She walked towards the front door without so much as a glance over her shoulder.
Once the door was shut, the heavy wood caused the house to shudder. Each floorboard creaked under the weight of my mother’s footsteps, almost alerting me to ready myself. As my mother climbed the stairs, I steadied myself in my desk chair, re-organised my papers, and began writing nonsense. All I could think about at that moment was what my mother might say to me. The sting of her words and the force of her anger resurfaced in my memories. Tears pooled in my eyes and my vision blurred. The words on the page fused together into one big mess.
The creak of my door as it opened was the final breath before the performance. I turned to face my mother, having dispersed any emotion from my features. Her brown eyes held no light, save for the reflection of my lamp. It caught me by surprise, but I pressed that feeling down. There was a heaviness to my mother’s eyes. I braced myself for her words.
‘Your sister is gone,’ she rasped, ‘do your homework or you can pack your bags too.’
And with that, my mother turned and left the room. I was then left staring at the space she occupied. Silence draped over my body like a weighted cloak. That was it? No condescending tone? No judgement? The panic that filled my system had drained my energy. I had no choice but to continue writing with my thoughts in a haze.
It was a moment I often thought of after Josie left. It followed me into my dreams, staining the films in ink that I couldn’t wash out. I think it followed my mother too. I think she blamed me for Josie leaving.
A week after Josie left, my mother had taken down her baby photos from our wall of memories. The hallway suddenly felt bare in comparison to the life my sister brought with her everywhere she went. Even in the hottest of heatwaves, the house felt cold with just the two of us left.
*
In the months that followed, my mother and I became estranged. My mother hid herself away in her work, as did I. We became ghosts haunting the same hallways with words exchanged like secrets. My night shifts dragged me into an endless cycle of exhaustion, and the effects of work began to show. Those nights, I often came home to a sticky note on my door.
“Leftovers in the fridge,” it would read in my mother’s cursive handwriting.
Across the hallway, I’d glance at the empty spaces in-between the frames. Josie’s silhouette remained etched into the paint. My mother’s door stayed propped open by the bag she stopped using two years ago. I knew for a fact that she still hadn’t emptied its contents, except for the fruit she usually kept on hand. The sound of my mother’s soft snoring ebbed and flowed like waves along the shore. I would tiptoe into my room and shut the door with the slightest of movements.
In the silence of the night, I was engulfed by my own thoughts. They consumed my waking moments and terrorised my dreams. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. I wanted to tear this house apart. Just so my mother would stop hating me.
Why does she hate me?
The words rattled in my brain like a broken record. I hated that the fear started to seep through my mask. It wasn’t my intention to make myself small, yet it felt safer to do so in my mother’s presence.
My dreams were relentless. They coaxed me into moments of bliss—of warmth under the summer sun, and the scent of chlorine and ice blocks. I relived fond memories of the past, one that I’m not entirely sure truly happened. Not long after the recalls, they came crashing down like angry waves.
My dreams turned into nightmares and I was hunted for sport by an unknown being. A shadow materialised in the form of a tall, slender body with no face. They ravaged through my house while I hid in nooks and crannies to escape their grasp. In another nightmare, the shadow took the form of a hound with glowing eyes and sharp teeth. I ran through a darkened city, a maze of headlights blinding me at each turn. I was in search of my home with the hound at my heels. Each dream was different, yet all the same at once.
There are times in my dreams where I felt like a watcher of my own life. I saw myself laughing with my brother and dancing with my mother as we once did (again, I don’t know if this is real). Sometimes, I would see my own face morph into my mother or vice versa. Those nightmares sent ghost-needles into my skin. It was a gruesome process, now vivid in my memory. I watched as our skin melted into a mush. They reached out for one another like oil in water. Our limbs fused and our marrow intertwined themselves. Our blood sloshed into one disfigured body, moving like a think syrup beyond its expiration date. Everything came together, save for our eyes.
In my nightmares, I was hunted; and my mother and I became one.
*
When I turned seventeen, my grandmother appeared on our doorstep at dusk without notice. She wore a long, dark coat, and kept her grey hair pinned atop her head. She stood with her shoulders back, held her chin up, and walked with purpose. My grandmother could command any room she stepped into, something I think my mother despised.
‘Elaine, stay in your room,’ my mother whispered.
We watched my grandmother as she stepped over the threshold and waltzed towards the dining table.
‘Listen to some music or something—just stay upstairs for a bit.’
I climbed the stairs without a word, my fingers already opening the music app on my phone. I tucked in my earphones and pressed ‘play’ on my go-to Stray Kids playlist. I made sure that my mother and grandmother were out of view of the stairs before lowering the volume enough for me to hear.
There was a faint sound of glass cups being placed on the wooden table. Soon followed the fridge being opened and closed. Their conversation began in hushed tones, but I was too far to make out anything for certain. I padded down two steps and pressed my ear between the balusters.
‘You’re nitpicking.’
‘Hardly, my dear Madeline,’ my grandmother’s laugh sent a crackle of electricity down my spine, ‘hunting for sport, in fact.’
‘I’ll ask you again: why are you here, Natalie?’
Although she sounded frustrated, there was a certain grit to my mother’s words.
It had been years since I saw the two women interact, let alone be in the same room as one another. It’s been even longer since I’ve heard anyone refer to my mother by her full name. She always avoided it. But like a curse placed upon her at birth, her full name always managed to make an appearance. A beat passed before my grandmother replied.
‘You never answered my calls,’ my grandmother stated, ‘I told you this would happen and you didn’t listen to me, as always.’
Her calculated response earned a huff of exasperation from my mother. I became highly curious about my grandmother’s words. Her enigmatic nature was a force that beckoned me to always read between the lines.
‘Why should I listen to you about parenting? Yeah, because you’re so perfect at it,’ there was a pause, ‘you’re the reason why I left in the first place.’
At that moment, I thought of what my mother was like as a child. Maybe she liked the same food as I did. Maybe she read the same books as I had. Maybe she was completely different to the woman I knew.
The realisation dawned upon me that there was a version of my mother that once thrived. Maybe she felt the same way at seventeen.
The sound of chairs scraping against the tiles echoed throughout the house. Having been lost in my thoughts, I completely missed their conversation.
It was a silent trek as the two walked towards the front door. The air was filled with thick, syrupy tension that left a sour taste. I had thought to sneak back into my room—to act as if I hadn’t been eavesdropping. A tug in my chest anchored me to the staircase.
My grandmother’s shadow grew against the wall. It towered over her. A sense of familiarity sparked in my chest, soon followed by fear. I know that shadow. Dread filled my veins as my grandmother turned before opening the door. Her dark brown eyes made direct contact with mine. She held the same eyes that haunted my dreams—all three of us did. Adrenaline rushed into my legs; it screamed at me to run. It scaled the surface of my skin, all under the gaze of my grandmother.
‘Your turn will come soon enough, Elaine,’ her saccharine voice dripped with poisoned honey, ‘just you wait.’
‘Enough,’ my mother barked.
I looked at her. Her brown eyes were already alight with anger. She stared right at me. Her lips were pursed in a tight line. Panic rose in my chest. I had one thought blaring through my head: Get out.
Yuanne Viado is a Sydney-based writer currently studying a BA with a major in Creative Writing. One of her many inspirations for her writing are her crazy, weird, and sometimes scary dreams. She loves to read Fantasy; her cat, Tassie, and hopes to publish a Fantasy novel in the future.
