Note: I was getting really really annoyed because I couldn't find this really cool piece of writing I read months ago. I had the link on my other blog, but it didn't work no more. After about an hour or so searching on google, and with my friend Kyle's help on searching for it, we finally found it. So here it is, just in case I wanna read it again. This is NOT my work. It is, in fact, some guy, Steve Eller's work. Its called "In Dreams". Enjoy dark literature.

You get food when people die.

A stack of casserole dishes teeters beside the kitchen sink. I scraped them all out, and threw away blobs of ground beef, and macaroni, and cheese. The dishwasher is full from the last batch, and there’s another wave molding in the refrigerator. I’ll have to do some handwashing soon, before bugs start coming.

The owners of the dishes have left me alone so far, but sooner or later they’ll come knocking. Heads tilted and eyes brimming, asking for their things. I’ll shake their hands, and tell them how much I appreciate their kind gesture. But I won’t tell them how dwelling on my wife’s shredded face spoils my appetite.

The house is warm for late October. I haven’t heard the furnace kick on all morning. Brilliant sunlight soaks the hardwood floor, and I cross a lake of fire to look out the kitchen window. Outside, the North Carolina mountains are bleeding in yellow, and orange, and fiery red. What the weatherman likes to call peak color. The rainbow foliage is a big draw for tourists.

Like the one who ran over Sandy.

He was trying to drive down our twisting mountain road, and videotape the leaves at the same time. The police officer who took his statement told me why, but I don’t remember anymore. The man said he never saw Sandy standing in front of her own house, checking the mailbox. All I remember is a shout, and a thud. Then tires skidding on gravel. The rest is a blur.

Except for Sandy’s face. Mouth open. Tiny grains of stone imbedded in her wounds. At least her eyes were closed.

The oven clock blinks ten-thirty, and I tally up the hours I slept. Or didn’t sleep, tossing and turning in a bed too big by half. Time is something I have now. My boss told me to take a few weeks of vacation. Maybe a month. Like having nothing to do will help me. Nothing to do but think. Days and weeks, one moment blurring into the next. He’s a good man; he just doesn’t know.

I unloop my housecoat belt, and sit down at the kitchen table. Underneath the robe are the sweatclothes I’ve been wearing for days. I should eat something, but my stomach gets tight when I think about it. Some hot coffee would taste good, but it’s too much work to get up and make it. I’m not tired, but I shut my eyes anyway. Lacing my arms on the tabletop, I rest my head.

And I remember.

I dreamed of a little girl last night.

Opening my eyes, I raise my head. Dust tumbles in scattered rays of sunlight. It looks like a snowstorm, a miniature of the one that could come any day. A ghost-scent of coffee tickles my nose, and before I know it I’m on my feet, spooning grounds into the coffee maker. While the machine hisses and sputters, I lean against the counter to wait.

I hold the baby girl in my arms, and someone tells me her name. Abby. It might be Sandy’s voice, but I’m all alone in the nursery. Puffy clouds painted on azure walls, ruffled sheets of white and yellow in a crib. I’ve never held a child before, but my body knows how to do it. Left arm cocked in a cradle, right fingers curled beneath her fuzzy pink head. Her eyes are closed, but I know they’re a perfect blue. There’s nothing on her scalp but colorless tufts, but someday her hair will be golden, and as willowy as cornsilk.

She’s so warm against me. The air is all milk, and powder, and the sweet scent of newborn skin. The world is silent, and I hear each fragile breath, each tiny heartbeat.

She’s mine. Abby is mine.

The clack of the coffee machine kicking off pulls me back to my empty house. And empty embrace. My left arm is bent, right hand cupped underneath. For a fleeting moment, there’s a memory of warmth and weight.

Then it’s gone.

I reach for the steaming pot, glancing around for a clean cup. I open the cupboard and see the mugs we bought at a roadside pottery place in Cherokee last summer. I try to picture it all, the trip, the shopping. Sandy’s hands closing around the mug she wanted. Turning to me, telling me to pick one out, too.

I can’t remember which is hers.

Wandering back to the window, I sip black coffee. The leaves have already started falling. Another few weeks, and the trees will be bare. I imagine dark limbs sparkling with ice, then dusted with snow. Later, dripping, as new buds sprout and unfurl.

Then all over again. As time passes.

Abby was Sandy’s dream. A little girl with yellow hair, and robin egg eyes. Sandy shared her dream with me across the breakfast table, even before she told me she was pregnant. The dreams came so often, I sometimes wondered if Sandy was making them up to amuse herself. Abby in her crib. Abby’s first Christmas. Abby stumbling up the stairs to nursery school.

Sandy beamed when the ultrasound revealed our child was a boy. I knew she was a little disappointed, but she tried not to show it.Then our boy died, unnamed, inside Sandy. Before the ambulance came.

Abby is my dream now.

***

Cold winds twist through the mountains. A few leaves cling to the trees; the rest swirl across the ground in ragged piles. Through the window, I hear them hissing like something alive. But they’re dead. The color that drew the man with his camera, that took Sandy’s life and the unfinished life inside her, is long gone.

I’ve barely touched the lunch on my lap tray. Just like everyday. The sweat pants I’ve been wearing for weeks feel loose in the waist now, and have permanent knee-prints.There’s plenty of nothing on the television, and that’s the way I like it. The TV screen glows, all smiling faces and chattering mouths. If it starts to make sense, I’ll switch the channel. I want the colors and sounds to fill my senses, to keep the thoughts from rattling through my skull like ghosts. A daily diversion, between the toes of slippers propped on a stool.

I’m supposed to go back to work next week, but I don’t know if I can. The world is still hazy. A fraction of an inch beyond my reach. And every time I hear car tires on gravel, my chest aches like a fist is crushing my heart.

Work doesn’t mean anything. All that matters is Abby. I dream of her every night.

Abby cries as tiny Chiclet teeth break through her bleeding gums. She speaks her first almost-word. Takes her first wobbly step. Two gilded ponytails brush her shoulders. A real diamond pierces each delicate lobe.

I switch off the television. The quiet is soothing. Warm air blows through the vents, like the wind swaying the trees against a crystal Autumn sky. It’s been a while since I stepped outside. There’s nothing out there for me. Everything I need is in my head. Recollections of last night’s dream.

I kneel, opening my arms to Abby. Her tears are shed drops of my blood. One of her sneakers is untied. Half-stuck Band-Aids flop over her shins as she runs to me. She cups the elbow she skinned when she fell off her bicycle. I clutch her against me, wondering if I’ve taken off the training wheels too soon.

I hug her as tightly as I can without shattering her ribs like porcelain. Her shoulders buck, her chest heaves. Perfect sorrow, perfect pain, in such a tiny creature.

When her sobs slow, I hold her away. Her eyes are a tropical sea, deep blue and salty. Tears streak her soiled cheeks like branching streams. On her lips, a purple Kool-Aid moustache. I embrace her again.

Her pain is mine. Abby is mine.

I hear something shatter, and I’m terrified that I’ve broken her this time. Crushed her body in my misery. Then I see that the plate has fallen from my lap, and splintered on the floor. Bread and baloney a scatter of leaves, mustard smeared on wood like blood leaking from the shards.

It doesn’t matter. I step over the mess, and walk to my bed. The wall clock tells me it’s barely past noon. And that doesn’t matter either.

***

Checks come in the mail now. The bills never stopped. The postman drops the mail on my porch every day, bound in a rubber band. A kindness. He knows I couldn’t walk out to the mailbox.

Sometimes, when I crack the door to get my mail, I find a bag of groceries. People can be thoughtful, even as they blur, and grow further beyond my reach. Maybe they watch me. I don’t know. I keep my eyes down when I open the door. There’s a gravel road out there, and I don’t want to see it. I open every envelope, and read every letter, before dropping them to the floor. The white drifts in the house are almost as tall as the snowbanks outside.

Some time ago, one of the letters said that work had put me on an assistance program. But the checks don’t match what the bills say I owe. Another month, some bank wrote me, and they’ll start the process of taking my house. No more propane for the tank, some strange woman informed me. When I accidentally unseated the receiver, the phone line was dead. The television plays a hundred kinds of static now.

A part of me, still tenuously in touch with the world, tells me that decisions have to be made soon. What to do. Where to live. But the only choices I care about are the ones Abby makes.

She sits beside me, and places her hand on my arm. I’ve dreaded this moment.

There is so much of Sandy in Abby’s face. Sandy might be her mother, but Abby and I never speak about such things. Abby is her own woman. Beautiful, strong, independent. I wonder if she’ll leave me now.

Then she tells me she has chosen Western Carolina University for her studies. Driving distance. She wants to live at home. Abby wants to keep me in her daily life. Our tears mingle as she presses her lips to my unshaven cheek.

Her tears are mine. Abby is mine.

Winter sun prisms the icicles draping the windows. Some are only a frozen drop or two, others nearly brush the snow. Soon they’ll begin to drip, and narrow. Then they’ll fall to the ground, shattering like glass.

***

The coffee is too sweet. My tongue burns, and my scalp tingles. I refill the cup, then spoon in more sugar.

Scraps of paper skirl around my ankles as I pace the empty house. The knock on the door could come any moment now. People in suits, folders stuffed full of official documents. Men in uniforms and sunglasses to lead me away.

The morning sun glistens through the windows. The panes chop the light, and it breaks in abstract blocks on the floor. The house is warm enough, if I keep my robe tied tightly. The furnace hasn’t kicked on for days. Only scatters of white remain outside, new grass sprouting from the sodden ground.

My eyes throb, and my head spins. I swallow more coffee, and my stomach prickles. The recliner looks soft and inviting, with a deep imprint of my body. But I hurry past it.

Abby holds the edge of the blanket to her throat. Her hair is wispy and white. Fragile, spotted hands tremble. Her eyes are still a perfect blue, but they seem so tired. She tries to smile, and her shrunken face is both beautiful and horrible. Abby never married, never left my house.

I wonder if she ever loved. I wonder if it was selfish to keep her with me. She shakes her head, like she knows my guilt. I dreamed her life away.

Her death is mine. Abby is mine.

My limbs are so weary they feel detached. My heart thumps as I wander from one room to the next. I can’t sleep. I have to brew more coffee.

While it perks, I clap my hands and scuff my feet. I sing to myself. Anything to keep my mind off my exhaustion. If I sleep, the dream will be her last.