A Stranger's House

A Stranger's House by Bret Lott

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Authors: Bret Lott
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the blood to give it a strange and new pattern.
    Another line of blood fell, and another, until I stood staring at this bouquet of blood, my own, on the sleeve of my lab coat, each moment the circling squares of moving gray closing down on me until there at the center was only a red-and-white sleeve, caused by a pregnant rabbit I had let kill itself, and then the gray took over, and I fell into darkness.
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    Though I could not sleep that night, I could not come awake, and so I spent those hours in the dark, in my bed, moving, moving, my eyes unable to open as I tried to force them. I could feel Tom in bed next to me, the warm curve of his body, his pulse, but I could do nothing. Only move, dreaming.
    I had dreams of things that made no sense, dreams of deep forests, foliage so thick I could see in only a few feet, lush trees that let in no light from above, and in my dream I wondered how anything could grow in such darkness. Then I dreamed the forest was gone, and I stood on a high desert plateau, only scrub brush around me, a hot wind breaking across the mesa, my hair lifted by the wind so that I felt as if I might fly. Then I tried to open my eyes there in my sleep, and the wind died. The desert shook, broke into pieces, and I felt Tom still next to me. I had fallen back into my bed, still unable to awaken.
    I had another dream, too, one not so much a dream as a recollection of what had happened that morning, the images so real before me that they were more frightening than anything I could imagine.
    There was first darkness, and then light, light from the long fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling. Here was Mr. Gadsen’s face above me, saying nothing, only moving back and forth as if dodging my eyes. His mouth was open, the corners drawn up, and I could see his teeth, rotten and gray and dead. I wanted him to move away from me, wanted him to stop blocking out the light I could have from the bulbs above, but he would not leave me. I smelled hiswhiskey, and watched as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
    Mr. Gadsen looked away from me a moment, and here was Will, his face even closer to mine. He spoke to me, let out my name, and it came to me as if from a great distance across water, my name drifting toward me on cold air and settling down into my ears. I started listening, thinking perhaps he could tell me something I needed to know, but all he did was speak my name. I heard the squeals of the rabbit again, the wail, and I began rocking my head, the ceiling and those two faces swaying above me.
    I said, “The rabbit,” though I couldn’t hear myself, only knew that those were the words my brain was gathering, the words my tongue in my mouth and the air across my larynx meant to form. Will tried to give a smile, his eyebrows and forehead wrinkled. I did not believe him.
    My left arm did not exist in the dream, I realized. I tried to move it, but nothing happened, and I thought that someone had already come along and had cut it off at the shoulder.
    Finally Sandra’s face was above me, her eyes nearly closed, her mouth pursed as she glanced at my face, down to my left, then back to my face, and here was Wendy, and Paige, faces all floating above me like leaves on water, floating and bobbing, some speaking, some not; at one point Sandra leaned close, said,
I guess this means no lunch date,
and gave a forced smile, and I remember trying to do the same myself, and remember nothing happening. This is what a newborn must feel like, I thought, faces above it, words falling down, unable to move itself from its back as it lay there, eyes still and unfocusing, simply looking, looking. This is how I felt in my dream: a newborn, helpless, and waiting for help.
    I sat up in bed then, my back straight and stiff, my left arm limp at my side. The bedroom was dark, but someone was in there, someone other than Tom and me, and as my eyes took in the shadows around the room, I saw them.
    There were three children

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