I dream in red

Standing up and beating himself he felt better. It never changed
anything. A couple of times he had beaten himself to the point
that he knocked himself out. He’d lost a couple of teeth and broken his
nose dozens of times. He had a constant black eye.

Beating always after he slept, as he woke up. His eyes were bloodshot
and burned him. The beatings were his attempt at self-remedy, thinking
he could knock his problem out of his head. It never worked but he never
gave up.

He only dreamed in the morning, usually the two hours before he woke
up. He went into his class realizing he had not studied for the test.
His heart beat harder and faster in his ears and he got much weaker.
He walked up to the teacher and asked for the exam. She opened a
chest full of french fries. All of them were as long as an arm and a
couple inches in width. On them were written the problems for the test.
Some were harder than others and she picked them randomly. Five french
fries were given to him and he sat at his desk. He stared at the
problems on the french fries and realized he had never been to a single
class. He had no idea what to do with the problems. As he sat brooding,
thinking of what to do, a person walked in and over to him. The man
stuck out his hand to shake, and he did. The man then shook the fries
and released them. Where his hands had been was now directions on how
to solve the problems. They must have been printed on his hands in ink,
he thought. But the directions didn’t help him, he still had no idea
how to solve the problems. He stood up and handed the blank french
fries back in to the professor and walked out the door.

But the dreams were not what bothered him. They seemed normal enough,
or at least did not bother him. It was something else.

The beatings would take place whether he was in the presence of another
person or not, he didn’t care. One morning he awoke in a friend’s
living room. The friend was already up and watching tv. He proceeded
to beat himself and stopped only when he threw his head into the concrete
floor.

“What the hell are you doing?” his friend asked when he stopped.

He laid there on the ground, sobbing a little. “It never works!” he cried.

“What are you talking about? Why did you just do that?”

He took a deep breath and sighed. “I dream in red.”

As a child his parents were worried, as were his teachers.

“Is all this red supposed to be blood?” his father asked. He was holding a
picture his son had drawn in school. The teacher gave it to his parents in
a conference.

“Some of it, dad.” he sat on his bed with his feet dangling, unable to
reach the ground.

“Why did you draw blood?” his mother asked. They sat on either side of him
on the bed.

“Because the guy is dying. see? His arms were cut off and his neck was…”

“Danny!” his mother said. “Where did you see that? Did someone at school
show you something?”

“No mom, nobody. I didn’t see anything.”

“So where did you get the idea to draw it from Danny?” his father asked,
tension rising in his voice.

“Dad, I dreamed it.”

“You dreamed it?”

“Yeah. I dream in red all the time,” Danny said.

“You dream in red? What’s that mean?” his mother asked, kneeling in front
of him, her words becoming more frantic.

“The color red. That’s all I see in my dreams. Red and blood.”

“Danny!” cried his mother.

“What mom? I do. What do you want me to do, not dream in red? I can’t mom,
I’ve tried.”

“How have you tried, Danny?” his father asked.

“I’ll think about a different color, like blue. Before I go to sleep I just
think ‘blue, blue blue’ in my head. But I never dream in blue. Or purple,
or any other color. Just red. I really have tried.”

“Well, Danny, maybe you should try harder,” his mother said, standing up,
tears beginning to stream down her face.

“Susan, don’t…”

She ran out the door and to the bedroom, slamming the door.

Danny and his father sat on the bed for a while in silence. Then his dad
said, “Danny, I…maybe you should just keep these dreams to yourself, you
know? Maybe they’ll go away if you don’t think about them, or paint them.”

“But dad, I can’t, I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.”

“It will, Danny. Just give it time. And don’t talk to your mom about it
anymore, okay? We don’t want to upset her.”

Danny looked down into his lap for a while. “Okay, dad.”

He smiled. “Good boy. Okay, go to sleep. Night son, I love you.”

“You too,” said Danny, and curled into a ball.