The following is an account of a gathering of the VIV writing collective. All names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.
Gabby’s Dream
“I was born in Ladoga, but my parents are originally from the Dominican Republic. It never ceases to amaze me that they ended up there, that my birth certificate is so much different than theirs. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to go there before I went when I was fifteen. My parents showed me pictures and it looked like they grew up in the jungle. I was nervous the first time I went, I’ll never forget that anxiety. I wanted to go, I had begged to go so I could brag to my mostly white friends that I have traveled to a different country, but when it was time to go, I just worried about everything. What if my relatives think I act weird? What if my Spanish isn’t good enough? What if it’s just as dangerous as my parents had told me it was before they left? But they wouldn’t put me in harm’s way and all my worries were overblown. I had a great time in the DR and I always do every time I go.
“When I go, I stay at my uncle’s house. It’s a nice house now and I go there to get away to a place where everyone reminds me of my family. It does feel like home.
“Last night I dreamt that I walked into the front door of my uncle’s house in the DR and the black thing was hovering over the couch. It couldn’t really sit, it’s not a person. Most of you have seen it, it’s like a black ghost.
“It seemed like he was waiting for me and I wasn’t afraid because I was in my uncle’s house. The black thing didn’t seem scary there, strange for sure, but I sat on the small table in the middle of the room in front of it.
“‘What do you want from us?’ I asked it.
“‘I desire nothing,” it said. I don’t remember how it sounded, maybe it didn’t actually say anything. You know how dreams are, do you actually hear anything in a dream? Only things that your body hears maybe, everything else is a memory of sounds. But is that hearing? Remembering sound?
“Anyway, I ask it, ‘Why are you haunting me and my friends?’
“It says, ‘I manifest where I am summoned.’
“He didn’t say anything else. The whole house started to shake and I got under the table. When the shaking stopped, the black thing was gone and I went to the front door. When I opened it, the entire world had fallen away, everything except my uncle’s house that drifted in space on a chunk of the Earth.
“I was dumbfounded. It was unsettling and I just stared out the door until I woke up.”
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