i haven’t written short fiction in four years, so here’s one-fifth of an incomplete drabble about a girl who tastes dreams.
At the young age of five, her developing wits had given her enough just words to describe what she tasted in the dark. She was a precocious child, but it wasn’t until her sentences spilled out texture, density, aroma, that they realized she had five essential modalities at her disposal.
A dream of sponge cake and sweet strawberries, coated in fluffed cream. A dream of the tannic, acidic bite of an aged red port. A dream of damp grass and balmy soil, stuffed down a closed throat. Might a child recognize the taste of a feeling, a flavour, before they have tried the unknowable thing?
Rare was the dreamer who could could only access what resides at the tip of their tongue. Taste could only name sweet, salt, bitter, sour, umami, then hot or cold. Though every sense was empowered to capture the sensory details of slumber, seeing and hearing were the most common disciplines. Sight could unravel any story, pinpoint complete details with visual precision. Sound could beckon secrets from beneath floorboards and behind shut doors; what is heard only exists because it happened in utterance. Touch could map out a room, a terrain, an instrument; the scald and pulse of something under skin. Taste and smell were not particularly advantaged, but they had their place in the world.
Nightmare was not a word she knew. All dreams were a blessing, for they were veritable signs of a brilliant mind at work through all hours. Her dreams weren’t always soft and sweet, but when they were sweet, they were honeyed and luxurious. The aftertaste of a delectable meal left on the palette. Food and drink were her closest companions at night.
Her most violent dream seized her with the bitter iron of warm liquid. A little salty, mostly metallic. It flooded the insides of her mouth; a gushing river with nowhere to go but out. When she woke up, she envisioned all the circumstances where someone would end up with a mouthful of blood. A punch to the face; an implosion to the roof of the mouth; a vampiric disposition, even. Night terror, she mused, was a closer cousin than a nightmare. The terror was real.
Later that week, she would learn her brother fell off his bicycle and met the pavement facefirst. He would lose one of his incisors to the rugged concrete—and that was the taste. An endless gush of blood swelling from an absent tooth.
The dreamer families were offset by a generation; they could not tell where the dreamers began and sleepers ended. For everyone had to sleep; but not everyone could render their sleep-sparked activities so vividly. It is said both parents had as close to a prophecy as a dream could be—and in sleep, had coupled to produce the children of their dreams. Such abilities were passed on to all progeny thereafter.
Dreams were true, only because they described a reality that had permanence in past, present, or future. It would be impossible to tell when a dream would come true, or if it already had, or if it were true in the very moment of sleep. Access to a single sense was hardly enough of a clue to reveal the culprit, save a life, or prevent calamity. Dreamers were not diviners; merely reflectors of detail.
When a dreamer fell asleep at night, they would remain asleep until they awoke. Sleep was an indeterminate stretch that lengthened and contracted based upon the dream. Some sleeps were concise briefs. Other sleeps were sprawling storylines. Dreams came in accordance with the lunar cycles, arriving in the pitch black of moonlight. The sun had to disappear far beneath from the horizon, and the moon had to rise for the night shift. There was no dreaming in the daylight.
Her brother shook her awake. “Wake up, wake up,” he hissed beside her ear.
She stirred, eyes blinking open in shell-shock. A heaving gasp brought her to the surface; first her lungs seemed suffused with liquid, then emptied to air in one big gulp. Her chest stuttered as her heart could not work quickly enough to circulate her body, roused to sudden action by the precipice of her dream.
“Are you alright?” he asked. He snapped on the lantern at her bedside. He needed to affirm his rash decision: it was forbidden to pull dreamers from their dreams. To wake a dreamer prematurely was to spit upon their gift and rob them of what little control they had over their faculties. Only a dreamer could decide when night was over and morning began.
She brushed a sweaty lock of hair away from her forehead. Still taking small breaths, in and out. “Why did you wake me?” Not accusatory, only confused.
He gave her a pensive look. “You were screaming.”
“I never scream.” Screaming was for other senses, whose mouths weren’t so full with a foreign taste. Even then, their screams had to ride out the night; forgotten until the daylight wiped the slate clean. Now, her lips felt wet, drenched somehow. She pulled the sleeve of her pajama to wipe at the back of her mouth.
“I know that,” he replied quickly. “You didn’t answer my question. Are you alright?”
She looked down at her sweat-soaked nightclothes. Rattled, but unscathed. “Yes.” Her mouth was bone-dry now. The insides felt briny and basic, puckered from saline. She chewed the inside of her cheek to coax saliva out; parched as she was, she could not bear to take a sip of water and swallow. “I believe I was underwater tonight. But you cannot scream underwater.”
“No, you can’t.” He was still crouched beside her, eye-level. He glanced down, ready to shift his body back into motion and give her leave. He looked back up, still rooted to the spot. “Are you going to ask me why I’m awake?”
It hadn’t crossed her mind. Perhaps he had been roused from an early course of his dreams; more unlikely, he was woken by her so-called screaming. The night was quiet, save for the electric buzz of the lantern. A house of dreamers, asleep.
He continued on, “My dreams ended early tonight. You were already yelling by the time I was awake, but I didn’t know—your dreams.” He stopped himself, looking back into his mind’s eye. “In my dreams, I didn’t hear you underwater. I heard pouring rain, and you were screaming still.”
“Are you sure it was me?” She had the leftovers of water and salt and pollutant in her mouth to corroborate.
“I can never be sure.”