EMMETSBURG: Four

These dreams, these little torturers and redeemers, these liars and betrayers of the conscience. They are perversions and predictions, and so fully out of the soul’s feeble control. Where is the line crossed between temptation and imagination? That they reside within each soul, are they proof of ultimate corruption or reason for hope? And what of the pious man, tormented by demons he eschews by day? Is he then a hero or a hypocrite?

John woke with a start. His heart was racing. He had been dreaming something but he could not recall what it was. It was an odd thing. He always remembered his dreams. They escaped him now for some reason, which was just as well. His breaths upset the early morning still of the room. He glanced to Anna, certain it would disturb her sound sleep. She remained asleep, a deep and peaceful sleep. There was just the slightest furl to her brow. John touched her forehead gentle and it relaxed
.
There was a cob web hanging lazily from the ceiling above. It was fat and gray from dust. The creature that had created it had long ago passed from the world, or moved off to a better place. John watched it sway gently from a breeze somewhere. It almost lulled him back to sleep

Dreams stalked John. They had since the war, which had revisited him on nights too numerous to count. They were shocking, detestable images so real he would awaken believing he was still in some muddy, lice-filled, corpse ridden trench in France. That morning when he awoke those dreams had left him. More than that, John actually felt free of them, as if they had been a terrible fever that had suddenly and unexpectedly passed.

He slipped quietly from bed. The floor was cool against his bare feet. The floor boards were uneven. Not disjointed or separated in any way, but rather rose and fell like waves on the ocean. Anna was on her belly. The blanket was bunched at her waist. One leg was bent along side of her. The other stretched to the end of the small, high brass bed. Her bare foot dangled at the edge. The pre-dawn darkness softened the contours of her back, bare to her hips. John recalled their lovemaking during the night with a mix of joy and concern. He touched her bare ankle as he moved around the edge of the bed, where he scooped up his coveralls and went out into the kitchen.