Tag fantasy

After a moment of sleepy disorientation, Julianne knew it was the smell of coffee that had wakened her. She caught her breath and peered into the darkness of her room. There was nothing for her searching eyes to see, even if they could have broken through the blackness of the night, but she could not close them again. Slowly, the homey smell of frying bacon began to seep into the room. Yesterday, it had been a sausage.

As she had known it would, the gentle clatter of dishes followed the smells. Julianne clutched the blankets tighter around her chin and waited. The voices began, low and soft. It was the gentle murmur of early risers being thoughtfully quiet as they spoke. The next sound, a new one today, sent Julianne deep under her covers, quivering with terror. This new sound was perhaps the worst of all; the low-throated chuckling of her mother’s laugh. A laugh that had burned away with the rest of my family more than twenty years ago.

***

Plopping into her chair and slipping on her headphones, Julianne tried to avoid noticing the frantic gesturing of her co-worker. Melanie, however, wouldn’t be ignored. With a quick glance over her shoulder, she leaned forward and grasped Julianne’s shoulder.

“She’s been looking for you,” she said, “Man, you gotta start getting here on time! She’s pissed now! I think Donna had to take an ad from Thomas’s Lumber. I don’t think they were very happy that you hadn’t called them yet!” Melanie stopped talking and peered at her friend. “Are you still having those dreams?”

Julianne didn’t answer. She shook her head, not in denial of the question, but to cut the conversation off. Melanie watched her as she punched her phone button and greeted a waiting client, “Classified Ads, this is Julianne, may I help you?”

Melanie punched the button on her own phone and shook her own head. She didn’t want to be angry, but she was getting fed up with Julianne.

For a moment, Julianne thought about getting up and heading straight for Miss Moore’s door. She might as well get it over with. This time it was likely to be more than a warning. Before she could act, though, Miss Moore opened the door and beckoned to her.

“Close it,” Miss Moore said. Without looking up from the file on her desk she waved at a chair and added, “sit down.”

Silence settled into the room. Julianne felt the weight of it pinning her to her chair. She almost screamed into it. She might have broken down and done just that, but Miss Moore finally spoke.

“Do you want to try to explain what is going on with you? It is obvious, even to an ‘old bitch’ like me, that you are having some sort of personal problem. Not only do you come in late on a regular basis, but you are a mess when you do get here. Look at you. Have you even slept lately? How about an iron, do you own one?” Miss Moore gave her a moment to answer before she continued in a harder voice.                

“Your work has also become less that adequate.” She waved a pink phone message slip at Julianne. “I got a call this morning from Carter’s Tractors. Their ad has disappeared from the paper. They are one of your customers, aren’t they? No one called them to ask if they wanted to renew or drop the ad; it simply dropped out. That is not acceptable.”

Julianne stared down. Her fingers, with their chewed-up fingernails, lay on her lap. What could she say? A broken heart? A financial mishap? A death in the family? She smiled inwardly at the irony of the last excuse. How could she tell her life was in turmoil because she was having good dreams?

Julianne tried to look up, to offer even with a look, some answer. She had no answer to give and her eyes refused to meet her supervisor’s.

Miss Moore waited, hoping without much real hope that Julianne would give her something to work with this time. She liked Julianne and more to the point; the girl had been a good employee for several years. She’d been, in fact, one of her best Ad-Visors until – until what? What had changed her?

With an exasperated sigh, Miss Moore pushed a document toward Julianne. “Sign this,” she said, “It is your last written warning. Next time this happens, you are gone.” She shook her head. Her voice softened a little. “Julianne?”

Without looking at her boss, Julianne signed the document and slid it back across the desk. For a moment, redemption had been possible, but the moment had passed. Miss Moore added the document to the file, closed it, and dropped it into her out basket. Julianne was dismissed.

Over salads and diet sodas, Julianne told Melanie about the latest dream.

“You know how they have been getting more detailed? First there was just coffee, then bacon or sausage, you know, just smells, then the sounds started…” Julianne’s voice caught. She was trying to explain the unexplainable. She chewed her lower lip and looked at her friend and said, “I heard my mother laugh this morning.”

Because Julianne had told her about the dreams from the beginning, Melanie could just grasp the significance of what Julianne had just said. It had been difficult at the beginning to understand the terror that had come with the dreams. It had seemed to her that the homey sounds and smells should have been comforting and nostalgic.

Eventually, Julianne had helped Melanie understand the terrifying reality of those sounds and smells.

Melanie almost asked how she’d known it was her mother laughing. Julianne’s mother, her whole family, in fact, had been dead since she was eight years old. But she didn’t ask. She supposed that a mother’s laugh would be ingrained in the memories.

Shaking her head, Melanie tried to get the inconsequential thoughts out of her mind. She was alarmed. Not alarmed by the laugh, but by the steady deterioration she saw before her. How could a dream, any dreams cause this?

“I think you need to talk to someone, Jules,” she said, “You must have a lot of buried pain or something.”

“Buried pain? A psychiatrist, you mean?” Julianne’s laugh was bitter. “I don’t think so, Mel. I mean, what could I still have buried?”

“There were years of therapy after the fire. I mean, I dealt with their deaths, I dealt with the guilt about surviving; about being at a slumber party, of all things, when the farm burned down. I dealt with all of it a long time ago! Why now? Why should I, all these years later, pop up with new guilt and ‘buried pain’?”

Julianne looked at Melanie, seeking answers that weren’t there.

“I don’t know why?” Melanie said, “But something is causing these dreams and just look what they’re doing to you. That’s why I think you should see a doctor.”

“A doctor,” Julianne laughed, “Frankly, Mel, I think I’d be better off going to a psychic.”

Melanie stared at her. “You are joking, aren’t you?”

Julianne shook her head and shrugged. What Melanie did not know, could not have grasped, was that Julianne had ceased to believe that the dreams, were dreams. She knew she was awake when she smelled the aromas and heard the sounds.

“I don’t think I am joking,” She said at last, “Who else can help me now?”

***

Madame Rosario was a pleasant surprise after some of the psychics Julianne had been to in the weeks since she’d heard her mother laugh. She greeted Julianne at the door of her tidy little house, dressed in blue jeans and a sweater. Smiling she directed Julianne into the sunny living room and offered coffee.

They sat for a while sipping coffee. Julianne felt herself relaxing despite the intense inspection Madame Rosario was giving her. Reaching out, she took Julianne’s hand and gazed down at the palm. A puzzled look slid across her face. She frowned before her face relaxed into a neutral expression.

The reading which followed, though, was disappointing. True, was none of the usual prince charming stuff, but Madame was too general. She murmured about changes for the better in career or lifestyle.

“Maybe both,” she said. Once again, she appeared puzzled. Shaking her head, she added, “I don’t know, you may relocate, but I cannot say for certain.”

She peered into Julianne’s eyes. “Is there a specific question you’d like to ask?”

Julianne shook her head. She could not bring herself to tell this woman, about the smells and sounds from twenty years ago. She had told none of the other psychics. They had not given her any useful information either.

Well, thought Julianne, score one for Madame anyway. At this point, a change in her career is almost a certainty.

“Thank you,” she said as she got up to leave. She paid the requested fee, then headed out the door. Perhaps sensing that her client was disappointed, Madame stopped her.

“There is one more thing,” she said, “it makes little sense to me, but maybe to you…” she paused, then shrugged, “Your mother wants you to join them for breakfast.”

***

It was sausage again. Julianne sat up and breathed deeply. Sausage, and was it possible to smell waffles cooking? The voices were louder this morning. She still could not understand words, but she was beginning to pick out different voices. Her fathers? Now Sam’s?

At the time they’d been spoken, Madame’s last words to her had sent a chill down her spine. An odd combination of terror and excitement had filled her. Was it possible? Could she be with her family again? Even if it was only in a dream or even if – even if, they were all ghosts?

When her mother laughed this time, Julianne did not dive under the covers. This time she threw them back and stood up.

As she moved toward the kitchen, she was aware of the fuzzy-wavery appearance of the surrounding room. The dreamlike quality bothered Julianne. She didn’t want this to be a dream.

When she reached the door of her kitchen, she gasped. Standing in the doorway, she saw, not the small utilitarian kitchen of her apartment, but the large farm kitchen that had burned down when she was eight years old.

Her mother smiled at her from the stove and scooped some sausage onto a plate. “Good morning Sleepy-head,” she said. “A couple more late mornings like this and you’ll be caught up from your slumber party.” She held the plate out toward Julianne.

Just beyond her Mother, sitting at the kitchen table, her father was just lifting the lid on the waffle maker. “Got a nice hot one for you here, Peanut,” he said, grinning at her.

Sam, her older brother, waved a fork at her, his mouth too full to say “Good Morning.” The others were there too, her older sister Bobbie and the little boys, Tim and Davy. They were all there smiling at her. Even the dog was there, under the table, eating the scraps he wasn’t supposed to have.

Julianne was frozen. She stared at this impossible scene, unable to move forward.

“Aren’t you hungry, Sweetie?” Her mother asked.

Julianne stumbled forward into the kitchen. As she did so, the dreamlike aura vanished. The world snapped into crystal focus.

She reached for the plate her Mother was holding out to her.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said.

***

Miss Moore was more resigned than angry as she walked past Julianne’s empty desk. Closing the door to her office, she pulled out Julianne’s file and reached for the termination paperwork.

She was just finishing with it when the newsroom called.

“Becky, this is Stan,” Stan said. There was a pause before Stan cleared his throat and went on, “Have you heard about the fire? My god, talk about coincidences.”

It had been a fatal fire.