Blood On My Hands
The man awoke sweating. It was that dream again. It had become perhaps too frequent an occurrence, and because of that he had a new morning ritual. Check your hands, his mind said, but his body refused to respond to the command. It’s just a stupid dream said the other part of his mind, why do you need to check your hands?
The first side flared up, and the man’s head jerked forward as his hands came up. There was a brief moment of panic and his eyes refused to register what they saw, trying to close without having seen. A sigh of relief escaped his lips and his panic fled in response to it. Clean. His hands were clean.
The man stood from his bed and laughed at himself as he got in the shower. It was a stupid dream really; he couldn’t understand why it affected him so much. The dreams had started a few months ago. He’d had it only one night during the first week and he’d given it no more weight than any other nightmare. When he’d had it again the next week, twice within it in fact, he wondered if perhaps it might be more; a sign of the stress in his life perhaps.
Oddly enough the measures he had taken, a vacation, therapy, more sleep at night, had done almost nothing to prevent the dreams. Rather, his actions seemed to increase the frequency. Within a month, it had gotten to the point where it was infrequent for him to not have the dream.
After the second month, he’d realized how foolish he was. Who cared about some stupid recurring dream? It was no big deal, just a dream. After that, he began to wait for the dream, as each night he’d notice details that he hadn’t before. Little things in the background, people’s expressions, things like that.
Really, the more he had the dream, the more he realized that the level of detail was incredible. This of course raised other worrisome questions. He could accept a recurring dream, but one with such detail? That was something he couldn’t understand, no matter how hard he tried. Dreams were supposed to be vague, blurry; something one would have trouble remembering when they woke up. Why then was this one so different?
Wake up, check your hands, shower, and get ready for work. This was his life now, whether he liked it or not. Today was different though. He sat in his office, looking out over the city, and there below him, he saw the man. The man in his dream. How was that even possible? He’d never met the person in his life, and yet, for some reason he’d been dreaming about him. How uncanny. He sat back at his desk and continued his work, trying to shake the odd feeling he had.
Check your hands. No. Check your hands! NO! The voice in his head was insistent, though the man couldn’t understand why. What was the big deal? This was a dream, one he’d had a million times, and yet every time he went through this. Check your hands! He did, and they were blood soaked. Just like they always were.
People around him screamed and ran. There were the shocked faces he’d seen a hundreds of times before, the horror, the pain. The man on the ground was a bloody mess, a letter opener jammed into his neck, its final resting place after it had been plunged into flesh so many times. His shirt had been made into rags, hacked and slashed until it had mixed almost perfectly with the skin below it.
As the dying man’s breathing grew more ragged and shallow, the blood slowly began to change from a rushing torrent to a slow gurgling trickle. This was the end of it, he never saw anything else. His vision went black, and the dream was over.
Wake up, check your hands, get ready for work. It’s a routine, something rarely done with any thought. Something about it today though… The man checked his surroundings. This wasn’t his house, was it? People passed by outside the door, speaking in hushed tones. What? His eyes widened. Check your hands. No, I won’t. Check your hands. No, no, I can’t. Why? Because there’s blood on them. There’s blood on my hands.
Check your hands. The man looked down and screamed aloud. It was true. Blood soaked his hands, up to the elbow. It ran down his arms and dripped onto the already dirty floor, making a black puddle. He shook violently as he stumbled backward, shrieking unintelligibly.
Large men opened the door forcefully and rushed to grab him, causing him to scream even louder and struggle against them. With every blow he rained on them, some of the blood was wiped off of his hands, and soon it became less about struggling against his assailants and more about removing as much of the blood onto them as possible.
One of the men mercifully struck him on the skull, knocking him into unconsciousness. It was dark, and it was the first time he could remember in the past few months when the dream didn’t immediately begin. He breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed in the comfort of blissful darkness. It wasn’t too long though before he had a visitor.
“I’ll thank you for your help,” he said calmly, his smile full of sharpened teeth. What help was it he’d provided, the man would ask.
“Well, that man was going to become a problem for me,” the smiling man answered. “I had you take care of him. Sorry, but I just couldn’t be connected to this. You did well though.” With that, he faded back into the darkness.
The man stood confused for a few moments before shrugging it off. He didn’t know that person and he had no idea what he was talking about. Without thinking, he looked down at his hands and smiled, not knowing why. Though he couldn’t fathom why he would think such a thing, the words came flowing out of his mouth through a wide smile.
“No blood on my hands here.”
