To Bide Your Time: The Factory

This is a dream I had in college; it's very Freudian so be warned. It will go in the second part of the book after my mom has died. I had a couple of nightmares like this while I was writing a "Life History" paper for one of my college courses. We had to write a page on each year of our life. When I got to the age when everything hit the fan, it got extremely difficult. Especially when I found out that my parents had been having trouble since the late eighties, rather than the 1992 date I initially thought. Discovering that secret undid a lot of the growth I had accomplished up to that point. Until then, I had thought that my childhood years were something I could cling to. It was a point in time that my parents were happy in their marriage. When I found out they were putting on a show, and secretely having trouble behind closed doors, I fell apart. It was like reliving it all over again, and it was too much. It was too painful.

The Factory

I awoke standing next to my brother in the public bathroom of an abandoned building. The tiles covering the walls were black; caked with ages of grime and feces. I avoided touching them as I tiptoed around dusty puddles of urine gathering in the corners of the floor. I gagged as the acidic tang of vomit burned the back of my throat. I motioned silently for my brother to follow as we pushed through the bathroom door, and stood at the top of a spiral staircase.

“You first,” said my brother.

The rubber soul of my shoe tapped the first step cautiously and when nothing wavered, wobbled, or groaned in protest, I hopped on the stairs and turned to my brother.

“It’s safe. C’mon.”
We neared the bottom level of the building as the distant murmur of voices clattered somewhere below us. With it came the unmistakable scent of fresh baked cookies and the smell of home.

“IT’S MOM!” I said, as we both galloped down the remaining steps. We stood in an empty hallway filled with open office doors covered in mold and peeling paint. I hurried in and out of several rooms looking for my long dead mother.
Finally, I saw light pouring from a room at the end of the hallway. She was sitting in a chair in the middle of floor. The room was split in two, separated by a thick piece of thick glass.

“Mom!” I said with a smile. Before she could look at me the room started to pull away. With every step I took forward, the barren room slid further out of reach as a thick steel door slid shut, leaving me in the hallway, beating the metal slab with my fists.

“Mom!” I shouted. “Mom, can you hear me?” She didn’t answer. “Timothy help me with the—” I looked over my shoulder. He was gone.

“He can take care of himself,” I thought, thinking only of my mother trapped inside the room. My hand searched the steel door for a knob, a button, a lever; something that might open it, but there was nothing.

I ran through the hallway with my blood rushing through my ears and my chest burning. “I can’t let her go now. I’ve got to hold on to this moment.”

I ran through an intricate maze of hallways and dead ends until I burst into the room separated by the window. There she was, sitting on the other side of the glass.

Navigating through the garbage to the window, I cocked my head and noticed for the first time that my mother was naked, except for her bra and underwear.

“Mom?”

She looked at me momentarily through the glass. Her brown eyes flooded with tears as she dropped her head, and looked at her feet.

Scales fell from my eyes, and I noticed she was not alone. Naked and huddled in the corner stood Willie. He glared at me with his clothes clutched between his hands.

Backing towards the exit in horror, my shoulder blades slammed against the back wall as my hand wildly groped for the rusty doorknob behind me. I spun around quickly to find the doorway had vanished, replaced by a cement wall. I was locked in the room.

“I’m going to be in so much trouble,” I thought as Willie hopped on one foot, thrusting the other into a pair of blue jeans. “What if Mom tells Dad what I saw? He’ll be furious. He’d—hang on.”

Suddenly, the crashing realization struck. “They were having–” I couldn’t say it. The idea alone filled me with revulsion.
Rage overtook my body as I grabbed a splintered desk leg and smashed it as hard as I could against the glass, but nothing happened. I dropped my shoulder, and slammed into the divider repeatedly. My chest heaved as rivulets of sweat poured from my forehead.

Transfixed with morbid curiosity, I watched as Willie bolted through a door that had materialized out of nothingness. He left my mother naked and alone, staring at the empty doorway. Somewhere outside, a car door slammed, an engine turned, tires squealed, and the night was silent once more.

My mother pried her gaze from the doorway. Her piercing hollow eyes met mine. She looked beyond my body and saw the dark recesses of my mind. She could hear the questions I wanted to ask her. “ Did you love me? Did you ever really want me?” I looked expectantly, hoping to hear answers in her soft voice. She issued a silent verdict by turning her head and staring back through the doorway. Her answer was simple. Her answer was “No.”

“Mom, why!” I screamed, bolting upright in my bed, covered in a cold sweat with hot tears streaming down my face. My hand was outstretched, blindly groping for the dissolved glass barrier. I was greeted with the suffocating emptiness of my bedroom. I cradled my face in my hands and wept as the harsh December winds howled outside.

I tried to console myself by whispering, "It was a dream. It was just a dream." But, the haunting thought planted in my mind kept me awake for the rest of the night. What if it wasn't a dream? What is she didn't love me?