The Dream

By

Tanja Milojevic

The last few nights, Diana had a recurring nightmare about the doctor with the split heart. It always started out the same. She reposed flat on her bed, the lights off. All was silent, all save the biological ticking of her clock. Heartbeats disturbed her greatly. She hated their rhythmic pounding, like the drums of doom. Hearts bothered her, she surmised, since she had read “The Tell Tale Heart” in eighth grade.

Her eyes moved under their own power, and she took in the dark, dreary interior of the bedroom surrounding her. The walls were painted an off-white, which reminded her of ancient stones of a prison, in a long-forgotten castle or mansion. Her wall-to-wall carpet was a dark gray, and her desk was a plain dirt brown. Nothing looked cheerful. The black drapes hung limply across the windows, obscuring any light which could have entered the room. All in all, this atmosphere smelled of foreboding and great melancholy. Her stomach spun crazily. The overall demeanor of the room annihilated any sense of hope she might have had.

As if out of nowhere, the light in her ceiling came on blood red, casting just enough illumination to throw a bloody glow on everything, but there was still enough of a deficiency of light so things were left in shadow. There were impenetrable shadows in the corners, and as Diana studied the room’s walls more closely, she was aghast to find her sister's corpse hanging, crucified on the opposite wall. People had always said that Diana and her sister shared a close affinity, but death had made its impression on Rachel. Once a happy vivacious young woman, she was now limp and motionless, obstinately dead. Her head sagged on her mutilated chest. Her hair lay emaciated on her bony shoulders. Her eyes stared vacantly at Diana. Their glazed stare was distorted by the numerous maggots which made their home deep in her eye sockets, feasting on the tendrils of what had once been her icy blue eyes. Rachel’s face was gaunt, yet bluish black around the eyes and nose, as if she had suffocated to death. However, there was no sign of an interment having been performed on Rachel. No grave dirt soiled her bloody or her mold encrusted clothing.

Diana slowly rolled to her other side, turning to the mirrors which served as the doors to her closet. She saw the spectral reflection of the doctor standing directly behind her, yet he seemed entirely aloof to her presence on the bed. For some inexplicable reason, she saw him as a sad, neglected, desolate figure, with no hope. On some level, Diana knew all of this was a dream. Both her sister and the doctor were feigned.

As she watched, he fitfully moved to her sister's limp corpse. He held a large scalpel in one hand. The red light bounced off the deadly edge of the blade. Diana had a strong foresight into what the doctor would do next with the scalpel. Almost at that exact moment, the doctor plunged the scalpel deep into Rachel’s horribly disfigured chest, and dug furiously with a resolute diligence, tearing chunks of flesh and tendon from bone. Diana took solace in the fact that he wasn’t doing the same to her. Perhaps some imaginary sentinel was keeping watch over her. She could distinctly hear the carving and squelching sounds of the blade as it mercilessly tore away at the meat, as if performing a simple heart surgery. Only, this was no ordinary heart surgery. It was a singularly bizarre one, involving further mutilation of a corpse. As he fastidiously worked, he systematically cut around the heart. This malevolent specter had some eccentric purpose, some peculiar destination for Rachel’s dead heart. Diana didn’t want to discover what this purpose could be.

A rotting smell reached her nose as she dolefully watched, unable to move. The smell worsened; as he finally extricated her upside-down pear-shaped heart, pink and bleeding, with a horrible gushy tearing sound, from her lacerated chest. The blade cut the heart clean in two, and he deliberately held the severed parts in front of him, dropping the blade to the ground. A perturbation went through her. She was daunted by this disreputable wanderer of the night.

Blood slowly and languorously dripped down his arms. His face was that of a clown, a lustrous bloody smile on a pasty white complexion, a shock of black hair spilling across his forehead, and that perfectly shaped nose, smeared with blood on the tip. His operating room smock was soaked in gore; once green, it was now purplish crimson. Slowly, a feeling of resignation overtook her torrent of fear. She had to accept the fact that she was next.

His sick candy red grin widened as he approached her. She stared unmovingly at the mirror’s face. Her biological clock got louder and faster as he sneaked up behind her with slow meticulous strides. Her mind was numbly taking in every minute detail. His voice was low, vulgar, and guttural, as if his throat were clogged with dirt and dead insects.

"One for you, one for me." He prowesly grabbed her by the shoulders in a merciless, greedy grip, and pulled her toward him. She struggled futilely. Unscrupulously, he held a piece of the bleeding pink heart towards her, and a low malevolent laugh shook his thin bloody chest.

She endeavored to rise, but as soon as she had pushed him away enough to get halfway off the bed, the entire room turned upside down, and the red light began pulsing to the beating of the heart. Her heart! Moving had been a horrible blunder, an advantage for him, her tormenter. She prayed for some sort of serenity, but she knew the horrible situation she was in was insoluble. Things could only worsen from here on.

The thin rudiment of hope died in her as the heart's size increased on the mirror's surface until it enveloped her image. The magnanimity of her imaginary sentinel was no more. Blood spilled down the mirror's glassy surface in a thick ruby torrent. The doctor was abject as he tickled her, while running his bloody fingers with their sharp nails through her hair. “I’ll have to wash my hair now.” Her mind was trying to keep rational even through this ordeal.

His cruel fingers were tickling her on her stomach, her neck, under her arms. She pulled insipid air into her lungs and shrieked, but he did not stop. There would be no alleviation from this horrible nightmare.

The doctor multiplied, and another doctor was standing in front of her, holding a portion of the heart to her lips as she screamed. The incessant beating of the heart greeted her ears, and the smell of blood and rotting flesh bombarded her nose. He spoke again; his funereal voice once more daunted her. That feeling of fear had not been vanquished after all. The blood red hue of his lips seemed to darken as one of his hands with their surgeon’s fingers settled lightly on her left shoulder.

"One for you, one for me." He laughed. Tears ran down her cheeks. To deprecate her fear and disgust, she screamed on and on. The heart increased in speed, and the doctor, who was still behind her relentlessly, tickled her.

The heart was forced into her mouth through her parted lips. All she saw was the enormous heart in front of her, and the pasty smiling clown’s face of the doctor. His hand was still on her left shoulder, and she could see that his teeth were bloody. Cold blood dribbled down her chin, and the heart was pushed deeper into her protesting mouth. The taste of her sister's heart was metallic and slimy. Her screaming grew muffled as she gagged on the capricious doctor's medicine.

She had serious misgivings about whether or not she would wake up from this heart-wrenching nightmare.