In Dreams

I had a dream the other night. I seldom remember dreams unless awakened in the middle of one. This one startled me into awareness. What I remember went something like this:

I was at my kitchen sink with a woman. We were drying dishes, both of us smiling. I had a comfortable feeling she was someone I'd known a long time. Our arms touched the warm sensation pleasurable and soothing.

"Eric, I’m going to help you clean up your life," she said.

Unexpected recognition when I stared into her eyes woke me and caused me to remember her words. I'll call her Cicely. I had known her since first grade. We'd graduated from high school together.

While I had long known Cicely, we'd never been close and certainly not lovers. We'd never had any personal relationship, at least in this lifetime. Still, in my dream, she felt like a trusted confidante. I felt empty knowing she'd died of cancer that summer.

This brings me back to pondering the dream’s meaning. Perhaps we live parallel lives with many lovers and confidantes as the wheels of a giant machine spins one slow story after the next.

Shakespeare said, "All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts." Maybe he was right.

How many parts have I played and who were my fellow actors? Did all my stories end in song and dance on a festive summer night, or in the sudden shock of unexpected pain?

###

Eric Wilder is the author of the Paranormal Cowboy and French Quarter Mystery Series. Please check out more of his work on his Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBook author pages

Hand in the Dark

Wyatt Thomas is a disbarred attorney turned private investigator in my French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans. Wyatt learns from an old voodoo woman that he is a traveler, a person that has lived many lives and that has the ability to travel through time. He has problems with memories from many pasts that don't always make sense to him. In Courtyard of Forbidden Secrets, the French Quarter Mystery that I'm presently writing, he is suffering from a recurrent dream with which he can't quite come to grips. The idea occurred to me because of a dream I once had. Sounds creepy, I know, but would a fiction writer lie to you?

Hand in the Dark

We don’t always remember our dreams, but sometimes, awakened during the middle of one, we do. I recently dreamed I was lying on my stomach in what was likely my parent’s house. The bed was small, a single. It could have been the old house, but the bed was positioned in a way, and in a room that I didn’t remember. As I lay there, I heard someone come in the door. Someone with a dog.

The dog was a border collie, strangely similar to the one in my new book. It bounded into the darkened room, scurried to the front of my bed and licked my face. The warm tongue awakened me, at least in my dream, and I became aware of footsteps approaching the back of my bed. Footsteps halted beside the bed and a hand groped between my legs.

Really awakened this time, I swung my arm, hitting the lamp hanging from a ceiling cord beside my bed. I opened my eyes to see the flash of a human-like form pass through the window and disappear into the darkness. Wide awake, I glanced around the room as the lamp swung like a pendulum.

I’ve always contended that ghosts and spirits abound, not just in my house but everywhere. The touch seemed like a trick my brother might have played on me when we were younger. Brother Jack is not a spirit, and I doubt I will ever know for sure who, or what, it was that awakened me from my dream. I only know I was awake, wide awake when I saw the shadow figure fly out the window.

###

Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans and the Paranormal Cowboy Series. Please check it out on his Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBook author pages. You might also like to check out his website.