Dream Girl

The first time I dreamed about her, she was naked. Her body was 
wrapped in movie film, like some kind of sexy mummy. She didn’t say 
anything to me; she just turned to me and started crying, her big eyes 
filling up then overflowing with huge, shiny tears. Kids’ tears, I 
thought in my dream.
She wasn’t the kind of girl I usually dream about. She was slender, 
with hardly any breasts and only the barest hint of hips. She had a 
small, heart-shaped face with a splatter of light freckles across her 
small, upturned nose. Her eyes were a deep green and her hair was cut in
 one of those bobs that are longer in the front. I remember thinking she
 was too cute for a wet dream.
The film was wrapped around her torso, but it shifted as she moved, 
revealing glimpses of her teacup breasts and the dark hair below, 
winding down to her thighs and trailing onto the floor behind her.
I woke up the next morning feeling depressed and worn out, which was 
odd. Normally, I woke up from naked girl dreams feeling ready to face 
the day - kick ass and take names. That morning, however, I felt like I 
was dragging myself through my morning routine. I couldn’t shake the 
crying girl’s face out of my mind.
As I lethargically tapped buttons on my keyboard at work, I tried to 
place her face. Had I seen her here at work? Was she at the coffee shop 
downstairs? I felt like I knew her from somewhere…high school? It was 
driving me nuts.
I was still brooding about it on my way home, leaning against the 
glass wall of the bus stop and chewing on the corner of my lip. 
Suddenly, something caught my eye on the ground. There was a little 
cluster of litter trapped in the corner: a coffee cup, a flier for some 
rock concert, cigarette butts, and a short strip of film. My heart 
shivered a little, but I bent down and picked it up. It was six frames 
of a dark movie. I held it up to the sunlight and there she was…my dream
 girl.
The first frame showed her cowering in a corner, trying to cover her 
nakedness with her arms, her feet pulled up under her and her face 
turned to the wall. Her neck was pale and smooth, but there was a bruise
 rising there as if someone had grabbed her roughly where her neck met 
her shoulder. There was a shadow cast over her. It got bigger in each 
frame and, in the sixth, I could see the barest sliver of an arm. It was
 a big, muscular one covered in dense, dark hair. the girl hardly moved 
in the frames, just curling deeper into the corner.
I looked around but couldn’t find any more film on the ground. I went
 home feeling ill, my heart heavier than ever. I tossed and turned all 
light and when I was finally asleep, I dreamed of her again. She turned 
toward me again, her big eyes full of tears. “Who are you?” I tried to 
ask, but couldn’t make any sound. She began crying. “Help me,” she said,
 her voice thick with sadness.
I woke up with my pillow soaked with tears.
I called out of work that day. I felt like my heart was breaking. I 
hadn’t felt that way since my dad’s funeral, three years before. I 
stayed in bed, curled up and moping, until ten or so, when I got up to 
use the bathroom. I stood over the toilet and noticed that peeking out 
from behind the tank was a strip of film. My hands shook as I picked it 
up. It was longer than the first at a whole twenty frames. The man drew 
closer to the girl in each frame, his hand reaching for her. The angle 
of the camera cut him off at chest level, never showing his face. He was
 of broad build and covered in dark hair. He was naked, too, so I could 
even see the hair covering his ass. The girl cringed further down but, 
in the last frame, his hand closed around her upper arm.
I was shaking all over. My heart seemed to actually ache in my chest.
 I could feel it throb with each beat. I spent the day in bed, with my 
blanket pulled over my head. I drowsed a little in the afternoon…and 
dreamed. The girl was crying harder than ever, her whole body shaking 
and her chest hitching madly in and out. “Stop!” I tried to scream at 
her. “Stop crying! You’re breaking my heart” The girl only looked at me 
with those big eyes filled with tears. “Please,” she sobbed, “Please 
help me.”
I woke up, my own chest hitching with tears. “Who the hell are you?” I
 yelled, the sound of my own voice scaring me enough to let out a thin 
shriek. My neighbor pounded on the wall in retaliation. I jumped out of 
bed and threw on clothes. I needed to get out of the apartment, feeling 
I’d suffocate if I didn’t. I pounded down the two flights of stairs to 
the lobby and ran out into the twilight. I stood on the bottom stair for
 a moment, sucking in deep breaths and trying to calm myself when…there,
 on the ground, fluttering in the light breeze, was another strip of 
film. This time, it was over six feet long.
I held it up and the streetlight above me flickered on. The man was 
dragging the girl across the room, throwing her face down across a 
table. He yanked her legs around and began to rape her. My stomach 
turned and I had to look away, but I felt my eyes drawn back, dragged 
back, and ran them down the rest of the film. The girl tried to fight 
and crawl away, but the man punched her hard in the back, grabbed her by
 the hair, and slammed her face down onto the table. In the last frame, 
there was a trickle of blood running across the table, dripping from her
 nose and mouth.
I threw the film back on the ground. The breeze picked it up and it 
went curling down the street, tangling around a stop sign. I followed it
 and saw another strip down the street tied to a sign reading, “SLOW 
CHILDREN AT PLAY.” The film wound and curled its way around the corner 
and disappeared on the next street. My feet began walking that way. I 
tried to stop, as I didn’t want to know where that film led, but I 
continued moving anyway.
It felt like I followed that film for miles, weaving through 
neighborhoods I didn’t know and stepping over hobos sleeping on 
sidewalks. Sometimes the film wound around poles and signs and I caught 
bits of the images it held: he raped her, beat her, raped her some more,
 and beat her some more; she was covered in cuts and welt and was hardly
 recognizeable by the end.
Finally, the film began winding down a narrow alley choked with 
garbage. It dove under a pile of metal scraps that had fallen against a 
wall and disappeared there. I began pulling the metal aside; it was 
heavy and there was a lot of it. I uncovered a rusty steel door, held 
shut by the debris for god knows how long. I kept pulling the metal 
aside until I could yank the door open. It was dark inside and I could 
hear a fan blowing endlessly. I went in, pulling my lighter from my coat
 pocket as I did. I flicked the wheel and saw the movie from the film 
strips. There was an old projector set up on the table and a man sitting
 in a chair next to it, facing the blank white wall.
"Hey, I said. The man didn’t move. The fans whirred on and on. I 
stepped closer. "Hey." Nothing. I drew closer and my lighter’s flame 
finally fell on him. He was dead - long dead. The fans whirring 
endlessly somewhere in the darkness had dried him out completely; his 
skin was stretched tight over bones and his pants were a moldy puddle 
around his ankles. His left hand was lying on the reel of film in the 
projector, like he’d died caressing it.
Someone sobbed softly behind me.
I spun around so fast that my lighter blew out. I fumbled with it 
again, trying to light it, but my shaking hands only spun the wheel and 
slipped off the button.
"Help me." It was her voice. The dream girl. The film girl. I knew 
what moving that man had been watching as he died, trapped in this room 
by the pile of metal that had fallen over, trapped in here with his 
dying, broken toy and his sick masterpiece. I finally struck the lighter
 and saw a bundle of cloth in the corner. My heart gave a final lurching
 bolt of agony before falling back to the normal, steady rhythm it hd 
been keeping for the past 27 years. I knelt at the cloth and peeled it 
back.
She was cringing in the corner, her skin pale white and those big 
tears running down her cheeks. She turned her face to mine and 
whispered, “Take me out of here, please. I don’t want to be in here 
anymore with him.”
"Okay," I said, wrapping the cloth around her and covering her naked 
body. "Okay, let’s get out of here." I picked her up; she was so light, 
she hardly seemed to weigh anything. She pressed her face into my neck, 
her tears beginning to slow and then stop. I carried her through the 
door and she sighed as we passed out of that awful chamber. She seemed 
to get lighter still and I looked down at her.
She was gone. I was carrying a pile of bones, broken and splintered 
from all the beatings. A single tear rolled down my cheek and struck the
 top of her skull, ran into a wide fissure, and disappeared. The skull 
caved in with a soft whispering sound, then crumbled into fine dust. As I
 watched, the rest of her bones broke apart into dust and blew away in 
the night breeze.