His wife had always wondered why Axel had such a hard time falling asleep.
He was used to falling asleep with a tight hug around his `better half` and that habit hadn't left him even after four years of living together. Maybe he was compensating for something from the past that he rarely talked about, maybe it was about (too) strongly expressed emotions, or maybe it was completely simple and most laconic, it was just a matter of character. That night, after a long time, a dream appeared, completely simple and devoid of drama, but still meeting all the conditions to be called a `Nightmare`.
The location of the dream was undefined, as often happens during trips through the kingdom of Morpheus. Three people were recognizable, one adult male and one adult female, and the third was a child in a worn-out child's jacket and obviously slightly too-large shoes. The child had a slightly surprised expression and his gaze fell on the local kiosk where newspapers, cigarettes and various trinkets were sold. In addition to the pictures of football players from some undefined championship...Looking at the pictures reminded him that he had recently seen albums in which some children stuck pictures, and a picture with a colorful crest on which there was a red lion on a yellow-blue background and under it the word Scotland appeared crystal clear in his mind, on another there was a strange stadium with beautiful green grass and on a third - a black player with funny hair, which if not the child, at least the dreamer would have remembered as a Dreadlocks hairstyle.
Since he had been conditioned from a young age to stop looking for toys, chocolates and small things in time, the child did not dare to cast a questioning glance at his parents. But the temptation was not destined to pass by itself, the father stopped in front of the kiosk and bought a pack of cigarettes, just a moment before a teenager said, "Give me ten packs of those stickers," followed by a vague comment from the seller that he would get a lot of "doubles." The child did not know what "doubles" were and that did not even intrigue him, what caught his attention were the packets, shiny and thin, which hid the ultimate childish desire, the secret of what stickers would come with various players, stadiums and colorful crests.
The child fell further and further behind, dragging himself and turning constantly towards the kiosk, just as his mother and father slowly moved away from it...`Dad, buy me a sticker` were the words he quietly uttered at that moment. The father first looked at the child with an expression of fear and then turned to the mother with whom he exchanged a look, understandable only to them. The mother started some `pedagogical` conversation with her son, something along the lines of `what are you going to do with the pictures, you're already big, you've turned seven, you should have sympathy for the school and not collect pictures like babies`...
The reality was that both parents at that moment had enough money at least for an album and maybe for a few packages, but that money had long ago been intended for something completely different, maybe half a kilo of mixed minced meat and two kilos of potatoes that would last them at least another day or two... Whatever the exact purpose of that money was, the child was not interested in any of that, he just knew that he wanted at least one package of pictures. No accountant in the world would have managed to balance the child's desire and current priorities, so the choice was expected...
The parents applied the tactic of `strategic withdrawal`, rapidly moving away from the traffic and at the same time the object of the naive child's temptation. The child tried in vain to pull his father's sleeve away, then tried the same with his mother...whose gazes met again, but this time with a different expression, a mixture of anger and sadness on the father's face, a confused look somewhere to the side at the mother's...The child lowered his head and somehow didn't have the strength to feel any more sad than he already was. He continued walking past his parents back to the house.
And then his gaze suddenly fixed on a package with pictures blowing in the wind down the street. He was overjoyed to find a package in the middle of the street. He headed towards it and picked it up from the ground, all the while maintaining a smile from ear to ear.
`Mom, Dad, look what I found' was his first reaction.
The parents turned to see what was happening and noticed the child's beaming face holding a package in his hands. What immediately became clear to the parents was that the package was probably empty, because there is no child who would throw such a thing on the ground before opening it. A little more slowly but surely, this also became clear to the child who started to cry when he noticed that the package was torn and that there was nothing inside. However, wiping the tears from his reddened cheeks, the child put the empty package in his pocket, calmed down and continued walking forward.
At that moment, Axel woke up, reluctantly freed himself from their mutual embrace and sat up on the bed. It was too late to try to fall asleep again, but for consolation there was more than enough time left for the regular morning ritual with caffeine and nicotine, poor substitutes in terms of fulfilling instant happiness compared to a package of stickers in some other time or in some other, completely distorted dimension...
(Roger Mortis, 093)
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