Gently, gently please.

It's not too often that I have a nightmare that sticks with me. The last one I remember having was from my elementary years, a chain of events bordering on the absurd, still fresh with me. Colors, tinted with surrealism, a masked man in black asking me, a child then, if he could have a mini pig-in-a-blanket from the pastel pink, plastic plate in my hands. I say no, because they are for my father, who is sitting upstairs. He promptly shoots my mother, who is standing across the kitchen. For a hotdog. Finite.

I must have replayed this scenario countless times in the weeks that followed, with conscious addenda of what I would have done next... In the end, wistful thinking, since it has never progressed past that point. Dream and reality blur.

Two nights ago, I had another nightmare. It's been a while; guess I was overdue for one. This time, I was being raped. Or at least, about to.

Cue scene. I'm living in an unidentified apartment with an unidentified roommate and two other housemates. Keith is over, and we are just sitting together in the room that I share, in silent affinity. The thing that really gets to me is how this opening contrasts so sharply with the moment before fadeout. It's a blissful calm.

Some time later, he leaves the apartment, and I'm left alone with my two other housemates. They beckon to me, and begin gossiping about my roommate's crumbling relationship. She is an older woman, and at this point in time, I have no solid impression of her boyfriend. "They're going to break up.", one of my housemates remarks.

Again, some time after this conversation, I am walking around outside, in a nondescript world of white. The roommate's boyfriend is around. I may have been accompanying a housemate somewhere, or I may have offered to show him to some location he was seeking. The exact circumstance escapes me, but I do have a strong impression of him leering at me. Just leering, leering and repulsive. Old lines, haggard, yellow teeth, scraggly hands, just horrid. Lascivious through and through, the way he eyes me. As I pass by, he reaches out runs his hands up the sides of my waist once. I brush him off and continue walking, trying to stay further away. He grins, a joyless grimace, comes up to me, and begins to caress my sides again, as I turn see my roommate standing some distance away. I look at her, panicked, trying to convey that I. do. not. want. this.

I try to brush him away again; this incenses him, as he grabs me again, roughly. As I look upon my roommate with sheer terror, her eyes fill with tears, and she looks away. In this instant, I realize that she is not going to do anything. She won't help me, she won't stop him, she will simply stand there with her head turned away, pretending not to see. I plead with him, "Please, stop. Please!". He handles me brutally, hoisting me by the waist and pinning my arms down. He grins, and with one hand, rams his fingers into my thigh with a dour pressing strength. I close my eyes; in this blindingly white world of mine, there are only five other people. My roommate stands off to the side, indifferent, and I've the surest sense that my two other housemates wouldn't lift a finger to stop this. The one who would isn't here, and cannot hear my cries... and the only other "he" has me in an iron grip. Helpless, sheer terror. No one willing to stop this. No where to run. Unrelenting fingers pressing into my flesh, blood vessels popping, spider lily blossoms. I know what comes next...

I wake up, with a need to be held. Gently, gently please...