Skip to main content

Bitter-Sweet Dreams

Here's a short exercise I wrote.

I've been working on this other short story that's proving to be a bear and this sort of came out of me on the side.

I dreamed of you last night.

It was the type of dream where things don’t seem to happen, you seem to just know that they have.

I arrived at a party that we’d both planned on attending, the location of the party seemed to be a kind of industrial building with the back wall decorated as a cave. I came out onto a balcony looking over the party to see you sitting there, wearing that short black dress you bought that night we drank too much wine and went shopping at the mall.

But you weren’t happy. You were on the phone. I never knew for sure, but it seemed to be your boyfriend whom I not-so-affectionately always referred to as Ringo.

It seemed as though we’d been planning on getting together for this party for a long time, but once you got there Ringo harassed you by phone… I came over to you and offered you my hand, you took it and stood up, putting your head on my shoulder, sobbing gently as he continued berating you with his overbearing jealousy over the phone.

Aside from almost making me cry, holding you there like that made me wish that my sole purpose in life could simply be giving girls like you hugs in times of need and crisis. I always seem to want to give you a hug anyway and this time it was so urgent it broke my heart.

He hung up on you and you looked up at me, with your head pressed against my chest. I wiped the tears from below your eyes and made a soft shushing sound in your ear.

Though you didn’t say it, your eyes seemed to tell me that he was forcing you to choose between him or me. I love you more than anything and it broke me, even in a dream, to tell you to go to him if that’s what you needed to do.

You kissed me on the cheek, then softly on the lips and left the party.

It was a bittersweet dream.

When I woke up I felt sad, devastated, as though it were real.

Maybe it will be.

But I hope not.

Comments

... said…
Awww. Bryan, was this a short story or a diary entry? Either way, I feel bad for the dreamer.

Pretty good writing, champ.

"I'm trying Ringo. I'm trying reallll harddd to be the shepherd"
Unknown said…
Actually, I came up with the title and my exercise I gave myself was to write something that fit...

Popular posts from this blog

Salt Lake Comic Con 2017 Schedule

It's time for another year of Salt Lake Comic Con and another hectic schedule for me. But! that doesn't mean it's not a helluva lot of fun. I hope you're able to join me at any of these panels. Especially if you like Star Wars. And please, please, please come to my signing and visit. Get some books signed. I'd love that enormously. Here is my Thursday schedule: Everything here is a highlight. That first panel about behind the scenes of the prequels is with Pablo Hidalgo and I'll be asking him questions about what it was like to be there on set for most of the prequels. Then I'll be asking questions of Michael Biehn, who I've been a fan of since I was a little kid. Aliens and Terminator were favorites. If you want to ask him a question, please hit me up on Twitter with it. I will ask it at the panel. And you don't want to miss Fauxthentic History's Infinity Gauntlet live episode. It's going to be soooo good. Here is Friday:

The Missed Opportunities of Days Gone By

“Hello?” I said into the phone, accepting the call from a number I didn’t recognize. “Hey,” the feminine voice on the other replied, as though I should know the sound of her voice. At a loss, I said, “Can I help you?” “It’s Brooke.” Her name stopped me. It couldn’t possibly be her. We hadn’t spoken in years, a decade perhaps. “Brooke?” “Yeah, Brooke Baker. This is Mark, right?” Jesus Christ. It was her. “Yeah, it is Mark. Brooke. Wow. How are you? It’s been a long time since… well… since anything.” “I know.” “So, how are you doing?” “Okay, I suppose…” Her voice belied her words, though. Something was up. “I… It’s just been so long and I guess I wanted to hear your voice.” “I don’t think I had a number for you. Ever. I offered a couple of times, but…” “I was a brat back then.” And that’s how a random phone call turned into a two-and-a-half hour catch-up session. We spoke of everything under the sun: people we still knew, how different we were, h

The End of an Era and a New Beginning

It's been a long time coming, but I think an upgrade to my web presence was long overdue. I began this blog in 2005 and it's served me well over the last 13 years. My goal in those early days was to write a short story every month. Back then, that was the only writing I was doing. This website, then called "Bryan's Short Story Corner," got me into a regular writing habit. One that I still maintain today. I hoped it would help me get eyeballs on my words and, looking back at some of those early short stories, I shouldn't have wanted any of those eyeballs looking. Today, my Patreon fills that void. There is a dedicated group of supporters there that help subsidize my ability to write short stories on the regular. After I started publishing books, this blog morphed into a place to talk about my projects and writing and it worked well enough for that for a long time. But now I have Twitter and Medium for those functions and they have much cleaner and easi