My favorite nightmare

At breakfast today I only met Guilherme. He informed me that his father went downtown and his mother was at Renan's room with him. I was going there to see what was going on but Guilherme made me stay and have breakfast with him. I believed he was following his mother's recommendations, so I let myself stay and had the meal with the kid. He spoke little or nothing at all; I asked him what was going on and he said Renan had had a nightmare.

"Did he say what the nightmare was about?"

"Oh, he said Anderson and Andrés broke into his room during the night and spent hours", and he emphasized the word "hours" with his intonation, "beating the shit out of him. Renan swears it was no nightmare, he insists all was real."

This blew me away. Got me all dizzy. I saw them walking in my room the other night. I didn't even talk to them about it. But it had been an interesting night anyway. Now what? What is this new ramification? Why would they do it to Renan?

I called Andrés and Anderson. The latter was not at home. That, or nobody felt like answering the call. Andrés denied having entered anyone's house at night in physical or astral body or whatever it was. He didn't even remember being here that night, in my bedroom along with Anderson in what was our lucid dream together. I insisted on reminding him of it, but he'd only remember the dreams before that one, the ones we had already commented. This blew me away too. Why the hell would he have forgotten about a dream that was clear for all of us? Because it had been clear only for me? I remember I really hadn't seen them any longer after this dream. As money you forget to take, money you'll only remember when you need to pay for your first purchase on the way.

The sound of a car engine outside as I hang up. The car is not from this farm, but it is familiar anyway: it's Anderson, being brought by his father, Alberto. The car stopped at the gates of the farm Teixeira, the boy got off and walked up to the porch. He smiled when he saw me, but seemed to foresee something strange around. I had hardly greeted him when I asked if he remembered coming here at night with Andrés in a lucid dream. Told him the passage at the square and all. The kid goggled at me, confused, seeming not to know what was going on or what I was really talking about.

"Why, I don't remember anything like that, Ms. Grisam. I remember that we had some dreams alike, but coming here with Andrés and talking… This I don't remember, I'm dead sure."

"This is not the issue really. The issue is that Renan dreamed about you two coming to his bedroom at night and thrashing him good for the whole of the night. And he thinks it was for real."

"What???", his bulging eyes now were as big as tea cups looking at me.

"What I've just said", "I still haven't talked to him, but Guilherme told me he swore it was the truth. I don't know what it is going to be like when he meets you, but it won't be any good anyhow."

Anderson had his chin hanging from his mouth. For a while there, it seemed that he didn't know what to say. Donana appeared at the porch and went back inside. After some time it was Guilherme who appeared at the porch. He told Anderson to come back another day. Anderson insisted on talking to Renan and judging by the furiously stomping sounds of the wooden floor inside the house, he wouldn't have to wait long.

"Came to see what was left of me, fucker?"

Renan came down on Anderson as a bullet, drooling with anger. It was hard to hold the boy back. You can imagine the situation for Anderson, not knowing much what was going on — even considering that I had previously put him in the picture of what was happening — and he was now the center of the turmoil around us all. Renan faced him, bloodshot eyes, he wanted to reach and annihilate, asphyxiate, assassinate, crucify, dispatch, do away with, do in, drown, dump, electrocute, eradicate, erase, execute, exterminate, extirpate, finish, garrote, get, guillotine, hang, hit, immolate, liquidate, lynch, massacre, murder, neutralize, obliterate, off, poison, polish off, put away, put to death, rub out, sacrifice, slaughter, slay, smother, snuff, strangle, suffocate, waste, wipe out, X-out, zap his fellow citizen (the alphabetical order words for the same function appear courtesy of Thesaurus.com and no, they are not enough to describe Renan's intentions at the moment).

"Hey wait there, let's talk", Anderson seemed a bit frightened, yet he tried to keep calm unlike his nervous friend.

"Still you come here to poke some more fun on me on top of everything you have done! You weren't satisfied, right? You had to come and see… Goddamned fucker!"

It was the three of us — Donana, Guilherme and I — holding the little animal force of nature. And boy, was it hard. I could count down to the moment Renan was going to turn on us for not letting him reach Anderson and do as his heart desired.

"Renan, it was just a dream, for God's sake!" Donana was terrified at his reaction, in vain she asked Anderson to come back another day; he wouldn't go away until he could talk to Renan and the turmoil extended until the little fury felt its energy go away. He fell to the ground, crying softly, too weary to go on. Anderson spoke to him without ever coming close to the fallen fellow, but said what he had to say, "if we beat you so much at night, where are the bruises? There would be some purple spots all over you right now, wouldn't there?"

Renan couldn't answer, panting like a dog. Also because he wouldn't have an answer to Anderson's question anyway. Because even though he said it was all for real, and if the beating was half of what he told us, he should have at least one arm broken. However, his body didn't show signs of being barked or bruised anywhere. Nothing could be more intact than he was (at least physically).

Andrés came in the afternoon by popular demand, long after he had unknowingly used Anderson as a lightning rod. We sat down to talk, Donana, I and the boys. Anderson again affirmed he had not had this dream that night or any other night. Andrés was more confused than him at all that had been narrated, having just arrived at the whirlwind. He was all ears but also all misunderstanding of what was in course.

"Yup, I remember the dreams we had in common, but like Anderson I didn't have this dream of walking in your bedroom and taking you out to the square."

"So it's Ms. Grisam who's lying?", Renan turned his eyes to me, wanting to find someone to fry, this I knew for sure. And I talked about the lucid dream too soon, without ever confirming the dream together with the other two. Doing so, I could only put myself in a situation like this in time.

"I wouldn't say she's lying, but neither I nor Anderson had this dream. She might have had this dream alone, no?"

"That's what happened and I am not lying to anyone." I had to voice my opinion, since my name seems to be neck-deep in this story. Acted too soon and now I got all this to fix. It seems not much right now, but God knows what it can grow to be in the near future let alone in a place like Taurinos where the slightest vibrations might be felt by the local population as a full-blown earthquake.

"Even if it is a dream, who's sending it?" Renan resumed, still panting and looking a bit overworked.

"If there is someone sending it", Guilherme cut him short, "because you've been dreaming about it it doesn't mean that someone is sending it to you, mister."

Renan was now silent, looking at everyone around him. Donana wanted to comfort her son, but didn't seem to find the right words to do it. Neither did I have any wise words to say. Things here escape natural patterns all the time, all is chaotic, all is random and practically impossible to be assessed, since it all changes face and circumstances all the time. This has been the picture since I first set foot here in February. It's difficult to try to analyze things here under a Cartesian point of view. Things in Taurinos are not set in an Euclidean universe, this I know for sure. Is the city anyhow?

Hurricane | Big sleep

Radio Universal: Shadowplay