To Beget or Not To Beget…

I spent a recent weekend helping babysit a twenty-month year old girl. And by “help”, I mean cowering behind the fridge terrified. I’ve got no brothers and sisters, no nephews and nieces; kids to me are practically a different species. Especially small ones: imagine laughing when you’re happy, crying when you’re sad, saying what you mean, and knowing what you want! Where’s the duplicity? Where’s the angst? The enormous chip on the shoulder? I am in my thirties, no longer able to understand kids; I was born in a different millennium to them!

But as it turned out, the child was really an amazing delight. One of the nicest kids I’ve ever spent time with, in fact; kinda made me think that having one of these baby things one day might not be such a bad idea after all. Even the odd moments of tears were welcome; I quite enjoyed helping to calm the kidywink down.

The overwhelmingly positive experience is weird given the dream (read: horrific nightmare) I had the night I handed her back to her parents. I’m sure fans of Freud will have fun with this.

I Have A Dream…

Dark, moodily lit world, constantly twilight and grey. Everything was damp, rotten, dilapidated. Walls peeling. Even the very air and sky seemed worn. After some days living in this dreamworld, I realise that a pale, sullen child of around five years old seems to be wherever I am. In the shop, in the street, in the coffee shop. Always watching me, always unaccompanied by a grown-up. Eventually he gets closer and closer to me during these visits. I know he has an evil intent. I feel his evil presence. I try to outrun him, but he always manages to sneak up on me. NOTE: exactly like the evil force in the film It Follows, which is weird considering I hadn’t thought or talked about that film since the time I saw it.

And then one day, I wasn’t paying attention. I turned around and there was the child stood right next to me.

He slowly raised his right palm upward. I was transfixed in horror, perhaps mesmerised by some supernatural ability of his. His palm went towards my groin(!) He literally levitated my left bollock out of my ballsack, through my pants and trousers, into his hand. It’s like it was attracted by some magnetic force in his palm and slowly floated through these layers into his hand.

I stared at my gonad in his hand in horror and knew that he was about to extract the second. I had to get away, or I would never have children myself.

I somehow broke free of his gaze and fled. And fled again. He kept following me as before. But so traumatised was I, so underslept, that eventually I became slack again. One day I turned around to see the boy there, his palm outraised. I wanted to cry because I knew I would never have children, but no tears would come out. I accepted my fate and closed my eyes as his hand drew closer to my groin.

Then I woke up.

Seriously.

What.

The.

Flip!?

That dream was some seriously messed up nonsense. Tell me what you think it means. And do you know a good counsellor?

© 2016 Bryan A. J. Parry

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