The Inventor's dream

The story is somewhat loosely based on an actual dream I once had.... Hope you enjoy the read

Noel sat dreaming in his heavy oak chair, his deep breathing and the occasional grunt puncturing the morbid silence of the laboratory. The dim yellow light reflected with a blinding brilliance off the edges of the intricate glass contraption of tubes, flasks and jars on his work table. The wooden furniture and the walls glowed a deep red in the windowless room. Guarded by a heavy, bolted, acoustically sealed wooden door, the room was Noel's proudest achievement. It gave him the solitude to think, free of the interruptions of his ugly wife, the gentle & not-so-gentle prodding enquiries of 'acquaintances', the judging glances of visiting relatives, the awkward dinners with long silences, and everything else that weighed down his ambitious rational mind and it's visions of greatness. On this evening however, this scientific mind was resting, neck limply hanging over the edge, arms splayed apart, thick frizzy moustache swaying gently in the gust of his breath. Then, suddenly, his chest tensed, starting to rise and fall in a frantic fit, and his face, deeply disturbed, started to twist itself into tortured grimaces, suddenly panting. Noel thus woke abruptly to find himself mumbling like a crazed old man convulsing in fear, beads of sweat soaking his brow. He realized he'd been dreaming and as his racing heart quelled, he remembered that he hadn't eaten for three days. He thought of walking up to the house, to ask the wife to prepare his dinner, then remembered that her pregnancy, which was now at an advanced stage, meant that she was excused of her duties in the kitchen, leaving the running of the household at the mercy of her insufferable mother. Thinking it better that he wait out for dinner time, he fell back in his chair, trying to remember this dream that had left him in such a cold sweat...
There was a lot of blood.. That was the last thing he'd seen.. But it had started off more innocently. Yes, he was seated at the sofa by his fireplace, but, over the fireplace was a window overlooking a moor. Seated in the sofa opposite were his wife, and conversing with her, his old 'friend' and colleague, Nathaniel. Noel himself felt satisfied..he was smiling. There was the trophy that he held in his hand... the polished silver surface.. the thick certificate in his other hand printed in cursive letters with the thickness and weight of authenticity. The objective of all his research, all the testing with the fumes and the fires and boiling liquids... the mice in the cages, had all been realized. Recognition was on it's way. Nathaniel's presence in his house symbolized his re-induction into an elite society of inventors. It didn't matter to Noel that his friend was so blatantly chatting up his wife.. He had better things to be happy about. Marion looked as tired and old as ever, intently conversing with a rare glint of curiosity in her kind yet dull, glazed eyes. She was not pregnant, but her movements were still slow, awkward and laboured. Noel looked out the window, onto the calm, dry moor where he now noticed a lone cow moving about languidly, grazing with an absolutely unremarkable countenance, painting a picture or eery stillness. As he watched the clumsy animal he felt a sort of sympathy welling up inside him. It was almost as if he felt sorry for it's expression of contentment, because for him being content with the mundane spoke of a lack of ambition and vision. Then, as he looked on, a man approached, walking nonchalantly up to the grazing animal, and without warning, with a swift strong swing, struck the beast at the vertex of it's head with a heavy-looking hammer causing it to flop down instantly in a puddle of deep black blood. He saw the helpless animal screaming, it's neck contorted obliquely, ribs heaving in it's dying throes, eyes rolling about frantically, seeming to settle on Noel as though accusing him for his inaction. It's mouth gasped open in an agonizing scream, but no sound came out of it. Transfixed at the scene with visceral horror, Noel suddenly became aware of a vast pool of blood creeping forwards from under the sofa and towards his feet. His wife and his friend had disappeared from the other chair. The dim candles in the room seemed to flicker as if in a wind, but he felt no cooling wind. His eyes darted immediately, almost reflexively, to the hallway behind him and he sat frozen in his seat, anticipating...something..to walk in through that doorway, coming for his blood. He could hear..no.. feel something crawling in the long dark hallway. He looked again, outside the window, to the moor and saw that the animal was no longer wallowing in it's blood. It had sprouted a pair of wings and was, with great effort, hauling it's bloated body up into the pale lavender sky. In that final moment before waking up to the tympani of his rolling heartbeat, even as he felt the surrealistic visceral terror, he looked at the flying beast... and felt that the whole scene seemed serene.. almost elegant.. in it's absurd ugliness.
He spent much of the next hour or two reflecting on his dream, trying to chalk out the meaning of the baffling, bizarre 'symbols' in his dream based on his scattered knowledge of the Freudian sciences. However, the dream eluded a reading that satisfied him. He felt that he alone could find the 'true meaning' of his dream but decided not to- a part of him seemed to be terrified of what he would find. Lazily flipping through his journals, eyeing the yellowing dial of the tall grandfather clock that served as the only portal connecting his lair to the world outside, he sat through another hour until the clock chimed dinner time. Laboriously pushing the giant door with his lithe, hairy arms, he shuffled across the long dark hallway to the candle-lit dining hall. Mustering some strength to his parched, breaking voice, he beckoned his wife. All he heard were hushed whispers from the bed room. Calling out her name once more, he slowly made his way across the silent house towards his wife's bedroom from where a soft, rustling commotion seemed to emanate.
The first thing he noticed as he approached the bedroom hallway was the steely visage of the midwife, lantern in hand, seeming to disgustingly regard him with black beady eyes. His wife's sister sat by the bedside, eyes wet and bloodshot. And there, in the centre of the room, sprawled on the large double bed was his wife, her skin so pallid and translucent that it blended perfectly with the faded lavender sheets. Then, he noticed the crusted brown blood dripping from the foot end of the bedcover into a thick, dark puddle on the floor. Her body looked more like an unpainted wax likeness, the face featureless and frozen in a meditative expression, her light brown bangs pasted to the forehead with sweat.As Noel took another step towards the room, he became aware of the tiny gurgling coos arising from between the bars of a cradle beside the bed in the dead piercing silence of the room. As he shuffled further and looked around, he saw his burly mother-in-law suddenly rising from her chair. He was trying to sneak a peek into the cradle when the old woman flew at him in a distraught fit of rage.. "..Ignorant.. Monster... let her die.." was all he heard in her mumbles before she knocked him cold with the heavy candelabra.

Author's Note

Please leave your honest reviews, opinions or interpretations below..
Thank you :)

Reviews

[King Kutlo]

It's quiet a story, firstly I'd like point out you're paragraph spacing, I find myself skipping lines which caused to re-read the your paragraphs more than to twice to get it right. I also feel your characters weren't well justified, again it caused me to re-read a paragraph just to remind myself who's Nathaniel or Marion.

With that being said thanks for sharing :).