dragonsandwolvesohmy - Tumblr blog

dragonsandwolvesohmy · 9 days ago

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I haven't written in over a year, for various reasons. As some writers do, I also note down interesting dreams I have. I also haven't done this in over a year. Not because I haven't had any interesting dreams, but because I only have such small pieces when I go to note them down, that I don't bother, because it'd only be a few sentences at best.

During my nap today, I had a really sad dream that played out like a movie in my mind and I have to write it down. I can't stop thinking about it, and I need to get it out of my head, if only for the chance to move on. Be warned, this is a long one.

It's about a boy, who grows to a man, who experienced trauma as a kid. (I've been awake long enough I can't really remember his name, but I'll call him Barns.) When he was young- maybe first or second grade?- he was in an accident with some other kids. For context, he's from a small town that's centered around the train tracks that go through it, and river the train goes over. On one side of the river is most the town. On the other, is a train depot, as well as a few important buildings; such as the church, grocery store, and the school, and a few other places. (they share these places with the next town over, which isn't too far away, but is still a good amount from the river.)

Everyone from the small town has to go over the river via the bridge that carries trains, in order to get groceries, go to school, etc. It's also important to note that a section the bridge is covered and akin to a car tunnel, it's a halfway point where you can ascend some stairs and find yourself in a little tower type situation where you can rest before going further, with a window to overlook the river and see the surrounding forests, etc.

The thing is, is that the land around the river leading to the bridge, and the bridge itself, are thin. It's primarily train tracks. Your expected to walk along the thin strip of ground on one side of the tracks (the other side is too soft and waterlogged from the river. The walking side is thicker and, despite being part of the same river and running parallel to the bad side, safe to venture on because of the plantlike holding the soil together, etc.)

It's so thin that the train ruffles your hair going passed. If you walk three people wide, someone is walking along the edge of the tracks and will get hit by an upcoming train. If your two person wide, you best be skinny and small, otherwise, the person on the side is going to brush the train if not get clipped/hit. Because of this, those going to school- from preschool up to last year of high school- have to be careful when venturing to school. They've also turned the depot into this cool hangout to spend time there until after the trains pass, having somewhere to hang out in a small town, etc. It's really cool because there's a room where there's an actual bartender/drinks giver (its soda, basically, or canned beer for the adults. Bartender is the owner of the depot) and a little kitchen that produces a number of snacks. Next room has darts, pool, games, candy dispensers mounted on the wall, etc. There's a space outside for trails to walk away from the tracks along the river, a space for fishing, etc. It's a good hang out place.

Unfortunately, not too interesting for first/second graders most the time.

So Barns has two older brothers, both who are eager to be 'cool', and one day he wants to go home, he's bored, his brothers want to hang out at the depot with their friends, etc. Well, they tell him to just go if he wants too. They've been walking across the bridge/along the tracks without their parents for a while, so it's whatever right? Well, Barns goes along with a few of his own friends from first/second grade, and they're crossing the bridge along the correct side when a train comes. It's important to note that in this weird universe, the bridge is inverse (as in, a passenger train comes along the tracks on the ground normally, but when it hits the bridge, it's the top of the passenger train that engages in the tracks and it essentially goes under the bridge, while carrier trains (with whatever lumber/coal/whatever fits in a fright car they carry) go along the top of the bridge like a normal train bridge.)

The passenger train shakes the bridge, the kids fall off. They hit the river. Barns hits deep water in the river, and he's mostly fine. Bruises, cuts, etc. But he'll be okay. The few of his classmates aren't so lucky. One survives the incident, but she clipped the train and didn't survive passed a few days. None of the others survived passed the initial incident. Barns is the only survivor.

It's also important to note that the incident is classed as an unfortunate accident, as first/second graders are generally allowed to make the walk by themselves when in a group like Barns was. It wasn't at all usually for a gaggle of them to go by themselves because people from this town are making that specific walk since they could walk.

However, the accident, has a profound effect on Barns growing up. He's a very nervous person, he wets the bed well into middle school, he can't go anywhere without needing to hold someone's hand without crying, he gets frequent nightmares, he's easily 'upset', and he holds his other brothers hand whenever he has to cross the bridge/walk along the tracks from then on out.

As he reaches his last year of middle school, child's cruelty comes into play. He's been made fun of for most his childhood for being a 'baby' being that he cries, wets the bed, holds hands, etc. By 8th grade, others start teasing his two older brothers, too, for allowing his 'babyish' behavior as well as being the ones holding his hand during the walk by the river to school, etc. His brothers finally have enough (they're “cool” teenagers now.) and complain to their parents that Barns is too old for this. Their parents agree, which isn't odd, as they've taken Barns to multiple doctors as he grew for his nervousness and bedwetting/nightmares, and have mostly been told/tell Barns that 'it'll pass/nightmares don't last forever, etc'.

Well, they take Barns to yet another Doctor. This one clearly has a hard on for Freud because he tells Barns parents that Barns issues are due to his having 'inappropriate feelings for his brothers'. This is the worst thing to tell them, because not only does it freak out his brothers something fierce (all that hand holding takes a very different, and very incorrect light) and it inevitably gets out into the small town. The 'teasing' takes a very harsh turn. Let's be real, it was bullying, and now it's got a different edge that Barns has to endure despite knowing that the doctor was very wrong. (Note that when all this doctor stuff goes down, Barns is at the appropriate age to be exploring masturbation, attraction, and whatnot.)

Barns does what he can to save himself. He runs away from his family, the town, all of it. That doesn't change the impact the accident had on him.

As he doesn't have a high school education, he picks up odd jobs to survive, and eventually finds himself living and working in a train yard. He lives in a converted freight car in the yard where he keeps an eye on the discontinued/abandoned train parts to make sure no gets up to no good and whatnot. His home is frankly amazing- what he didn't do himself he saved up to contract out, but in the end, this huge freight is a little two story home, complete with a 'u' shaped staircase, hardwood flooring throughout, a kitchen, a bathroom and bedroom on the second floor, a study he uses, etc. It's amazing and really nice. He's got a job working in education about the trains he looks over/works on for this yard, and has student assistants, etc. He's made himself a comfortable life. He even has a cat.

Until a young girl goes missing. Immediately, the 'weird' outcast guy is thrown into suspicion because he talked to her at career day the day she went missing. The whole train yard is searched, they terrorize Barns cat because the girl was last seen with a cat (who looked nothing like Barns black tabby) they tear apart his house, etc. He's terrorized, ostracized, even spit on in the streets. It's like his hometown all over again and it ruins his comfortable little life thoroughly.

The girl is found, alive, taken by someone else. (I don't remember the why much given I've been awake so long, but it was someone both the girl and the family knew well.)

Everyone pretty much pretends they didn't fuck up with Barns, and he doesn't even get an apology from the police/FBI/searchers for the way they treated him and damaged his home. Everyone goes on like nothings changed, but Barns can't handle that. He loads up his cat into his freight, takes to the tracks, and moves on.

Eventually, he meets the woman he falls in love with. She's a music producer Barns met at the vet when she Gigi was picking up her mothers parrot, while Barns was taking in his cat. Unfortunately, the old yard cat didn't live long after this. To be fair, the cat was old when Barns got her- she was in the double digits, having lived feral in the train yard most her life, and her muzzle was gray when she went because of old age and a hard life for most her life- but before she goes, she basically sets Barns up with Gigi. They bond over their lost cats. (Gigi had a cat when she was a teenager but cancer is a bitch and the cat had been gone for some years before she met Barns) and eventually things develop into a relationship because they have stuff in common, they're good for each other, supportive, etc. Gigi knows about Barns history and is completely supportive and overall amazing. She's great over the fact he's got trauma around attraction/sexual feeling meaning they don't have that in their relationship, really, and his trauma around the incident when he was young, and even the suspicion around the missing girl doesn't phase her. They're best friends but more, and she's one of the best things to ever happen to Barns. She even loves living in the converted freight and the fact they could go wherever they wanted so long as there's tracks to take them there.

One day, Gigi finds what Barns calls his therapy journal. It's a beat to ship spiral bound notebook he's written in whenever he needs to. He's got lost of them, and the one Gigi finds is one he used for nightmares during his later teenage years, when he first got into poetry as a form of expression. (Barns read a lot of self help books trying to figure out how to manage himself.) Gigi reads some of it to figure out what the book was, finding the poems would make great songs. When asked, Barns isn't super interested, but doesn't mind singing about nightmares and survival and being an outcast from society. (nothing super detailed, but we all know those songs that talk about living through something without saying what it is and it can apply to so many situations. Try 'Triumph' by Bishop Briggs if you're not sure what I mean.)

Unsurprisingly, people relate to, and love, Barns songs about living through life, surviving tough situations, and feeling out of place and like you don't fit it. He's practically famous overnight, which Gigi knew would happen. (She does this for a living, she knows what good music takes and Barns has what it takes to make good music.) Barns even finds it's nice sing about his troubles, having people feel like they were understood because of it, and relate to it on so many levels.

He's a great musician. They do music tours in the freight, with an attached car they converted into a studio for their music, another carrying their car, and their best friend, who drives the train/works the engine/locomotive/whatever it's called. He's a great guy, works the train, helps with recording music, is practically a brother to them, and helps out with the shows/security on them. Barns is a bit of a big deal, music wise, he's a bad bitch when it comes to music.

Then, as all things happen to Barns, his good thing has to take a hit. When touring, he has to go through his home town. Everyone from the town remembers him, and everyone, their mother, and their kids, has heard from those who remember him 'I used to know that guy...' and his troubles as a kid. (the hand holding, the crying, the bed wetting, etc.) It's made its way into his music career before this, (some of the press are awful people) but it's only mad his fans (of which there are many) love him more. It makes him more relatable, more human, more loved. Because he's had trouble. He's survived. He knows what it is to struggle and overcome, just as his music talks about.

What's supposed to be just a drive trough, nothing more than a blur through the freight cars windows, becomes more when Barns little train breaks down on the tracks after the depot, before the bridge. Gigi has to take the car onward to work damage control on the delay to their tour, to ensure that if the show is deleyed, it's not too bad. Barns stays with their buddy to get the train taken care of. Before he could do anything however, who should show up but his family.

Their buddy (I can't remember his name) internally fucked with the engine (hit a button meant to pump the breaks, basically, that needs a special tool to reset. It's a safety feature he exploited) to have the train break down where it did so Barns' family and he could meet. Barns is decidedly not okay with this. (Gigi didn't know about this plan, by the way.) there's a huge row between parents and older brothers, versus Barns, where he reveals that he ran away because he couldn't handle the fucked up town, the fucked up treatment anymore. He'd been a hairs width from committing suicide, he'd been on his way to kill himself, when he was attacked at the bridge's halfway point by some older kids. He didn't know who they were, as the bridge is car tunnel dark between windows, but they kicked the shit out of him, and ripped his clothes off to strap him into a diaper for being a bed wetter, and called him names about his 'babyish' behavior, and generally it was fucking awful. It stopped his suicide, but after pulling his clothes back on, he started walking and never went home- it was the day he ran away.

He hated his life, he couldn't stay and be happy, and he resented his family in a lot of ways for letting everything happen to him, evermore so that they were only now- not that he's famous musician- trying to make amends. But that day, that attack, he realized he hated them a little and none of this was his fault, but it was partly theres. And he deserved to live without them. So he left.

His family is trying to be part of his life now, and they're trying to patch things up with him, but they're clearly not hearing him. It's painful and awkward and one older brother (the middle brother) even gets caught with an old baby bottle he was going to make an awful joke about concerning Barns issues as a kid. Barns coldly tells him to get rid of it, then walks off to take care of the train.

Barns walks along the tracks back to the depot, talking on the phone with the train people to essentially tow his train to a point where it's not sitting on active tracks being a massive hazard, as well as get the engine fixed up. He gets to the depot and the bartender lady even remembers him and helps him out with telling the right people about the breakdown and where to tow, etc. When he's done on the phone, there's some fan mobbing, but mostly everyone's chill. (remember, they've all heard about how he's not a famous musician, but the dude their dad/mom/aunt/uncle/etc knew and had a story to tell about. He's more like the lost, distant relation, then a bigger than life singer) He even meets an old classmate who makes an off color joke about him living in a train after coming from a train based town.

He goes to the bathroom to have a bit of a stare down with his reflection, trying to handle his mental health that's taken a major hit being where he is and the people e encounters, and it's all crumbling around him. Despite being better, his music notably helping as did Gigi, he's not okay. He's not 'over' what happened to him as a kid despite what people assume. Being back there is not just hard, it's not good for him in any way, and his best friend betrayed him to make it happen. He tries to call Gigi but she doesn't pick up as she's driving.

(Note he ditched said friend, telling him to make his own way and to ask Barns family, whom he wants nothing to do with, if he needs a place to stay.)

When he leaves, he sees the wall mounted candy dispensers in the depot. The bartender lady (again, no alcohol is actually served by her, I just don't know what else to call her) even jokes about how she refilled them five years ago because it was an ongoing joke in town that the candy hadn't been replaced since the depot was built. This was because it was all 'old person' candy, like chocolate covered raisins, hard caramels, and, most importantly, these jelly worm type candies that come in yellow, blue, and red, but looked more like slugs than anything. Barns favorite candy used to be the yellow ones, which the lady remarks on as he gets some, remembering how he'd buy a handful every week. The only person to do so. In the dream, they're like jumbo gummy worms in marbled yellow and red coloring. (there's blue and green marble, or a clear and orange marble in the dispensers too)

Barns just kind of hums as he leaves, snacking on the candy as he passes his broken down train and keeps going. He reached the bridge, and starts that fateful walk all over again. He reaches the halfway point where some young teenagers are joking around in the tower, as kids do, and it's nothing inherently awful; they're using slingshots to launch rocks down at fish in the river like dumbasses. Barns tells them to find something better to do, and the local sheriff shows up to shoo them off, threatening to tell their parents. Apparently she regularly checks in there because kids do dumb stuff in the tower (nothings changed, apparently) and she wants to keep everyone safe. She ventures with Barns, talking to him about how stupid kids can be, through the tunnel/bridge, until they reach the other side and keep going. She's talking about the walking sign that they've moved, as well as the sign that basically tells kids not to do stupid shit that the teenagers are constantly vandalizing/taking down as small town troublemakers do. She stops to fix the sign, again, but Barns isn't listening. His attention is caught on an abandoned/discontinued passenger train that hanging on the inverse tracks, which have been put out of use for a good period of time now. (They no longer make trains with the equipment on the roof of the train to use those inverse tracks anymore. So some old cars are just abandoned on the inverse tracks to keep people from using those tracks with 'restored' cars.) The regular tracks are still in use, though.

A train passes through, the tow train, actually, and Barns hair is flung about from the nearness of the air being displaced.

Miss Sheriff turns to keep talking to Barns, but he's not there. She calls out, receives no answer, figures he kept going to reach the forestry on the other side of the river a short distance away, and shrugs then goes on with her way.

What she didn't know is that Barns had climbed atop the bridge. He's up on the support structure walking on the beams, his own music about the 'tragic accident' and everything that's happen to him going through his head. He 'slips' (I don't know if he just slipped or purposefully didn't step right) and begins to fall.

Time slows as he falls from the bridge, into the water that once saved his life as a child. It's in slow motion, and we see flashbacks of all the shit that happened to Barns. We find out what the tragedy he went through was. We see why he left the train yard. We see the attack he experienced as a kid. Before now, we didn't know these things, they were only mentioned vaguely, not explained what happened. A voice over happens, telling us to re-watch the movie with this information now in mind. To rethink what we know. To not take first impressions as fact. And to lament the loss of life of Barns. We see, not the actor who played him in this movie, but a photo of actual Barns, as a child before the tragedy, eating those yellow gummy candies he loved.

The movie/dream ends with a view of the river running, Barns nowhere to be seen, and his date of death displayed.

#dreams #dream #bad mental health #mental illness #writing #creative writing #suicide #tw suicide

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