The nights in December were long and unsympathetic in Stockholm, and it wouldn’t get any better until March came. This was the least favorite season for Agnes. And to hate the everlasting winter for a girl who was born in Scandinavian was considered as something odd for her husband.
“Bad dreams again?” Nathan whispered in her ear. His wide eyes were boring into her petrified feature as though it was the first time Agnes had screamed in her sleep.
Agnes inhaled for air as she slowly opened her eyes to find Nathan’s concerned stare. The cold sweat froze on her forehead as she raised herself up from the bed sluggishly. “Yeah.” Her voice was soft and weak.
Nathan’s reasoning was, half of the year in Sweden felt like winter, and to hate it was a meaningless self-inflicted torment. And Agnes didn’t feel bothered regarding his lack of understanding because the real reason behind her loath was complicated enough that even Agnes herself didn’t fully comprehend. The only thing that she could be certain was, it wasn’t the extreme cold. It was the everlasting darkness that she saw no end worried her, as long nights usually came with recurrent nightmares.
She would scream in the middle of the night and when she was fully awakened by the vivid and horrid dreams that she had experienced just a second ago, her mind was drained, and her memories of the dreams were buried like it had never even surfaced. Sometimes, it felt like a norm for bad dreams to catch her in the middle of the night. It felt normal. It was part of her ever since she knew how to open her mouth to speak.
Nathan snuck closer to her and held her into his arms. “We have to sleep like this I guess.” Then he placed his hand over her mouth to cover it. “Would this help you sleep better?”
She was actually half-pissed and half-laughing. “It only helps you sleep better.” Agnes’s voice was muffled as she rolled her eyes, as she sniffed in the scent of her husband’s hand. It was the familiarity in the smell that made her feel safe from her own devil inside her somewhere. She was almost certain.
“HA!” Nathan teased, then he let go of his hand. “Would this help instead?” He inched closer ever so slow that it felt as if the surroundings became still.
Agnes’s heart skipped a beat as he laid a gentle kiss on her forehead. It always felt as if it was the first time Nathan had ever done that. The soft touch and the gentle kiss had transformed her white shiny skin to almost as red as ripened apple.
“Are you blushing?”
“No...”
“You are!”
“Stop messing with me.” The harshness in her tone was contained as she pushed Nathan away.
“Alright. Alright.” He raised both of his hands in defeat with a big bright smile that Agnes could never be irritated. Or so he’d thought.
His cheeks dimpled. He was still smiling. And his stare never left her. Agnes was resisting her impulse to punch at the perfect row of shiny teeth Nathan was revealing. “What?!”
“You’re funny when you’re pissed.”
“I can be dangerous, if you want to see.” Then she groaned and laid flat on the bed with a soft thump, rubbing her temples. Her thin brows contracted to the centre as she spoke, “When can I get rid of these nightmares?” She glanced at Nathan, as if he would know the answer.
“Soon honey. You have a PHD in brains. Besides you already know how to erase memories.”
“Who told you that?” It was the company policy not to mention her work with anyone else, including her husband. And she never bothered to explain her research to Nathan because he was a CEO of a multi billions company and his deal breaker in a conversation was anything that was scientific. So of course, she was astonished that he actually knew about her job more than just the job title.
“My secretary. She had been keeping an eye on you I guess.”
“The only thing I know is how to wipe the memory clean, not to erase certain memories.”
“But you’re close.”
“I guess.” Agnes sighed. There were just too many things to understand and study, as specific memories are sorted and stored differently in the brains. And to delve deeper, even if she managed to categorise all of them, she still needed an algorithm to identify each unique memory piece in that certain category to remove them as she intended, which made her goal implausible, at least not in this century she was living in. And Nathan seemed to have deciphered her frustration.
“It’s fine too if you can’t make nightmares go away. I mean I’m completely fine for you to scream in the middle of the night. In fact, I couldn’t sleep without you screaming.” He leant closer to Agnes and pulled her into his arms again.
“It’s not funny Nathan,” Agnes replied. Her weary eyes found his square jawline and oval-shaped face somewhat comforting.
“On the bright side, your parents don’t have nightmares like yours, our daughter doesn’t have it either. So, the problem is not genetic.”
Agnes was hushed for a second. “I better go take a look at Emily,” she said and immediately jumped out of the bed.
“Wait I’m kidding. Stay in bed honey. Our daughter is fine.” Agnes was already halfway out of the room with chaotic paces. She needed to be certain as she had never thought her problem could be genetic. Although her parents didn’t have the similar kind of problem, but it still couldn’t conclude that it wasn’t genetic. And the last thing she wanted was her own daughter having had to go through what she had been going through for almost her entire lifetime.
When she reached her daughter’s room, she slowed down her paces and quietly pushed the ajar door until the gap was wide enough for her to tiptoe into the room. Every of her step felt heavy until she found Emily slumbered peacefully on the pink toddler bed that Nathan and she had bought from IKEA. The hundred pounds of weight on her body was lifted all of a sudden.
She cried almost every night when she began experiencing these paranormal dreams and her parents were having a hard time trying to pacify her.
Her hands trembled as she held onto the cushion support beside Emily’s bed. The recollection flashed through her mind like how sea waves hit the shore repeatedly.
The nightmare made Agnes deprive of sleep since young. And the only thing shittier than that was the adults who were deprived of sleep because of their child. Eventually, her parents grew tired of her incessant screaming and crying, and they stopped appeasing her, but mostly, they were agitated by her weird behaviour.
And so, one day, she decided to just stop crying. Not because the nightmares were gone, or she became bold enough to face it alone, simply because it was futile to weep as no one would come. She had learnt how to live with nightmares. She would scream when she was trying to wake herself up, but that was all. And life goes on. She heaved a sigh of relief at the realization that Emily didn’t need to go through any of it.
“I told you. It’s not genetic,” Nathan said from behind her. He was leaning against the door frame and he sounded certain of himself. “Don’t worry,” he assured.
“You don’t know that. I just want to be sure.” She was caressing Emily’s smooth and silky hair. It felt almost the same as her own, only that it was shorter, and thinner. Emily’s mouth gave a slight twitch and then she grinned faintly. It must have been a perfect dream for her. She was probably basking herself in a big pool of puppies’ kisses somewhere on earth.
She had been imploring Nathan to buy her puppies and she said she wanted a dozen, but Nathan never approved of her demand. And because of his outright refusal, she had been throwing tantrum for the first half of the day and treated Nathan as simply another decoration at home for the second half. But, in the next morning, she seemed to have forgotten her wishes and started babbling to Nathan again in her own language. It was what happened last week, and that memory squeezed a hearty smile across Agnes’s face.
Nathan suddenly hugged Agnes’s waist from behind her and whispered, “Do you think I should buy her a puppy?”
“I thought you hate puppies,” she replied in a softened tone.
“I hated physics, chemistry, especially biology during high school. They are like agent Smiths because they keep coming back.”
“Like the agent Smiths from the matrix?”
“That’s correct.” Nathan was wearing a shit-eating grin. “But my wife is a researcher in KTH and she talks biology. And she is the complete opposite of what I thought about agent Smith.”
Agnes’s cheeks were boiling again. The sensation was almost similar to when she was eating hot chilli from a Thai restaurant near Gamla Stan. Only that this time she managed to hold the tears in the brim of her eyes and sweetness tinged the tip of her tongue. She nodded silently in reply.
“By the way I have to leave for office soon,” Nathan whispered and placed a kiss on her silvery hair.
Agnes shot him a doubtful glance. “At 4am?”
“Something’s up.” He put on another big bright smile as if not to let her worry, and then he wafted out of the room.
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