Dreams

[oroburos69]

Title: Dreams
Rating: PG13
Warning: Disturbing imagery
Summary: A dream of what should-have-been, could-have-been.
Author's Note: Written for the new Mentalist prompt comm HERE. 300 words.

He dreams in black and white, right and wrong. Sharply vengeful as he finally does the right thing and spreads the man’s blood over the walls. The ghost of a soul is driven from his wretched body, a keening shriek of a wrong being corrected.

The man’s corpse turns to fine grey ash, and the dirty, soiled room fades to a spring touched clearing, fresh and green and blooming with young life. She’s half hidden by irises (she had loved them) death grey skin dull and waxy. His hands are covered in blood and she startles away from him. He fell to his knees, pleading, and she crept back, swollen eyes blank and doll-like.

“He’s gone. Dead,” he said, wishing it mattered.

She smiles around a mouth of broken teeth, and badly healed fingers reach out to touch his arm, cool touches that skim above bloody skin. Cold comfort, he realizes, and a sobbing laugh chokes out of him. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged, her shoulder shifting strangely under bruise blackened skin. The dead have never cared as much as the living.

A million should-have-dones and could-have-dones curl up in his chest, leaden weights of wrongs never righted and, even asleep, he weeps, a child’s losses and a man’s guilt.

She stares at him in bemusement, then pats him on the cheek before finding a quiet place to dig her grave. This time it’s hidden by the irises, and he prays to a god he’s mostly forgotten that they will keep her safe.

The slow displacement of earth stops and she crawls in, pulling the world down on top of her, like she never existed at all.

Rigsby wakes.

His father’s still alive, locked away in prison

His mother’s still dead, buried in a bloody sleeping bag.