Ever since I was little, I had trouble sleeping. My mother would hear me run to the kitchen in the middle of the night, mumbling incoherently. She always grabbed me and pulled me into her, whether it was a protective hug or a way to stifle me, she never said. She would shake me until I woke, “Ben! Ben! Wake up Ben, wake up for God’s sake!”. I’d open my eyes then let out a wail as she sighed out of relief and took me back to my room.

This happened to me at least twice a week for twelve years. As time progressed, my night time incidents” (as my mother called them) became less frequent and less severe. But every time they happened, it was the same goddamn dream. That gut wrenching, terrifying nightmare. It wasn’t even scary, but it’s content will always make me shiver.






* * * * *
In my dream, I’m sitting in the living room with my mother. I can’t be more than five years old. The front door to our apartment swings open, and my dad is in it’s frame, clearly perturbed and in a rush. My mother shakes her head and tries to back away. Dad yells, “We have to go, they’re coming! Ben, hurry, grab your things!”. I run to my room to grab my suitcase which, for some reason, is already packed, as if it was waiting for me. “Don’t grab your suitcase Ben” I try to tell myself. I don’t want to grab it because I know what will happen if- when I do. The suitcase almost seems to pull me towards it, and before I know it I’m right up against the blue and green checkered bed.

The suitcase is red and shiny, and seems to become sharper and sharper as everything else becomes blurry and out of focus. Time slows down until I finally grab the handle.

The lights begin to flicker and the air bites at my skin. My mother screams in the kitchen, and when I get to the doorway, I can see her and dad being pulled away by men in suits. I try to run to them, but another suited man grabs me, comes close, and stares at me with frantic eyes yelling, “Make sure you call! Make sure you call, Ben!”.






* * * * *

Then I would wake up. I’d be covered in sweat and crying, my mother holding onto me. I don’t know why the dream always scared me. Maybe it’s because my mother always found me hanging up our rotary phone, as if I had just finished making a call. Or maybe it’s because my dad died when I was five and my mother never told me how it happened.

So that was my life for twelve years. And as bad as this sounds, I missed the dreams when they left. They were a part of me for so long and then they were gone forever. At least, I thought they were, I had one last night time incident that would change my life. For better or for worse, I don’t think I’ll figure out.

It was only two years ago, in 1973. I was twenty four years old then. I was back at my mother’s house for the weekend, she was really sick and needed my help around the house. It was a late Sunday night in June, and I decided to go to sleep. As I headed to my old room, I suddenly got a very strange feeling. The feeling that I should not go to bed and stay up forever. I tried to shake it off as I climbed into my old bed, still with its blue and green checkered sheets. Although the uneasy feeling I had earlier was still there, I managed to fall asleep fairly quickly.






* * * * *
Something isn’t right. I can tell. I’m in the dark. Where am I? I can’t even tell whether or not I’m dreaming. I try to feel around for a light switch, but to no avail. Could it be… oh god, no. I reach my hand up and, yes, there I find a string. I pull it, and light flickers then illuminates the room. A plastic red suitcase sits on the middle of the blue and green checkered bed.
This is it. After all these years, I can keep this horrible dream from continuing any longer. “We have to go, they’re coming! Ben, hurry, grab your things!” I hear dad’s voice call from the kitchen. My parents… What do the men in suits want from them? From me? I have to try and save my family, save myself. I grab the handle of the suitcase, but nothing happens. My hand seems to go through and it stays on the bed. A pit forms in my stomach as I realize that I have absolutely no way of moving it.
The door to my room swings open and there in the door frame is me. I’m younger, my face round and helplessness still in my eyes. I- I mean younger Ben- walks to the bed without so much as glancing at me. I yell at him, “Ben. Ben, don’t you grab that suitcase!”, but he can’t hear me. When I try to grab his arm, my hand goes through that as well. I have to get to my parents before he takes the suitcase. I run to the kitchen to see my father beaten to the ground by the suited men and hear my mother scream. I can’t do anything to stop this dream. I have to watch it as an outsider.
Young Ben runs out of the room and towards my resistant mother and completely still father. Here comes the worst part of the dream. The madman in the suit. But something is different when he appears. He shoos young Ben out of the area like a parent secretly wrapping Christmas presents in their room. The man shuts the door silently and turns to me. Not young Ben, me. He walks towards me slowly. Although everyone in the dream looks exactly as they did twelve years ago, he’s noticeably aged. But he no longer scares me. His once untamed hair is now gray and slicked back. His eyes look kinder and less severe than they had years ago. I now find comfort in the sight of this man.
When he finally reaches me, he shakes my hand. “Well done, Ben. You’ve done great over these past years. I’m so proud of you” he whispers, tears in his eyes. “Sir? What exactly have I done? And who are you and those men?”

“I’ll tell you, but you have to wake up first. Just remember to keep on the phone”.





* * * * *
And with that, I woke up, the red receiver was in my hand. I put it to my ear and said a weary hello. And when the voice of the man in my dream replied, I remember being very startled, but why the hell wouldn’t I have been?

“Now, I’m going to tell you everything,” he said, “but you mustn't interrupt and you must believe me. Four months before you were born, my colleagues and I decided to begin a scientific experiment that would be funded by the government. It involved children and what they would be able to remember.”

“So we got participants. Your mother and father were some of the first to be signed up and chosen. When you were first born, we successfully planted a chip into your brain that stored memories. Our goal was to see if we could get children to remember repressed memories or events that happened in their early lives that would be hard to remember. It seemed very successful at first, but things quickly went wrong. The memories were playing out in their dreams and controlling them.”
“People, especially the participants, tried to unveil this project. Your mother and father were leaders in this revolt. So unfortunately, we had to track them down to try and snuff out their attempts. I didn’t want to Ben, believe me. But I had to. That nightmare you had as a child wasn’t just a dream. It was a memory.”
“Your mother escaped us and hid where we couldn’t find you two. But your father… Oh god I’m so sorry. They took him away and… he wouldn’t give information, so they thought the only way we could snuff out the possibility of information spreading was by snuffing him out as well. The chip in your brain programmed you to call us after every nightmare you had so we could try to track you. I took your case upon my self so you and your mother would be safe. I didn’t want you to be found and hurt. I’ve been protecting you all these years.”
The phone had gone silent on the other end. I listened and could hear the weak sobs of the man in the suit. I was baffled, but I believed him.
“So… so what now?” I had asked the man. He told me the project had been shut down, files were burned, evidence destroyed. The only people who knew about it were those involved as well as the government. They would no longer chase after me, and the suited man said he would personally pay to have the chip extracted from my head. I agreed, we talked a while longer, and at sunrise I hung up the phone.
My mother came out of the room that morning and asked me why I look like I hadn't slept that night. All I told her was that I was talking to an old friend. Two days later, I packed my bags and headed home to live the rest of my life, no longer in a state of dreaming.