"The Burning of Heather" by DedHeather

The Dream

There are two recurring dreams that haunt me constantly. One is beautiful. I wake up smiling and sad at the same time whenever I have this dream. Smiling because it makes me happy, sad because it's only a dream. The other one is a horrible nightmare. Both dreams reveal the extreme feelings I have for Dave on both ends of the spectrum. How I love him....how I fear him.

The Dream begins with me at his door. I don't know how I got there, but I show up at his door. He opens the door, his beautiful eyes wide with surprise and happiness. He grabs me and pulls me inside. We kiss urgently, passionately....we fall to a bed that magically happens to be there. He caresses my face and my hair and whispers,

"I'll rape you later ok?....I just want to love you now". I whisper yes, because it's what I want too. I never remember the actual lovemaking in the dream so much as the joy. The joy is incredible.

The Nightmare

This will be very hard to write about. It's the worst and most realistic nightmare I've ever had and it won't go away. I don't know how many times I've had it now, but it's driving me insane.

We're always in the woods, Dave and I. I always enter the dream after I've been tied--never during. Sometimes I'm wearing the olive dress from our first encounter; sometimes I'm nude. Sometimes I'm tied to a stake, my arms behind me, the rest of me tightly tied to the pole with what seems to be miles of rope. There's even rope around my neck, forcing me to stand very straight and erect. Sometimes I'm tied to a tree, my arms tied above my head to a branch, my ankles tightly tied to the tree, preventing me from kicking the large pile of wood at my feet away. There's always a large pile of wood. I watch helplessly as he piles even more, his hands shaking with excitement. Sometimes there's a video camera nearby on a tripod. And oh God, the stick-figures. I never see them right away but when I do I'm filled with dread. Every direction I look in these dream woods, there's those Blair Witch stick figures that were so creepy in the movie. They're everywhere....hanging from the trees. Some large, some small, but there seems to be an infinite amount of them. In the dream where I'm tied to a tree they're even hanging all around me. They always strike me as extremely bad omens. I can't explain why, but who knows with dreams? Who knows why they're even there?

"Dave,....Dave, how did you get these?" I always ask fearfully, but he doesn't answer. He doesn't even seem to see them.

I begin to whimper when he lights a torch. It looks like a large stick with a rag or something at the end. He stands there holding the torch and gazing up at me on top of my pyre of wood. I always seem to be on a pile at least 3 or 4 feet high.

"Do you love me?", he always asks. As many times as I've had the dream, even while the aware part of me is screaming I always answer "yes".

"Will you do anything for me?"

Sobbing I always answer yes again even when I don't want to.

He looks at me with love and lights the wood. I immediately begin to smell smoke and before long I hear the crackle as the flames begin to climb. Before long, I feel uncomfortably warm and try to tell him.

He doesn't listen, just takes pictures of me.

I try again...."Dave!" I say, "C'mon put it out now ok? It's getting hot up here.." Sometimes the smoke begins to drift into my face, making me cough.

When I begin pleading with him to douse the fire, reminding him I'm not supposed to get hurt here, ....that's when the dream becomes truly horrifying. That's when he climbs the wood (obviously there's a side yet untouched by the growing flames) and shoves a pair of my panties into my mouth and tapes them inside. He grins with satisfaction and jumps down to safety while I'm shaking my head frantically--the noises I'm making thru the gag making him smile even more.

I'm trying to calm down. Telling myself, of course he's going to make me sweat it out some. How fun could it be for him if he let me go the second I start getting uncomfortable? No way will he let me burn. He loves me.

He takes more pictures. I'm thinking surely he has plenty by now.

The fire must be getting closer....the smoke is thicker--it's hard to breathe now just thru my nose. The heat is more than uncomfortable now....my skin feels so hot that I begin to struggle harder, though I know it's no use. My only hope is that he'll see my suffering and put and end to this horrible, dangerous game. He sees my suffering all right, and this is almost the scariest part of the whole dream. His smile fades, he stops taking pictures and stands holding the camera loosely, as if he's forgotten about it, and just stares at the flames and at my struggles. He looks transfixed....no longer there...his eyes so blank...so fucking empty. Panicked now, I struggle even harder, thrashing and trying with all my strength to break the ropes although I know it's hopeless. I'm screaming as loudly as my gag allows, which isn't much. What noise I'm able to make is being drowned out by the sound of the fire--getting louder by the second. I'm trying desperately to catch his eye, to snap him out of this....but he seems to look right thru me.

I can see the flames now....Omigod, how did they get so high??? I see Dave through a heat shimmer . His figure is wavering in that illusion, otherwise he isn't moving at all. OH GOD WHY DOESN'T HE MOVE????

The flames are licking at me now....my struggles are no longer to get the attention of the hopelessly mezmerized David. They're now the frantic writhings of any living organism that jerks back instinctively from fire--that element of nature that painfully devours all in its path. But I can't jerk away from it, I'm tied too tightly....I know I'll die in agony long before the ropes that hold me will burn. ..My screams are muffled, I'm sure, but they're terribly loud to my own ears...they don't even sound human as the hungry flames begin to devour my legs. Every breath I manage to draw in is forced back out of me in one agonized scream after another...over and over and over as my flesh slowly cooks and all I can do is helplessly thrash and writhe...and scream.....and scream.

I can't scream anymore....my voice has broken. It doesn't really matter now that I can't scream because the roar of the fire is so loud I'd no longer be heard even without the gag. It was doing no good anyway.

I don't think you're supposed to be able to feel pain in dreams, and perhaps I don't feel a fraction of how much pain I would really feel, but I DO feel pain. My tortured mind must draw upon the memory of every time I've been burned accidentally--by a stove, with a careless cigarette, whatever. I can feel the tape over my face starting to melt. I smell my hair....Oh Christ it's all so fucking real.

Every breath that I'm still desperately trying to pull in thru my nose is too hot....there really isn't much air around me anymore, just this unbearable heat....Am I still alive? There's nothing but this searing heat and smoke and horrible pain....and ohgod I think my blood is boiling inside me.....I can't even see Dave anymore.....I see nothing but this wall of fire. Why did he do this to me? Why can't I just die?.....The stick figures are burning too.....I....can't.....breathe.....the flames have sucked away the last of my oxygen....OOOOHHHHGGAAAAHHD IT HUUURRRRRTS....my tortured mind screams loudly, but the only sound to be heard is the roar of the fire.....

"DAVID NOOOO!!! DON'T LET ME BURN!!!!"

I've woke up screaming that more than once. My husband thinks I'm having nightmares about my ex-husband, an abusive asshole whose name was also David. I guess that's good. He thinks maybe I should see a shrink to find out why I'm suddenly having nightmares about him again. I claim to never remember the details when he questions me. But I do. Oh Jesus, I remember everything.

Dave is coming back..... I've tried to tell him about my nightmare, how horrible it is. He thinks it's cool.

It's not cool. It's not cool at all.....I'm terrified, and Dave is happy about that.

I love you David....Oh...oh god, please don't let me burn.

THE END

....for now