This is a fictional short story written as an experiment. It’s an online draft of something I’m developing offline and is being posted as it takes shape.
Introducing “Darkness Comes to Kingswell”
This is an experiment. It’s an online draft of a fictional short story I am writing specifically for my blog. There are no assumptions about its quality just as there are no promises. I’m posting it as I draft it. That means it’s possible you will see disparities as it develops. That’s normal since the way I write is to regurgitate what comes to mind as it forms while going back as necessary to modify previous content to accommodate the storyline. I may or may not make those corrections as I move forward with this. I will update the offline version of the text, however, in order to keep it coherent in that form, and that’s because I don’t know if this will only be a blog thing or if I will include it in future publishing endeavors. Once the entire story is complete, and only if significant modifications have been made to it over time, I may repost the entire thing in its final form.
Part I
I drove to Kingswell’s General Store to grab a few necessities. While I would have to go all the way to Marshall if I needed groceries or anything beyond the paltry supplies available inside the tiny once-was-a-home shack that served as Kingswell’s only supply depot, all I was really looking for were a few sweets to subdue my craving while I finished my latest novel. I had my habits when writing. Don’t all writers? Sweets happened to be my weakness. For the last few pages of whatever text I was spewing, Twinkies, Hostess CupCakes, Mrs. Baird’s Apple Pies (or were they called Fruity Apple Pies?), and a short list of other goodies had to be on hand. That was my way. As both my agent and my publisher knew, it had to be my way if I was expected to finish a book, although I very much doubted they knew or were concerned with the specifics. With seven published novels under my belt and a generous advance as enticement for the latest, I didn’t need additional proof to show the sweets worked. Brody, my agent, and his counterpart at Penguin probably didn’t give a damn what it took; all they knew was that the process worked.
Part II
“Hey, Dad, how are you today?” I asked.
“I’m alright I guess. I’m not feeling too well is all.” That came as no surprise. My father’s health had been failing for many years. That was a major reason I decided to move out here after Beth’s accident. Her job had kept us in Dallas prior to that, so once that particular fetter was removed, albeit brutally, there was no reason I couldn’t relocate nearer my parents. He continued, “But I’m still kickin’ and can’t complain about it. What’re you up to today?”
“I’m at Joe’s and thought I’d call to see if you needed anything. If so, I can run by your place on my way home.”
“You’re already in your car, aren’t you?” he asked. How I hated that he knew me so well.
“Um, no. Well, yes I am,” I stuttered. “I’m about to leave though.”
Part III
I opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch (or is that ‘into’ the porch when it’s enclosed?). With the four six packs of beer and a fresh supply of confections pulling my arm in what I thought must be a most unnatural way, I approached the main door, unlocked it, and stepped inside. The rush of cool air-conditioned breeze that greeted me was most welcomed. It was hot outside; quite hot, in fact, although it was by no means very hot by Texas standards. It was summer after all. Nevertheless, I took great comfort in the onslaught of cold air pushed against my sweaty skin by both the ceiling fans and air conditioner.
After making my way to the kitchen—a room I’d only recently completed in my continuing upgrade of Carr Beholden—I put the beer in the refrigerator. Before I closed the door, I grabbed one of the lukewarm Coronas and put it in the freezer where it would more rapidly cool off. Immediate consumption of alcohol was blazingly fresh on my mind despite knowing I’d soon be eating far too many processed desserts. I then turned and dumped the bag of sugary goodies on the island behind me. Only with full view of the sweets spread out in that manner did I even realize I’d gone far overboard in preparing for my end-of-book fix. It didn’t matter; at least I knew I was prepared. I grabbed a package of Hostess chocolate CupCakes and set it aside before sweeping the entire mass into a pile that I immediately tossed into a cheap basket pulled from under the counter. I set that aside, made special note of where the first victim of my sweet tooth was carefully laid, and left the kitchen. My laptop was in the office and would obviously be needed if this evening was to be productive. I jaunted down the hall and into my working space, unplugged the Dell from its power and network connections, then returned to the kitchen and retrieved my insult to diabetics everywhere. Chocolate would kick off the event to be followed by the next item that grabbed my attention.
Part IV
No amount of contemplation could deter my horror. Something was terribly wrong with existence even if I was the only one who knew it. I immediately reached into the side pocket of my shorts and retrieved my cell phone. A quick inspection showed it was but a few minutes after ten in the morning. I had to call Mom and Dad. I had to know life continued outside Carr Beholden. I dialed the phone and waited patiently while the sound of perpetual ringing filled my ear.
This is rather silly, I suddenly thought. My panic was based on a dream. Sure, it was a nightmare if it was anything, but it was nonetheless a product of my own drunken imagination fueled by significant amounts of processed sugary goods. Whom was I kidding? Of course the world was still out there, and no, I doubted it had changed because I dreamed something bizarre.
Part V
“Holy shit!” The sentiment screamed out of my mouth and I immediately regretted its abruptness. And yet I continued, “What the fuck is that about? When did you hear that, George?” The tremble in his face told me all I needed to know. He was terrified by the unnatural truth that had been revealed. He’d absently whistled a children’s tune that he’d dreamed the night before, yet he’d done so because he thought only he had dreamed it and that it was nothing more than a weird nightmare. Why would he possibly think otherwise?
“I dreamed it, Davey.” His voice betrayed his horror as though he’d done something so wrong as to be unforgivable. I was certain it was fear of the unknown, fear of the unexplainable, fear of what simply should not be true. But it was real fear, and it swept around the room in waves that none of us could have denied.
I stepped over to where Mom stood in disbelief and grabbed a few napkins from the tray. She was barely aware she’d dropped her glass and was standing over shards of it that listed in a pool of tea. She looked down as I knelt in front of her and began cleaning up the mess. “Don’t worry about it, Mom. Really. Go sit down.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie . . .” she barely whispered as she stared at me.
“Seriously, Mom, go sit down. Don’t worry about this.” At the same time, Margaret dashed to the kitchen and returned with a towel to help soak up the remaining beverage as I picked up the broken glass and placed it in a napkin. “Thanks, Margaret.” She nodded but did not speak. When I looked at her face and studied it for a moment, the same terror I saw in George became evident there as well. She was overwhelmed with fear that stemmed from the impossible. She knew the pat-a-cake song too. She knew it because she dreamed it like the rest of us. How far had this gone? I wondered. How far . . .
While my mother stepped over the mess and took a seat next to my father who’d already taken a spot on the couch, Helene remained standing in the doorway to the hall with a blank stare on her face. I glanced toward Dad who was comforting Mom as she stared into space in bewilderment. He was whispering to her what I assumed to be reassurances, words of safety and security he undoubtedly knew he could no longer guarantee. We all were suddenly aware that our world had indeed changed.
“Did all of you dream it last night?” I asked.
Part VI
As I again looked at the faces around me and saw the blatant fear that defined each of them, I wondered to myself if this was all that was necessary to break our society. If our gadgets didn’t work, if our technology was rendered useless, were we once again the very savages we’d tried so hard to prove we were not? Was it all to be superstition controlled by terror of the unknown? I clicked the remote and turned the television and satellite receiver off before reaching down and turning the weather radio off. I stared into my mother’s face and realized I’d never seen it distorted in such a way. It had changed so much in so short a time. It was only fifteen or twenty minutes ago when Old George began whistling that tune. Could the world really change in twenty minutes? For all of us except Helene, that idea had been very real during the Cold War. We knew it would take the push of a single button to end civilization. But this was different. There had been no nuclear exchange. There had been no explosions at all that I knew of. There was only an unusual dream shared with all humanity, and that followed by an unusual weather event that seemed to defy what we thought we knew about the atmosphere. Would these two seemingly unrelated events, neither of them normal in any way, suddenly redefine life as we knew it? Looking at Mom’s face and seeing how it had already changed her, I was certain I had my answer.
In my heart, I was terrified. For me at least, the horror was as much not having information as it was the dream—at least the implications of the dream. It had driven a blade of fear deep within me without ever having to threaten me directly. Is that all it would take? All you needed to do was break our technology, throw a bit of mysticism at us, and tinker with the weather and voilà! You’d have the perfect recipe for the end of the world. I glanced at Dad as he held my mother closely and tried to comfort her with reassurances he himself didn’t believe, and then I turned and looked at Old George, Helene and Margaret still huddled together in the doorway, and I was immediately forced to concede the point. We were nothing more than scared savages hiding behind our scientific wizardry and electronic devices. We were barely out of caves and animal hides and already thought of ourselves as masters of the universe. We could be thrown back to our primitive roots simply by taking away the things we used to separate us from the big bad world: information and technology. If we can’t explain it, it must be metaphysical or worse. If we can’t scan it, report on it, catalog it, categorize it, dissect it, and otherwise study it, we won’t face it. My fear suddenly leaped into my throat at the realization of our predicament.
Part VII
I followed everyone inside and dropped the towels on the bench. At the same time, I pulled the door shut behind me and leaned back on it. For the briefest of moments, my position “holding up the door” reminded me of a very different yet similar experience more than three years earlier. Beth and I were attending one of those hoity-toity book-signing parties for my novel Evolution’s My Gig. It had won the Hugo Award for Best Novel only a month earlier and the Nebula Award for Best Novel two months before that, so Brody and Penguin organized an over-the-top shindig in celebration. Both my agent and publisher’s representative flew in from New York to attend. It was a perfectly dreadful event full of Dallas’ elite—or wannabe elite. We spent several hours listening to boring tales from rich schleps that probably had no intention of reading my book but wanted desperately to be associated with a local author who’d had more than a single novel show up on store shelves. It was only my fourth published work and the fifth was already taking shape, but anyone who receives both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel, especially for the same book, is a big deal in writing circles. That meant a celebration was a must. I only agreed after convincing Penguin to make it a charity event instead of a hobnobbing thrash.
Beth spent much of the evening playing second fiddle as I signed copies of my novel and spoke ad nauseam about my writing with people who didn’t care but asked because it was the polite thing to do. We both wanted nothing more than to leave. We even tried sneaking out on two occasions. Brody had other ideas however, and he was notoriously good at locating me no matter where in the room I’d slinked. I stood listening to some tedious older gentleman as he told me I’d inspired him to try his hand at writing. He was explaining the story idea he had; it was coming out as a tiring mess. Beth clung to my arm and pretended to be interested. Just as the man started to delve into some unremarkable detail of his life that he felt proved he had a story worth telling, my beautiful wife, always the thinker, began our second attempt to escape by feigning a touch of illness—”Probably from the heat and a bit too much drink,” she offered with a smile—and politely asked if I would be so kind as to escort her to the balcony for some fresh air. I was only too happy to oblige.
Part VIII
“Monica! Richard! Mr. Lloyd!” The shout was bloodcurdling. It was Margaret yelling—no—screaming from the living room. I was too entranced as I stood with my face near the windows to realize I’d ignored Helene’s call. When first heard, I’d assumed it was meant for Old George and his wife because their daughter was frightened—and rightfully so—by the sudden approach of the darkness outside. It had come upon us so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that anyone as young as their daughter would be frightened by it. It scared me and I was almost three times her age. I hadn’t considered the possibility that another reason existed. Helene was young and inexperienced (although I realized even then, there was no experience capable of explaining what was happening). A teenager living through such an event would undoubtedly panic, and it was that assumption I used to disregard her cry.
Margaret’s voice literally screaming for all of us, on the other hand, shattered that assumption and embarrassed me in some way for thinking I already knew what was happening. I nearly shoved Mom and Dad to the ground when I turned from the window and dashed full speed down the hall. Whatever was happening outside and whatever I thought I might be able to see out there could wait. Her voice from the other end of the house was like a sledgehammer to the heart and meant something more than just “Hey, come take a look-see.” As I ran to the living room, I could hear my parents following me with near abandon. Had I stopped they probably would have run right into me—or right over me. We all knew Margaret was not given to uncontrolled outbursts. On the contrary, she was prim and proper and would have to be pushed to great lengths to abandon that nature.
Part IX
I stepped across the hall and into the kitchen. Instead of heading to the refrigerator or cabinets, I turned to the left and walked to the window instead. It was a large view of the entire northern end of the screened-in porch. I reached the window and stood quietly looking out. There was nothing to see as I’d expected. It was complete darkness. But as I looked closer, I began to realize there was something different about this view than what was visible from the sunroom on the other end of the house. I could see the furniture on the porch outside. I could see the screen walls enclosing the entire west side of the house. I had to strain to see these things, but I could see them nevertheless. I found that in stark contrast with the sunroom where I was unable to see even the nearest tree that stood only a few feet away from the windows. How can I see what’s on the porch? I couldn’t answer my own thought. All I could tell was that the porch was barely visible in the darkness.
I leaned close to the window as I reached out and turned on the outside lights. The porch lit up just as I’d expect it to do on a dark night. The only major difference was that I could see nothing beyond the screen walls. I would normally be able to see out into the trees and toward the lake, but none of that was visible. Instead, there was only darkness hovering right outside the screen barriers. I turned to my left and to my right and had no difficulty seeing the porch itself. Everything appeared to be normal. I’d stepped to the window first because my curiosity was driving me insane. I needed to see the darkness again, to see if it had changed in the short time since I stood so close to the windows in the sunroom. I hadn’t expected the porch to be visible; it was. I hadn’t expected to be able to see everything on the porch with no difficulty; I could. I knew when I walked into the kitchen that I intended to test the porch lights, but that was based on assuming the porch would be filled with whatever was out there; it wasn’t. I stared out the window as my confusion grew by leaps and bounds. If the darkness is a cloud of some kind, it has to have passed through the screens and be on the porch . . . but it’s not. My own thoughts bothered me because they revealed a greater mystery and proved this was no ordinary storm even if it was just a very dark one.
Part X
Before I could engross myself once again with the view outside the window, George’s ever-so-loud voice boomed through the kitchen. “What’re y’all lookin’ at?”
I replied, “The porch.” I didn’t turn around. I could tell he was standing just inside the kitchen door. “There’s something different about the porch.”
“Whatcha mean?” he asked as he came to join us.
“I mean there’s something different. Look at it. Whatever that is out there, it’s not coming through the screens onto the porch. It’s weird.”
He stopped beside me and peered through the window. He was such a large man that I felt intimidated by his presence. I knew he was a gentle giant, but he dwarfed me and everyone else. I was quite aware of his mass standing beside me when he spoke. “Huh. Would y’all look at that. Now ain’t that the strangest thing you ever did see. I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it. How’s that possible?”
His rhetoric aside, George was voicing precisely what I was thinking, and I was quite certain it was also what my mother was thinking. The lights on the porch shone as brightly as ever and bathed the whole west side of the house in bright light. Had there not been an obvious discrepancy floating around right outside the screens, the view we were looking at would have been completely normal for a dark moonless night. Except it wasn’t night. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and checked the time. It was a few minutes before two in the afternoon. The view out the kitchen window didn’t support that truth. I slipped the cell phone back into my pocket.
“Why don’t we go out and take a gander?”
Part XI
We stood at the door leading to the screened-in porch in silence. None of us knew what to expect. Part of me felt it would be nothing; part of me felt it would be Armageddon. Neither of those parts seemed to be talking to each other. Regardless of the disparity in my own person, I watched my father make certain the pistol was ready for use, watched Old George step up next to me so he would be ready to put his entire mass into closing the door if needed, and watched Margaret and my mother stand side by side in the doorway that led from the hall to the living room. The thought of them as a cheerleading squad almost made me burst into uncontrolled laughter, the sick kind the brain spits out when declaring it’s in way over its head, but I was able to subdue it before it bubbled to the surface. I didn’t like what we were doing. That didn’t change my resolve in thinking we needed to do it.
My father nodded to me and I assumed he was indicating he was ready. I turned and looked at George and he too nodded. I wondered then in the back of my mind when we had decided to go with silent signals, but again I ignored the thought and turned back to the door. I lightly touched the handle. I wasn’t sure if I expected it to be hot, cold, or something altogether different. It was none of those things. I then reached up and unlocked the keyless security bolt. Nothing happened, so I unlocked the dead bolt. Again the world didn’t crash down on us, so I finally unlocked the handle. I knew then nothing was holding the door shut except a quick turn of the knob. I waited for a moment expecting something. In that second of time, I questioned the logic of what we were doing. As a writer, I prided myself in conquering the many aspects of a scenario in order to provide my audience with a realistic narrative. Only with the door unsecured did I realize that gift had failed me when agreeing to this plan. There were concerns we had not discussed. What if there was no oxygen outside? What if there were toxic gasses? What if it was a pure vacuum? What if . . .
Stop it! I thought to myself. This is ridiculous. There are a great many reasons not to do what we’re about to do, but there equally are as many reasons to do it. We can’t survive in here forever. We have to know something more than what we know now. The only thing that awaits us inside is eventual starvation, each other’s company, and the possibility of more terror-filled dreams . . . and possibly the same fate as Brogan. We have to know what’s going on out there. We have to know if it’s safe. We have to know.
Part XII
The entryway felt too small as we waited. The door was closed and locked yet I feared that was insufficient to restrain whatever hell had been unleashed on Earth. I thought of what happened to the screen door as I looked at the large solid-wood structure that stood between us and what was outside. I wondered if that barrier would be torn from its hinges as easily as the other had been. My hand rested tentatively on the handle. I feared it might start turning as some unspeakable thing tried to open it. Considering the outside door had been ripped from its frame with no effort whatsoever, I felt more than a bit silly for thinking the main door would be treated any differently. As if the horror a few inches away had suddenly gained some semblance of manners and civility. Yet my hand resting on the metal knob communicated something else to me; it was quickly becoming ice cold. It was as if the other side had been submerged in liquid oxygen. I pulled my hand away quickly as the chill became uncomfortable. I didn’t think there was any doubt what was right outside.
I mumbled as I stepped back, “It’s getting colder. The door knob . . . it’s getting colder.” I wasn’t sure why I repeated myself but was once again subjected to an internal smirk as a quote from Stephen King’s Storm of the Century came to mind: “Born in vice, say it twice . . . eh, Davey? At least twice.” I certainly had my vices. While I restrained the sick laugh that welled up within me, the image leaped into my mind of Andre Linoge staring down young Davey Hopewell and his parents in the middle of the town hall during that particular expedition into Mr. King’s imagination. The repercussions of that scene in stark contrast with the horror we had been thrust into made short work of whatever enjoyment I found in the memory of that fictional tale. Would I fare as well as my namesake from the film? I was shaken to my core by the possible answers to that question.
Part XIII
As we approached the end of the hall, Mom and Helene backed out of the large open space and glanced in our direction. The looks on their faces were of sheer terror. Even as protective rage welled up within me, my own tears blurred my vision in response to the look on my mother’s face. It was almost unbearable. No, it was unbearable in ways that defy description. One should never witness such horror reflected back in the expression of a parent. It’s as unforgivable as it is unimaginable. It distorted her in some way that could not be accepted. It struck me repeatedly as I ran toward them.
“Richard!” she screamed again. Her voice had gone up an octave despite my thinking such a thing was impossible. The sound of it was like a blade cutting through flesh. It was my flesh, and it cut me again and again and again.
Helene was beyond words and simply cried out in sharp tones of emotional agony. She rested her back and head against my mother as though she were drained of energy, and then she fell silent. I could see her body wracked by seizures of grief before she fell limp. Whatever they were looking at, it was so dreadful that it pushed her mind over the edge and made her unable to cope. I suspected she’d passed out. My mother held her close and continued backing into the hallway. Her own gaze bounced repeatedly between us and whatever hell was taking place in the living room. She was dragging the teenager.
We reached their position in the hallway and gave our best effort not to run them down in our reckless abandon. My father slid on the floor and stopped near the two, promptly wrapped his arms around them, and spun them toward the kitchen. That put his body between them and the living room. With one quick glance over his shoulder, he immediately started sidestepping down the hall in the direction we’d come from.
I turned the corner through the doorway and froze. While the others passed behind me, I stood motionless. My eyes couldn’t have been ripped away from what I was seeing. I looked first toward the fireplace and then toward the corner of the room where Brogan had been lying. “Jesus Christ . . .” The words slipped from my mouth without a thought.
Part XIV
“Why’d you come back, Vey?”
My tunnel vision began to clear as my mind did the same. I opened my eyes and was immediately blinded by overhead lights. Lifting my hand to block them, I blinked and squinted trying to see clearly. I thought I was hearing Beth’s voice. She sounded different than I’d ever heard her before. I couldn’t explain what made it different; I just knew it was. And behind that voice, or below it, or around it, was the voice of children. Many of them.
Beth’s voice continued, “I don’t understand why you didn’t listen to me. Why did you come back? Didn’t you believe me when I said you should go?”
My eyes adjusted to the brightness. As my vision returned, I realized I was in the sunroom. The lights in the ceiling shone brightly in my face. I opened and closed my eyes repeatedly to get accustomed to the room. If I was really hearing Beth’s voice, she sounded irritated—and something else. And why could I hear children singing? Or were they reciting a pat-a-cake rhyme? That thought horrified me.
“Didn’t you believe me when I said you needed to go? I thought you’d listened to me when you left, but now you’re back. I don’t understand why. Why did you come back after I told you to leave?”
I became certain it was Beth’s voice. It surrounded me. Although she was clearer and louder than the sounds coming from the children, I finally understood why she sounded different. There was a weakness in her tone, a strain of some kind. Her voice even seemed hollow in a way I couldn’t put my finger on. Am I dreaming again? I wondered. I immediately sat up and looked around. I was indeed in the sunroom. I knew I had to be in a dream. That room surely was filled with the darkness that had come to call on us. This glass-riddled room at the east end of Carr Beholden must already belong to the devil that poured in through the fireplace and porch door.
I glanced around me. Just as they were before, the windows showed nothing but blackness filled with unblinking eyes. They floated around me and stared with growing hunger that I could feel on my body and in my soul. I was weak and afraid. I felt vulnerable. My previous experience in this place felt safer by comparison. Those ravenous eyes stayed away from me then, or at least away from the windows. They were floating out in the distance somewhere. But this time they were right outside. They hovered around the glass as though the bodies that owned them were standing up next to the house. Shouldn’t they be further away from me? Please make them get away from me . . .
Part XV
I tried to calm down before speaking again. I took a deep breath, mental though it might have been, and said, “Okay, Beth, I’m sorry, but I could use some of those truths now.”
“Our time is short but I’ll tell you what I can. You must listen then you must leave.” She sounded like she was dying. Her voice was weaker and more distant as each moment passed. My dream-wife was dying. The thought upset me.
“No one knows where the darkness came from,” she began, “They simply have always been. It’s more ancient than time itself . . .”
I stared at the unblinking eyes that hung motionless right outside the window as they stared back. An occasional scratch against the glass kept reminding me of their presence. While I’d felt all of the eyes were watching me as in the first dream, this particular set looking at me—into me had a far more devastating impact. They weren’t floating around out there looking into the house but perhaps not at me specifically. No, these eyes were locked on my position, locked on my eyes, and their visual grip on me never wavered. And the scratching as though intentionally trying to frighten me . . . It was working.
Darkness fills the void
Mementos die
Darkness kills the worldsThere was something in the voices of those children that could be felt in a way I didn’t understand. The pat-a-cake song was somehow becoming physical and reaching out. I thought briefly my head was beginning to hurt, but Beth’s voice diverted my attention.
Part XVI
I was screaming when I woke up. I sat upright and wailed as though my life depended on it. My own screams sounded terrible to me. They reminded me of George’s bellowing as he was ripped from the porch, and of Margaret’s bloodcurdling pleas before she was muffled by . . . By the unforgivable. I was even reminded of Mosko’s horrific whimpers and painful howls as he disappeared into the darkness. My own voice sounding like those events was a terrible thing.
Tears streamed from my eyes and the wetness of them comforted me somehow by confirming I still felt something. It was something the darkness hadn’t taken from me. At least not yet. Still, darkness was all around me. It took me a moment to realize it was a lack of light and not some ethereal evil coming to visit endless death on me. I shook my head as if trying to free myself from confusion. There was only a small amount of light in the darkness, but it was enough for me to see I was in the office. And then something stood over me and reached toward me. I screamed again even as it spoke.
“Dave! Stop it! You had a nightmare. It’s your father. Calm down.” He grabbed my shoulders and shook me several times to get my attention as he continued, “Stop it! Right now! Dave, it’s your father! You’re okay!”
I started laughing. My own ears heard it as a sick demented laugh of the hopeless mixed with the cackle of the mentally ill. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. My father’s face was very near mine as he looked at me in bewilderment. I knew he was wondering why I was laughing. I wasn’t sure it was enough of an explanation when I said, “No, Dad, we’re not okay. We’re not going to be okay.” Before he could say anything, I added, “Where’s Mom? Where’s Mom!?”
Part XVII
How could we have known? I keep asking myself that question as though it provides an answer. I’ve always hated it when someone answers a question with a question, yet now I find myself using that same cheap exit strategy in an attempt to excuse the inexcusable. How could we have known?
The history of histories is replete with dreamers. Our particular species, Homo sapiens, once believed it was a holy and spiritual experience that no other creature shared. Nightmares were thought of as direct-dialed calls from the devil himself while most dreams were so overly magical and incomprehensible that they had to be nothing short of gentle touches from whatever god or gods we worshipped. It was by those primitive standards we found it sacrilegious to consider that any other beast could dream. We assumed in our simple way they didn’t have souls as we did. They didn’t pray. They didn’t know what we knew. And yet they did dream. We all dreamed.
As we grew in our understanding of life, the simplest things proved our early assumptions incorrect. Our beloved family pet lying at our feet whispering and wiggling in its sleep showed us that the experience was shared among many species right here on Earth. The most basic creatures demonstrated in sleep what had long been the purview of humanity: dreaming. We all did it. All life above a certain level of complexity did it.
And we all did it because it was part of who we were. It was no more an intentional act than it was a violent one. So how could we have known? Honestly, we’d grown up doing it, so how could we have possibly known that our actions were inflicting such horrific violence on others? I can’t see that we could have known. And as the dream-Beth said, even had we known, the experience of dreaming had grown so overwhelmingly delightful so early in our development that it became part of a shared genetic heritage passed down as part of our very being. We didn’t go to sleep at night and subconsciously decide we wanted to dream. We didn’t even decide consciously. It just happened. It was a part of who we were, so it just happened on its own.
