In my dream, I am my mother.
I’m laughing, walking around with my friends, candy apples in our hands. I bite into the apple, my teeth penetrating the candy to the fruit, sweet and crisp, the juice running down my hand.
We’re walking past the kiddie rides, the shrieks of small children echoing throughout, the sun setting over Lakeside. All of the colors so much brighter than in my youth.
There is a snap in perspective, and we’re closer to our goal, further along the dusty path. Another snap, and we’re standing at the foot of a giant roller coaster. Michael, my mother’s father, is at the foot of the coaster, pulling the gears. Another, and we’re on it, laughing as it pulls away.
My mother screams in pleasure as it turns, twists, and I watch, anxious for some reason, the smell of rotting meat beginning to pervade. My mother’s screams change to shrieks of outright terror as I watch the man behind her, whose face was at first a blur, turn into the Lofa. It begins to tear into her, its long hair caressing her like a lover as it pulls wet, meaty chunks up and out of her neck, her shoulder, her dark hair coated in blood and viscera.
I wake up from the dream, my mother above my bed.
Her eyes turn dead white, and she screams.
I scream with her.