NiGHTMARE ch 7

Nancy had added the sixth pancake to the stack when her father walked into the kitchen, already fully dressed in his uniform. His eyes were half-lidded from sleepiness and bloodshot, the whites of his eyeballs containing a deep pinkish hue.

"Morning." she said to her dad as she started scrubbing out the pan under the sink.

"Morning." her dad echoed, his drowsy eyes gazing down at her curiously. "It's seven in the morning. What are you doing up so early?"

Nancy shrugged and set the cleaned pan aside in the dish rack to dry, then moved the tower of pancakes onto the dining table, which had the plates and utensils already arranged. "I made breakfast." she answered, setting out the bottle of maple syrup.

Nancy's father poured himself a glass of orange juice and pulled out a chair and sat down. He stuck the prongs of his fork through the top two pancakes on the stack and dropped them on his plate. He then took the bottle and drowned his plate in syrup and started cutting up his pancakes and shoveled them into his mouth. Nancy followed suit and slapped herself a cake onto her own plate and began feeding herself syrup-soaked bites.

"Mmph, these are really good Nancy," Donald mumbled between chews before he swallowed, "Thank you."

Nancy couldn't help but smile at her dad's complimenting of her cooking. She didn't exactly cook often, so it was nice to hear his approval of it now.
"What time did you get up?" Donald asked his daughter.

Nancy just shrugged. "Pretty early." she answered. Her voice seemed to give away her facade to her dad, because his fork with a syrupy-soaked morsel impaled onto it froze, hovering just in front of his mouth. He then asked her, "You didn't get any sleep at all, did you?" He said this in a very flat tone, spoken as more of a matter-of-fact statement than a question.

Nancy couldn't answer that to her dad. She just couldn't explain to him the dread of sleep she had felt after her nightmare about sinking into the ground in their backyard like she was caught in quicksand, incapable of pulling herself free. She had just felt so weak and helpless, a feeling that she did not like, did not like at all. Not to mention that spooky little girl with the burned doll and sad blue eyes. Saying it all aloud would make her sound nuts, and that was not the way she wanted her own father to think of her.

So, Nancy just stared down at her plate and meekly shook her head 'no'. She heard her dad sigh her name heavily in the way many parents do when they are disappointed by their child's actions.

"Sorry, I just..." Nancy tried to explain, pressing her fork down on her pancake so the syrup it absorbed was squeezed out like a sponge, "I just couldn't go to sleep."

Her dad sighed again, looking somberly down at his plate as he shoveled down the rest of his breakfast, washing his pancakes down with the rest of his juice. "I know how ya feel," he said, "I didn't sleep to soundly either. Nightmares."

Hearing her dad use that word, "nightmares", sent an icy chill down Nancy's spine. He had nightmares too?

"Well, what did you dream about?" Nancy asked, trying not to let her fright show through her voice.

"Well, it was about about your mother," he told her, running his thumb along the rim of his glass, "It was about the last time I spoke to. I kept yelling at her how selfish she was and how I wished she would go and die, then she just up and vanished right before my eyes. I kept looking all over for her, calling out for her, but I couldn't find her anywhere. She was gone before I ever got the chance to tell her I was sorry."

The hand gripping his glass began shaking, despite how firm he tried to keep it. It was looking like the dam was about to break. Nancy extended her hand to touch her dad's, but he pulled back and collected his dishes and rinsed them off in the sink before she could make contact.

"I gotta go to work now." he sighed, raising his fist to inconspicuously wipe his eyes, then reaching out to grab his gun belt hanging on the hook by the door and fastened the strap around his waist. Nancy felt a hindrance of a smile as he did this; she suddenly remembered how, as a child, she had thought of her father as like a "superhero", because of how he took down bad guys and even had a "cool utility belt".

Donald took a thermos from one of the cupboards and emptied the pot of coffee inside. "You think you'll be okay holding down the fort kiddo?" he asked Nancy as he screwed the thermos back shut. Nancy nodded as she bit off another forkful of pancake.

"You could come down to the station with me, ya know." her dad suggested with a sly grin, but Nancy just laughed half-heartedly and rolled her eyes with a, "No thanks dad, but I think I'd rather spend a whole day doing housework."

When she was little and would have to stay with her dad, she would often go with him to spend the day at the station. Back in those days, being a little kid, she had always found ways of amusing herself, but after a while she got rather bored with making donut castles and playing fifty-two pick-up.
Her dad gave her a kiss on the head, then walked out the front door to his squad car, leaving Nancy in their house alone.

By the time she heard her dad's car roaring away down the street, Nancy finished off her plate, then proceeded to lock the house back up the way she always had to if ever she were left alone in the house.

Nancy then spent the next ten minutes scrubbing, rinsing, and drying her and her father's dishes. After she had completed cleaning the dishes, Nancy paused to rub her right wrist. Her arm was still sore after last night. It had been ever since she had woken up from that nightmare she had and practically flew off the couch like a lunatic. The dull pain in her arm made her think of her dream, of the hand that sprang out from the ground and grabbed her, but she knew when she had hit the floor she landed on her arm, so she thought nothing else of it. But still, Nancy wasn't sure she was ready for any more dreams like that any time soon.

She then took a mug out from the cupboard and reached for the coffee pot, only to find it empty. Nancy scoffed to herself, "Huh, thanks dad." then went to work on making a fresh pot.