The Dream Gift

Mom raised her head and adjusted her glasses with her forefinger as I walked in. She must have been grading the papers of some unfortunate kids. She was a teacher, but at least I was lucky to be old enough to be in college now. It had not been fun being in the same school where my mom had taught. She had been known as pretty strict, and I’d had to hear about it, among other things.

“How was your day?” she politely asked.

“Nothing new,” I said and moved towards the fridge.

“Hmmp…” mom mumbled and moved her attention back to the papers in front of her.

I recognized the tone in her voice. I opened a can of Coke asked: “What did you mean by that?”

“I didn’t say anything,” mom claimed, without raising her gaze from the papers.

“Yes you did.”

“You still don’t have a date, do you?” It wasn’t really a question. Mom had tried to set me up with a neighbor’s daughter, and she must already have heard what happened.

“It wasn’t my fault, damn it. She canceled it and went out with Kyle.”

Mom gave me a disapproving glance. “You didn’t even go to your own homecoming in high school.”

“I asked every damn girl in the school, mom. Even Lizzie, who no-one could stand. Even she said ‘no’.”

“Have you ever kissed anyone, Johnny?” mom asked as I walked towards the stairs.

I just waved my hands in frustration. I hadn’t, actually, but it shouldn’t have been any business of my mother’s.

My sister Jay met me on the stairs. Yeah, that was her actual name. Apparently my parents hadn’t been able to decide between Jessica and Jennifer, so they had settled for that. I couldn’t help blaming them for her turning out a bit weird. She still had that blue stripe in her dark hair, despite mom having hinted she should stop dying it, since now at nineteen she had officially been a respectable adult for a while. She was also so pale she must have been doing her best to stay out of the sun on purpose.

“Another lonely night?” Jay said as she passed me on the stairs.

“Shut up and stop take your panda cosplay elsewhere,” I said, referring to the black circles she had drawn around her eyes again in an attempt to appear cool and extreme. I pushed her as I moved past her. The stupid goth skull shirt Jay was wearing was quite tight, and I could almost definitely feel her perky breasts touching my arm.

I knew it was a pretty sad thing to think about before I had even reached the top of the stairs, but I often got some weird vibes from Jay. She had even smiled strangely at me when she had blown the candles on her birthday.
It might have been just mall-goth pretention, as if she wanted on purpose to be weird and different, but I occasionally had wondered how far it actually went.

Speaking of birthdays, my own birthday was coming up. Ever since we had been kids we had always written each other a letter describing what we would have wanted as a present. More often than not we had been disappointed, since the demands had been more or less unrealistic.

The last time Jay had wanted a silver mirror. I had jokingly asked her if she needed it to check if her reflection showed up in it every day, but despite that I had actually managed to buy her one. It probably was not solid silver, considering the price it had carried in the thrift store, but Jay had liked it. The strange thing was that I had noticed several ripped up letters in her trashcan later. She had obviously been thinking about something different before settling for a reasonably normal gift. Unfortunately she had managed to get rid of the trash before I had taken a closer look at them.

When I got to my room, I got a really weird idea which had been caused by Jay’s strange behavior. I did write it down immediately, like I had occasionally done with some other fantasies I’d had. This time I just happened to be thinking about my birthday letter, so I wrote this one down like it had been a wish in such a letter.

The result had been quite exciting, so my imagination was still running wild. I wrote another fantasy letter, and this one was for mom. Although I certainly wouldn’t have admitted it out loud, I had in fact thought about Jay in that way more than once, but I blamed the weird vibes she was giving for that. I had definitely not thought about mom until now. I wrote down some quite imaginative things about her in this letter. It felt weird, but not weird enough for me to stop until I was done.

There was no way I would let either of them see those letters, of course, although I secretly imagined Jay’s discarded letters having had something similar in them. I thought the details I had written down were too exciting to just rip up, though.

I didn’t actually think Jay or mom would go through my stuff, but I didn’t have any kind of a locked drawer or anything, and just the thought of them getting their hands on these made me feel queasy.

It might have been more sensible to write them on the computer. Jay did want to use it occasionally, but I could have put them in a password protected zip or something. It’s not like there weren’t several of them there already.

Eventually I folded the letters up and shoved them into my wallet. I figured that would be the last place they would have a reason to look in.

It might well have been, if I had not screwed up.

I didn’t even realize it until a week later, when mom came and tossed the wallet on my bed. I immediately started to feel bizarrely both cold and sweaty at the same time.

However, mom just casually said: “Don’t leave your wallet in the pocket unless you want to have it washed, although I’m sure you don’t have any money in there as usual.”

I looked away and drew a deep breath. “Thanks, mom,” I said and watched her leave as quickly as she had arrived.

The momentary relief soon turned back into the same uncomfortable feeling intensified thousandfold when I realized the letters weren’t in my wallet any more. Everything else was there, but they were not. I panicked and leafed through my bills and cards several times, but the letters most definitely were not in there.

I wanted to rush to the cellar where our washing machine was, in case they had somehow fallen amongst the other dirty clothes, but mom would still be there.

I was rolling around on the bed, biting my nails, but nothing special seemed to happen. I finally got the courage to go downstairs, and I could hear the washing machine running in the cellar since the door was still open. The letters were still gone, though, and they must have gone somewhere.

I literally jumped when I felt a light touch of black-glossed lips against my ear, followed by a whisper: “I liked your letter, bro.”

Jay had suddenly appeared behind me. She had always been sneaky, but I couldn’t remember her ever been able to surprise me that badly. Knowing she had taken the letters was an even worse surprise.

“Come on now, Johnny. It was quite fascinating,” my weirdo sister said, and stared at me with her dark-rimmed panda eyes. They were actually supposed to make her look like a vampire, or whatever hell she was trying to be.

“Where’s the other one?” I whimpered in a panicked voice. It was bad enough for Jay to have read hers, but she at least might take it as a joke.

“I gave it to mom, of course, but I told her she shouldn’t open it until later.”

“What? Oh my God! Are you crazy, Jay?”

“Of course, but am I any crazier than you?” She gave me another creepy little kiss on the cheek and added: “It’ll be good fun, trust me.”

I stared at her with my eyes wide and exclaimed: “Maybe it’s a good laugh you, but what do you think mom will think of that letter?”

“Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?” She flashed me a wicked grin and went for the stairs.

—

It was a very long week indeed.