Derik Anderson (Backstory)

I made sure to cough into my elbow. That’s what Mama always told me, always cough into your elbow. She taught me about how germs work and how they’re everywhere all the time. So when I got sick she told me that I picked up a bad germ somewhere. Like a hitchhiker. And now it’s traveling around inside of me and making me cough.

Daddy says he’s not afraid of any germs. Except he says “I ain’t afraid of no germs.” Mama always glares at him when he says that because it’s not proper grammar. But she laughs while she glares at him. I’m sitting on Daddy’s lap today while Mama goes to get me cough medicine. The cough medicine doesn’t fix my sickness but it does make me feel better. It makes my throat stop itching.

Mama sure is taking a long time. It’s been almost an hour. She said she’d be back soon. But maybe she’s going to bring us a surprise. Like pizza. We haven’t had pizza in a while. We don’t have enough money because I’m sick all the time.

I would like pizza.

Dad is a big man. He is very comfy to sit on. Nice and warm. I think I’ll go to sleep.

In my dream, Mommy is talking to a man. But this man is talking really loudly, like he’s angry, even though Mama is only saying nice things.

“What’s in the bag?” the man says.

“Just some cough medicine for my son,” Mama says, her voice shaking. I want to hug her, or maybe push the bad man away, but I can’t do or say anything. I’m just a watcher.

My Mama gives the man the bag, and he searches through it. He finds the bottle of cough medicine and throws it on the ground. The thick red liquid seeps into the black of the street. Like blood. Maybe now he’ll let my Mama go. Maybe now he’ll leave her alone.

“Is this all you got?” He says another word, but I can’t tell what it is. I’ve never heard it before evn though I’m eight and Mama says I have a big vocabulary. It sounds like war. But it must be a mean word, because now Mama is crying.

“Please,” she says. “Let me go home to my son. Please. Let me go.”

The man throws my mom’s bag onto the floor and a whole bunch of stuff spills out. Like tissues and that kind of thing.

This just makes Mama cry more. And she goes to pick up the stuff. She picks up the half-empty cough medicine bottle, and the tissues, and puts them back in her bag. She stands up and wipes the tears off her face, and I wonder if this dream has a happy ending. Most of my dreams do. They have happy endings where my mom and dad hug me and everyone is happy.

But not this time. This time I wake up crying with the image of cough syrup mixed with blood in my head.

Daddy tells me it’s okay. It was just a dream.

But Mama still isn’t back yet.

I run my fingers over the smudged pencil. Eight years ago I wrote this. When Mom was alive, and Dad was happy. When my biggest problem was a common cold. Before TSC. Before I became a killer. Before I knew I was psychic.

Before I knew that this dream wasn’t a dream.

It was no nightmare. But oh, how I wish it was.

No, not a nightmare this time.

This time, it was real.