Alfredo Eladio Moreno
I awoke without a headache. No dream either. The light shone through the cracks in the window blinds—hanging, covering large windows on adjacent walls. I liked when the morning sunlight hit my hand, like a warm shower. The smell of coffee emanated from the kitchen, Mexican pork sausage and flour tortillas, too.
I had had a spate of nightmares the days prior, and every morning after each one I awoke with a headache. Some mornings I’d wake up, eyes still closed, and feel my heart thumping and racing, like a car that had been left turned on overnight. Throughout the day the nightmares tortured my mind, interrupting the flow of my day with consistent reminders of what I had dreamed. Quickly I learned I found relief when I was able to write them down in detail in my journal.
I reached over to the nightstand and grabbed it. All my journals were black but they varied in size over the years. There was a time I’d journaled for enjoyment, not necessity. I had six or seven I’d filled since middle school; this one and the most recent contained entries of my nightmares. A pen hung by its clip on the elastic band of the journal. Writing in my journal became a morning ritual.
With thumb and pointer finger I grabbed the pen from its end and motioned it away from the band. When it untethered the strap recoiled. The morning outside was quiet enough except the mourning doves that I could hear the whimsical-sounding boing it made when it slingshot back. I pulled on the band and opened the journal. I held it upright to examine a piece of hair on the cover page—mine, deceivingly black except the portion lit by a beam of sun that revealed its true hue, dark brown. It looked much shorter than my hair now. I needed a haircut.
I set down the notebook on the duvet and swept off the hair with the border of my hand pinky-side. A sigh like a wave swelled from the base of my chest and touched corners of my lungs I had not imagined I could feel. It crashed in my head, carving euphoria into my temples pulse after pulse, and my eyelids melted. My back felt heavier.
Without a headache this morning, I’d have nothing to write about. I had only dreamed as vividly as I did when it was accompanied with a headache.
The first one, months back, came after I saw the eagle made of gold. A storm subsumed a land mass—enormous, an entire continent made of silver. A swath on the storm’s edge retreated, revealing a pocket from which emerged an eagle, made of gold with ruby eyes. It flew overhead the silver-laden landscape, peering below, searching for something, I thought. Then, emerging from below, five-thousand arrows with tips on fire assailed the eagle. It out maneuvered most, but together the arrows created a fireball that heated the air around the eagle. The tips of its wings became slack, lame, melting from the heat. The eagle began to lose altitude and its flight became turbulent and rickety.
The eagle jittered, an arrow nipped at its wing, slicing open its metal flesh. A glob of molten gold fell to the earth below. Two, three golden feathers fell landward.
Finally, an arrow had struck its chest. The eagle screeched. In my sleep I felt my body tense. I screamed, empty vibrations ringing through my throat and ears. Witnessing this dream was like looking at the inside of a house through a window, a transparent and solid barrier that insulated outside from inside. Why?, I had written in my journal. I continued:
To keep the cold in and warm out. Because opposites and entropy existed and if the cold and warmth touched each other they would cease being cold and warmth—silver and gold, like the eagle and the landscape—and neutralize each other, though becoming one they would lose their unique essence which justified the other’s existence, creating the differential which validated and justified work and growth: life.
The gold eagle crashed into the silver earth. Unbridled motion through the sky had been reduced to immobility. I was sad for the golden eagle, but I knew it didn’t die. I felt assured by a thought I had, still dreaming, which I took as fact, that the eagle survived but was merely minorly injured. It was too strong to be mortally wounded. I wrote, I witnessed a god. The winds of the storm swallowed the eagle and the scene playing in my head.
When I had woken up I felt the headache. A calid wind like the sun’s breath brushed over my body. Ugh, I groaned. Had someone hammered a large stake into the top right of my head? I rubbed it, in vain. That was how the dreams and the headaches had begun.
Since having the dreams, my thoughts generated ideas like the following which I took to be truths.
I was witness to these events as if I were sitting at the theater watching a movie, except I was unconscious, and the moving picture was in my mind and not projected onto a screen. I was the only person watching this film. It hadn’t been made for anyone else to view. It was made by me for me, I had surmised.
I felt I was learning how the human mind worked, its essential machinery and wiring. I had written these ideas in my journal, half out of fascination at my own mind and half out of necessity, since unless I wrote them down, they would jolt me throughout the day. I had developed an obsession I didn’t ask for. They would replay in my mind and distract me from the world outside me and the progression of the day. I started feeling self-conscious about the effect it was having on me and my relationships, because I couldn’t focus on what my friends were saying or on my work, only on the dream I had had the night before.
When I started writing, I thought it was a waste of effort, but it liberated me from the narrow window of consciousness in which I had found myself trapped. The journal was made for this, I had thought.
I leafed through the pages reading my thoughts about the eagle. Nostalgia set in. Without the headaches, would I ever dream as vividly again? I can’t believe I was beginning to miss my dreams, the headaches, my captor, my lover. I had found relief at a cost.
Sometimes the dreams were less intense, yes. Like when I saw only blackness but heard a voice say, I am here. Chilling, I thought, but otherwise less meaningful than the golden eagle, the silver landscape, and the arrows afire. Who was the voice? What was the voice? What did it mean it was here? Where, exactly? I ventured that it must have been the eagle I saw in the first dream, speaking to me and challenging me to find it, mired among who knows what else swirled in the storm which had produced it and then consumed it.
Other times my dreams were less obscure, taking objects directly from the reality around me. (Though, it’s odd to consider people as objects even when they are merely projections, mere simulacra of themselves, in my mind. That’s brilliant, I 4 thought. I wrote it down on a clean line in my journal, even as I grappled with the thought that I might never have to write in it again.)
I flipped back through the pages to find the entry about the boy in the ocean. It was written in blue ink. I had taken to using black ink but probably my pen dried or I lost it and the only one I had left was blue. The entry began in the middle of the page.
The cries of seagulls rang in my ears. Waves crashed on the sand. Bright sun blinded my eyes—my mind’s eyes. My vision hazed but I could make out the horizon and the vast ocean in front of me. Behind me, the sounds of cars, music, and people.
A boy who looked no more than ten years old was naked and ran into waters ahead of him. At the shoreline the water inched across the sand slowly, gently. Further in the water, the waves crashed and released droplets of water like vehicles hitting pavement after launching into the air when they go fast over a speed bump. After crashing they receded diagonally, leaving a V-shaped gap that cut into the water. These weren’t regular waves. I read in my journal that I felt ballooning anxiety as he ran into the ocean, the boy. He had a wide smile on his face, and he laughed.
The sand beneath his feet collapsed, and the boy lost his footing. He fell forward into the shin-high waters, and his head would have remained above water if the diagonal waves had not just crashed on him, receding quickly. The boy vanished.
He had been caught by the rhythm of the waves. They crashed and he crashed with them, they receded and so did he. The ocean and the boy were one, and the ocean was ready to take him, forever. Had the boy known the ocean’s intentions? Whenever he could, the boy raised his head out of the water and gasped for air. To no avail, he flailed his arms trying to reach shore. He was caught in a loop: crashing, receding, gasping, crashing, receding, gasping.
Near the shoreline straight ahead from where the boy was caught in a loop, a cacophony of voices broke out. A group of people had taken notice of the boy. They belted screams and exclamations. A la madre! No manches! Ay Díos mío, ayúdenlo! One voice stood out. Ya voy, mijo! A rescue call, from a tall bronze-skinned man. His 5 chest was huge, with enormous pecs. On his head rested black hair that was combed back and reached past his nape, right above his shoulders. The ends of his hair, about half an inch, curled upward. His face resembled the boy’s.
He was like a missile homed in on its target. He exploded from his sedentary position on the beach surrounded by others and into the water where the boy was drowning. The water hardly rocked him, and when it reached his knees, he dove into the violent blue. The bronze man glided through the water, first in the direction of the expansive ocean, and then in the opposite direction, towards land, with the boy tucked in his arm. He was a natural in the water. The waves could not match his strength, and he did not fear them either.
On the shore the boy he carried gasped for air as if it were his first. The boy’s chest rose in full. A gold chain, wet, hanging around the boy’s neck glistened in the afternoon sun on this nameless beach in this timeless moment. The crowd of people who had been screaming gathered around the boy.
A woman picked up the boy and held him in her arms. Her look contrasted the man’s: pale, white skin adorning a body half as tall as his. Her skin was taut. Her hair, reaching her chest, was dark brown and tangly.
I was the boy, and the man and woman were my parents, and at a later point after I had told them about my dream, they had confirmed to me that the episode had occurred, in Acapulco when I was five years old and young enough to not remember anything. Talking to aunts and uncles who were present I confirmed with them the occurrence of events, the screaming, the rip tides, and the sheer insanity at having let a butt-naked five-year-old wander from their sight in their first place.
But I didn’t blame my parents or family. It was insanity but I liked the lore of it.
All the best things arose from the seeds nurtured with the waters of insanity.
Mine had been a simultaneous dread and need for the ocean.
The dread of a violent death by drowning, the fear of salty water displacing the air in my lungs, the need for the water to envelop my skin in embrace, the character of which I thought I would consider a true love in the future, when I 6 had matured and my stubborn will had been weathered down by failure, but not in the present, since I still believed that true love meant a constant want for that which I desired, even though part of me, and not secretly, wished not to mature and constantly love in childish manner. This, I had considered a gift given to me by my family’s negligence in Acapulco that day.
These thoughts I wrote down in my journal.
Other times the headaches preceded the dreams. One afternoon I had been studying in my office, reading a tome on the history of Central America, when the pulsing on the right side of my head began.
It was the summer. That was when I had more free time to dedicate to activities that interested me. At the time I had chosen to not take medicine to alleviate my headaches, so I resorted to naps. I knocked over onto the leather couch in the office and lulled into a rest. That one was an odd dream.
I was nowhere—a vast expanse of dry and hot hilly landscape surrounded me nearby, but in the distance, I could see many valleys which looked greener than where I was currently: nowhere. I wore a white linen shirt and pants. Usually I hated linen, but I found it suitable in this clime. It caught the breeze and ventilated my skin. Leather shoes and a hat made of a dried plant fiber were on me. My shoes were dusty, and I felt the fatigue in my legs. But I urged forward, to where the valley was, and with it life.
Agaves and cacti grew here. They looked beautiful, geometric. How was it possible that their leaves grew exactly that much distance apart around the center? Around me swaths of taupe, orange, brown, sand were dotted with green. I walked in this endless landscape until what looked like a decline. Further down continued the arid hills. The green valleys were further ahead. I would not reach them before my feet would tire. But at the bottom of this decline, in a shallow valley I saw a collection of houses.
A path zigzagged against the hill to the valley civilization. Desert shrubs rasped my exposed ankles, which were unavoidable because they had over grown into the path. Down the path near the bottom a hare appeared in front of me and began talking to me.
You’re back. —The hare’s ears perked up. They were translucent and veiny. Its front legs were long. —I’m back? —Yes, you’re back. You have been here before and you will be here again. —I don’t understand. I’m tired. Will you let me pass? —I walked around and past it, but the hare caught up in front of me. It turned around digging its front legs into the ground, balancing on them and kicked its hind legs against my shins, toppling me back. —Argh, what the hell! —I know that hurt, you’ve been walking a while, I’m sorry, but you need to listen to what I have to tell you.
The hare’s tone was serious. Annoyed and intrigued I paid attention. —Okay. —From the top of the valley you might not have seen any people, only a collection of houses. Maybe you thought it was abandoned. That’s not true. In fact, there are people living there, but they’re clinging. They’ve been living in a drought for years. The sun has ceased to set, and the rain has not shown mercy on them. We have to help them, you and me. —What? How? It’s so hot here. I came to look for water. I’m thirsty. —There will be no water here unless we help them. It’s a long distance from here until you will find life. You have no choice, friend. —You say we’ve met before and you call me your friend, but how can I even trust you? —I’m afraid you have no choice. —And the hare was right. I felt death encroaching from within me and drying my tongue.
The hare guided me further down the path to a clearing at the head of the village. It was a large space. —Look up at the sky there. —The hare pointed with its front legs. —The moon? —Yes. I’ve fallen from the moon. When I did, my image fell off its face, and the drought began. The event forced the village into hiding, to avoid the sun. They’ve been in retreat since. You must launch me back there.
It sounded impossible. I didn’t want to admit to the hare that I felt weak for the task. Meekly, I said— I don’t think I can. I’m tired, and I have terrible hand-eye coordination anyway. —You don’t need to doubt yourself. You’ve done this before. And you are stronger than you might think. But, advice. First, you’re right-handed. So, you’ll rotate your body rightward and place your right foot behind the left. Then bend at the knees, and brace your core. Stay tight, except at the hips. You’ll need to be loose there to gain momentum. Keep your eyes on the target. Finally, you’re going to launch me before your arm is vertical with the ground. The power is within you. Do half the effort and I’ll do the other half.
The hare had been jumping from side to side. —Why don’t you practice with some rocks? I’ll be back.
I did. I was impressed by the distance I was getting. I had launched some easily over the other side of the village, and some over to the hills past that. The effort tired me more. Each launch had let out a gust of wind that shook up dirt from the ground. I had not seen that the hare gathered an audience to watch the launch while I was practicing: the villagers. They were famished, feeble wearing clothes like mine except theirs were tattered. They were silent. The men held guns with the butts resting on the ground, and their hands gripping the barrels like they were walking canes. A few of the children huddled by their moms whose hands were amorously draped around them. In their eyes was dignity and tire.
The hare approached me. We looked at each other. I stood in formation, and so did the hare. I gripped it by its long ears. —See you soon.
The final moments of the dream consisted of sensations, colors, partial images. First, a shock wave that knocked me backward. Then, a bright flash of red, followed by black. While on the verge of waking up I remembered seeing what looked like people looking down at me. Water subsumed me from all sides, I was sinking. I looked upward. It was the sky, and it was dark, except the stars and the moon which shone like jewels I wanted to reach up and grab. When I opened my eyes, I had been laying on the couch, in the office, drenched in sweat, a headache pulsing upon my head.
Alfredo Eladio Moreno is a journalist and photographer from his native Houston, Texas. He has reported since 2020 on Mexican politics and immigration policy in the United States, and especially on Nicaragua and the Ortega-Murillo regime.
He is a graduate student of Journalism and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University, where he is Editor-in-Chief of the Latin America News Dispatch.
You can find his writing on his WordPress page.