BLONDE SAVIOR

It was night and I was treading water, in the ocean, and the water was warm. The first thought I had that I could remember was that i could not see land, and that I was waiting to die. There wasn’t any reasoning to this; it just simply was. The waves were soft, gently rising and falling, carrying me up a little ways and then back down, and yet I was struggling like a child who had never been swimming.
Then I saw the Marlin coming, and I became terrified. It leapt violently out of the water, enormous and magnificent and terrible all at once, and in the near total darkness of the dream I started to scream as it disappeared back underwater. I've never seen a Marlin in real life, but I cant imagine them being more frightening than this dream one was, as it started to circle me, furiously cutting me off from swimming away, its loops starting out wide, and then getting closer, and closer, until it was a constant wall of movement and flesh and fear that kept me treading where I was.
And through my fear, as the waves rose, I saw the sharks; dozens of them, their fins cutting through the surface of the water like bullets. I saw that they were all around me; I saw that the Marlin was the only thing keeping me away from them. They lashed out with teeth and thrashing, and they groaned and muttered in languages id never heard, all of their voices too deep for reality. But the Marlin was there, and my fear turned into gratefulness. The sharks bit and tore and spit and connected into the Marlin with uncontrollable malice, and I knew that they wanted me, but this Marlin had saved me, this Marlin would die for me.
And then there came our first strange introduction, as the Marlin suddenly transformed into the girl that i would be dreaming about for the rest of my life.
The sharks swam away, defeated, and for a moment she merely treaded there with me, smiling at me in the low light. Her hair was the only thing that wasnt dark, blonde and long and spreading out around her on the surface of the water. I realized that she was bleeding everywhere; the sharks had left dozens of deep gashes and cuts and open wounds. 

“You're hurt," I said. 

She cocked her head, her eyes playful and full of misunderstanding. She laughed and splashed me, and dissapeared under the waves. I woke up.
That was the first time, but when i woke up startled and sweating that morning i had no idea that she would be back.
The second time was almost eight months later, when she was leading me by the hand through a warzone, dodging and and ducking and sprinting, looking back every few seconds to make sure i wasnt hurt. Snipers took pot shots at our feet, the metallic pinging echoes of bullets fired slightly off course passed inches away from us.
A rocket exploded into a centuries-old bell tower, and bursting, flaming chunks of debris flew off into the air, showering down into the streets. She shoved me as hard as she could under a partial roof, smiling at me as the deadly bits of stone and rubble crushed her. I screamed as i bolted upright in my bed, knowing immediatley that it was the same girl, and that she had saved me again. 

Two nights later I had a dream where my body was being thrown into an empty lime pit by a gang of black soldiers, all sweating and smoldering hot in the early sun. They complained in broken English about some sickness that was eating away the people, and as they trudged off into the heat, i lay in the pit of dead bodies, slowly dying myself. I tried to move, but it was if my skin had a stone veneer sprayed over it, an invisible exoskeleton that was weighing me down. Not far from me there was movement, and I managed to turn my head.
A slim hand stuck up from underneath several of the lifeless, bloated bodies. Then a forearm, and a shoulder. The bodies, heavy with death and grime, slowly gave way as the blonde girl emerged from underneath them, eyes steadily on me, her mouth set and determined. She was covered with dirt and dust, scratches and blood, but in that moment, in that dream, she was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life, something too cunning, too marvelous, too astonishing for words. She would save me.
I call her the blonde girl because I don’t know her name, and for a long time that part didn’t bother me because i was positive that she didn’t actually exist. I had several more dreams about her over the next year and a half, all of them dealing with horror and violence and an inescapable death that she would inevitably save me from in the 11th hour. Almost every time, she died herself, just after it was a secured assurance that I would live, and then I would wake up, always sweating, upset, terrified.
I knew only one thing: I had never seen her before in my waking life.
Until Philadelphia.
I barely escaped hurricane Katrina (another story for another time) and was waiting for a layover flight in the Airport at Philly. It wasn’t particularly crowded, but it had the urgent, stressful awareness that most airports are stuffed to the seams with. I was sitting in the waiting bay lobby by the boarding gate, stuck with no cellphone, waiting for a plane that wasn’t due to even arrive at the airport for another 90 minutes.
I was the first one there, save for a young teenager who was watching videos on a laptop, and as people started to trickle in I watched them passively.
When the bay was finally full, several hours later, they called for boarding. As I stood up I made eye contact with her, turned, took about five steps as I shouldered my carry on bag... and stopped still.
I recognized her instantly, but how could she be real?
I had dreamt her up; she existed in my head.
Stunned, speechless, I didn’t know whether to turn back towards her, afraid that I had gone schizo and was seeing things. But I did turn. And she was there. As clear as day, and as beautiful and real as she had been in the dreams. I didn’t stare, but I looked, and she was coming towards me, talking softly with an older black woman as they compared seats.
She came closer still, the line now forming up, and I went slowly through my bag, pretending to look for something, my mind nothing at all but static and furious sounds of unintelligible screaming and gibberish and cursing and ice.
As she walked past me she glanced at me, the way two people who don’t know each other do; I quickly looked down into the bag, suddenly full of the overwhelming realization that she was real. The girl I had been dreaming about for almost two years was real, and she was three feet away from me, about to step onto the same plane. I covered my mouth.
I had to say something.
What?
What would I possibly say? 'I've been dreaming about you for two years'?
No woman would believe that, even though it was true. I couldn’t say anything to her.
I got into line, several feet behind the girl who I didn’t know but who had saved my life endless times in as many ways, always giving herself in my place. Should I tap her on the shoulder? Should I ask her her name? Ah, God! What do I do!? What could possibly do?
I did nothing.
Moments later she realized she was in the wrong line, in the wrong bay, for the wrong plane. She turned and was walking away from me, speeding away, almost jogging away from me. I stepped out of the line. I opened my mouth, my hand held out, my fingers half pointed. My brain was overloading, ten thousand things blending into one horrible spinning ball in my head, and as I was about to call out to her, I heard
"Sir?"
I turned, facing a middle aged man, holding sony headphones off of his ears. I didn’t reply.
"Are you still in the line?"
I turned back to the line, now moving steadily forwards. I looked back towards the blonde girl, and she was gone.
The dreams stopped for a long time after that, and like all other things that at some point in our lives we think are unforgettable, I forgot about her, and I forgot about the dreams, and the airport, and she faded away like smoke floating over a pasture, quietly dissolving until its gone.
And then the dreams suddenly came back.
Almost every night, she was carrying me through a wasteland, towards water; she was rowing the raft away from sinking ship hulk in a horrible storm; she was appearing out of the dust of a trainwreck, lifting the long metal rods off of my crushed legs, telling me it was all alright. She was dying in the end of every dream, each time smiling and holding my hand and looking like Gods own physical daughter, perfect and majestic and beautiful.
Everytime I woke up, knowing that I should have said something, fully aware that I had been given a chance, only to crumple it up like a paper cup, tossing it in the trash.
And then one night she didn’t die.
She was hurt and bloody, coughing and spitting, but smiling and alive and I knew it was different. And then the next night we escaped together, both of us wounded and broken, but alive, and aware of our survival. At the end she said to me softly, "This is new."
And now almost every night its the same dream, the ant crawling up her collarbone, and then my hands are on her shoulders, or rubbing her neck. Almost every night I am on the edge of seeing her face, just before a shadow comes over me and I wake up. Almost every night I lie there in bed for a long time afterward, wondering if things would be different.