The Lullaby Of The Dream

The Lullaby of the Dream

By Ekona Del Rey Monroe

Chapter One: The Perfect Lawn

The grass was always perfect.

Susan Taylor stood at her kitchen window every morning at 6:45 a.m., coffee cup warm in her hands, and watched her husband Richard push the lawn mower in perfect, overlapping lines.

The engine hummed like a lullaby. The grass fell in neat green waves.

From a distance, it looked like a painting, the kind you saw in magazines that promised the American Dream had finally arrived.

She smiled the small, practiced smile she had perfected over seven years of marriage.

Inside her chest, something was screaming.

It had been screaming since the miscarriage six months ago. The doctor had patted her hand and said, “These things happen, Mrs. Taylor. Just try again.

Keep smiling for the children.” Richard had said the same thing, only kinder, and then went back to work at the insurance firm. The neighbors had brought casseroles and said, “You’re so strong, Susan.”

She had thanked them all.

And the screaming inside her chest had never stopped.

On this particular Tuesday morning, the screaming changed.

It became four notes.

A — C — B — A.

Slow. 

Gentle. 

Almost comforting.

They drifted from the vacuum cleaner in the living room. From the radio playing Perry Como in the background. From the children’s laughter outside as they rode their bicycles in perfect circles on the driveway.

Susan set her coffee down.

The notes were not loud. They were not frightening. They simply felt… familiar. Like something she had always known but had forgotten until now.

She walked to the back door and stepped onto the patio. The morning sun was warm on her face. The air smelled of fresh-cut grass and distant barbecues. Everything was exactly as it should be.

And yet.

At the very end of the street, where the new houses ended and the woods began, something stood beneath the streetlight that had not yet turned off.

A woman.

Tall. 

Too tall.

Wearing a blood-stained 1950s housewife dress with a crisp white apron. Her hair was in a perfect updo, but strands hung loose like wet ropes.

Her belly was swollen, heavy with something ancient. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, but when Susan blinked, the woman was smiling politely, as if she had come to borrow sugar for a pie.

The four notes played on.

Susan felt her heart slow. The screaming inside her chest softened, replaced by something worse.

Pity.

The woman looked so alone.

So terribly, terribly alone.

Susan took one step off the patio.

The grass was still damp from the morning dew. It felt cold against her bare feet.

She took another step.

Somewhere behind her, her daughter called, “Mommy, breakfast!”

Susan did not turn around.

The woman at the end of the street tilted her head, as if listening.

The four notes played on.

And for the first time in six months, the screaming in Susan Taylor’s chest felt understood.

-

Chapter Two: The Recipe Swap

The Maplewood Heights Ladies’ Auxiliary met every Wednesday afternoon in the community center. Susan arrived with her famous lemon bars and a smile that felt like it was stapled to her face.

The room smelled of perfume, cigarette smoke, and something sweeter.

Something wrong.

The Recipe Book Entities were already perfect housewives with coiffed hair, pearl necklaces, and frozen smiles that never reached their eyes.

They called each other “darling” and “honey” and traded index cards filled with handwritten recipes.

Susan sat down. The lullaby was in the clinking of silverware.

In the hum of the refrigerator. In the polite laughter that never quite stopped.

Mrs. Hargrove,  a Recipe Book Entity with perfectly applied red lipstick placed a plate in front of Susan.

“Try my Ribbon Jell-O Pie, dear. It’s my specialty.”

The Jell-O shimmered in layers of red, green, and yellow. In the center of the top layer, a single human eyeball floated, staring up at Susan with calm, unblinking patience.

Susan’s stomach turned.

The four notes played on.

She smiled politely and took a small bite.

The taste was sweet. Too sweet. And underneath it, something metallic.

She felt the lullaby in her throat.

Across the room, another Entity served Ice Cream. The women cooed over how creamy it was. Susan knew what it was made from, the old breastfeeding milk of the Entities, mixed with sugar, mayonnaise, butter, and final saliva. The women ate it with delight.

The lullaby grew louder.

Susan stood up suddenly.

“I… I need some air.”

She walked outside into the perfect afternoon. The sun was shining. Children laughed in the distance. Everything was exactly as it should be.

And yet the screaming in her chest had returned, louder than ever.

-

Chapter Three: The Briefcase

Richard came home at 5:47 p.m. exactly, as he always did.

He kissed Susan on the cheek, hung his hat on the hook by the door, and set his briefcase on the kitchen table with the same precise motion he used every evening.

The four notes were in the click of the latches.

Susan watched from the sink as the neighbor, Mr. Peterson walked past their window carrying his own briefcase.

He waved cheerfully, his tie perfectly knotted, his smile wide and American.

Richard opened his briefcase to take out the evening paper.

A massive, terrifying hand, gray, veined, and covered in grass clippings and soil  reached out from inside the case.

It gripped Mr. Peterson through the window glass, twenty feet away, and pulled him screaming into the briefcase.

The hand was slow, deliberate, almost polite. The screams were cut off abruptly as the case snapped shut.

The hand withdrew.

Richard closed the case, smiled at Susan, and said, “Long day at the office, honey. What’s for dinner?”

The Lawn Mower Men had arrived.

Susan felt the lullaby in her husband’s polite smile. It was the same smile he gave her every night, the same smile that hid the growing distance between them since the miscarriage.

She took a step back.

The screaming in her chest was no longer just hers.

It was everywhere.

-

Chapter Four: The Playground

Susan took her children to the new community playground on Saturday morning.

At first, it looked perfect. Children laughed. Swings moved gently in the breeze.

The merry-go-round spun slowly with happy screams of delight. The slide gleamed under the sun.

Then the illusion cracked.

The swings wrapped around small necks with sudden violence.

The slide became a grinding mouth of metal teeth that pulled children downward into darkness.

The monkey bars turned into crushing cages that snapped shut on tiny hands.

The merry-go-round spun faster and faster, flinging bodies into the air like ragdolls before the sand beneath it split open into a Pit.

Twenty children were chased and consumed by the equipment.

Their screams mixed with the four notes of the lullaby, creating a nightmarish symphony.

The equipment did not simply kill.

It played with its food.

It made the children believe they could escape, right up until the moment the chains tightened or the slide opened its throat.

Susan grabbed her own children and ran, their small hands clutched tightly in hers.

The laughter of the illusion still echoed behind them, twisting into something monstrous.

The Playground was not a place for play.

It was a trap.

The American Dream was eating its children.

And it was smiling while it did it.

-

Chapter Five: The Block Party Nightmare

The Fourth of July block party was the biggest event Maplewood Heights had ever seen.

Red, white, and blue bunting hung from every house.

Grills smoked with perfectly charred burgers and hot dogs.

Children ran with sparklers, their laughter ringing through the warm evening air. The band played “Stars and Stripes Forever” while neighbors clapped in perfect rhythm.

Everything was exactly as it should be.

Until it wasn’t.

The Pledge of Allegiance began.

The children stood in perfect rows on the makeshift stage, hands over their hearts, and recited the words that had been quietly changed by the lullaby:

“I pledge allegiance… to the Dream… 

of the United States of America… 

and to the silence… for which it stands… 

one nation… under grief… 

with liberty and justice… only for those who never ask why.”

The words hung in the air like smoke.

The lullaby exploded.

Lawns split open into Pits with wet, hungry sounds. Recipe Book Entities moved through the crowd with frozen smiles, serving Ribbon Jell-O Pie with single eyeballs suspended in the center and Ice Cream made from old breastfeeding milk, sugar, mayonnaise, butter, and final saliva.

The women ate with delight, their eyes glazing over as the poison took hold.

Lawn Mower Men in perfect suits opened their briefcases.

Massive gray hands reached out, gripping neighbors and pulling them inside with polite, mechanical efficiency.

The briefcases snapped shut with soft clicks that somehow carried over the screams.

The Playground equipment came alive in the background.

Swings wrapped around small necks. Slides became grinding mouths.

The merry-go-round spun so fast it flung bodies into the opening Pits like offerings.

The entire suburb began collapsing into the earth.

Susan stood in the middle of the chaos, holding her children’s hands tightly.

The air was thick with the smell of barbecue smoke, gunpowder from fireworks, and something sweeter, the metallic tang of blood and sour milk.

The four notes played everywhere.

The Mother waited at the end of the street, violin raised, blood-stained dress glowing faintly under the streetlights.

She was smiling politely, as if she had come to borrow sugar for a pie.

Susan felt the pull.

It was the strongest it had ever been.

The screaming in her chest was no longer screaming.

It was singing along.

-

Chapter Six: The Backyard

Susan stood in her own backyard as the Pit opened beneath the perfect lawn.

The grass split with a wet, tearing sound. The Pit yawned open  dark, ancient, and hungry. The four notes played slowly, almost tenderly.

The Mother stood before her.

Pregnant. 

Gaunt. 

Blood-stained 1950s housewife dress with crisp white apron. 

Violin raised.

Her mouth was open in a silent scream, but her hollow, leaking eyes looked at Susan with something almost like recognition.

The four notes played on.

Susan felt the overwhelming urge to walk forward To help this grieving mother, to end the screaming inside her own chest, to finally be understood.

Her daughter whispered, “Mommy… I’m scared.”

Susan looked at her living children.

She saw their fear. She saw her own reflection in their eyes, the same reflection she saw in the mirror every morning after the miscarriage.

The same reflection that had been screaming for six months.

She saw the American Dream for what it was,  a beautiful lie that asked mothers to bury their grief so the lawn could stay perfect.

She chose to stay.

She broke the cycle for one family.

She pulled her children back from the edge of the Pit and ran.

The Mother watched them go.

The violin never stopped playing.

Maplewood Heights fell into the Pit, house by house, lawn by lawn, dream by dream.

-

Epilogue: Thirty Years Later

The abandoned suburb is still perfectly maintained by unseen forces.

The lawns are always green. The houses are always painted. The streetlights still turn on at dusk.

People who drive past at night still hear children laughing on the playground… and the faint sound of a violin.

The American Dream continues.

The Lullaby continues.

It always has.

The End