Ruth Thomas

[Unscreamed Screams]

UNSCREAMED SCREAMS

Present Pattern of Past Nightmares

As a child, I had a recurrent nightmare in which the personification of evil appeared in form of ‘The Thief’. All these dreams followed the same pattern:

I am in a crowd, happy and carefree, but suddenly I know ‘The Thief’ is there. I know he (it is always a man) is coming for me. I try to run, but can hardly move. I want to scream, but no sound comes. He gets closer and closer, and when he is about to catch me, I wake up.

For years, I had these dreams, in which I could neither run nor scream. So here, on a pillowcase from my childhood, I have embroidered that scream that would never come out of my mouth in those nightmares: HILFE! (HELP!)

The cries for help form a pattern of unscreamed screams, just as the nightmares always followed a fixed pattern.

(Cotton thread embroidered on one of my childhood pillowcases, 30 x 30 cm, 2025)

(This work was produced as a contribution to Gaelle Chassery and Sofie Dieu's Dream and Stitch Project gathering stitched dreams from all over the world for their Dream Map. The size of the individual embroideries was fixed at 30 x 30 cm.)