Sonofabitch

Falling.
   It's supposed to be the end of all things. It's the mind-shredding fear of being out of my own control; the sensation of helplessness; the desperation of reaching out to steady myself and finding nothing but the smoky air clouding up my dreams. I usually fall facing upward, staring at the ridge where I once stood. Maybe there is somebody there, reaching out for me, calling for my return. Maybe there's an empty universe swirling in on itself, and I'm falling away from it. Maybe I should turn myself over and see if there's anybody below with arms outstretched, awaiting the soft impact of my arrival.
 
   That's not usually my luck.

   I once dreamed the sonofabitch shoved me so hard that I fell out of the car and off the side of the road. There was no drainage ditch. As it turns out, that ditch is just a mirage. If you care to walk up to it and press your hand firmly against the dirt and the sticks and the rocks, you'll find it ripples for a moment and then dissipates into a mighty nothingness. That's where I fell...into the nothingness.

   It's useless to scream. Nobody can hear me, but that doesn't keep me from doing it. I scream all the sound out and then I'm not falling anymore so much as floating, and now, it's not just me. There are Others. Some are like me, they float and look around in wonderment. Some are plummeting, screaming with abandon as they whoosh past me. There they go, and I stare after them hoping they'll discover the floating thing. The floating is so much more pleasant, but it's not really what I want to be doing. I'd rather be floating up. That's not what we're doing in the nothingness. There seems to be no upward movement.

    Hands grab at me and pull me downward. I'm afraid of this, but I quickly understand that this Other is not pulling me downward, but climbing over me.

   They are me.

   We are all me, and we see this simultaneously, and instantly know that we are the only way out of this. We clasp hands and use one another as purchase to climb back out of the drainage ditch. It is a great effort to climb over my own back and shove myself upward and cheer myself on. I can only think that some other me, somewhere below must have hit the bottom, and now we are all standing on the shoulders of the Me down there.

     We climb out of the nothingness, and he is still there waiting for our return. He grins and fantasizes that he'll be shoving us back into that void again, but we are ready for it this time.

    We have the feeling he'll scream all the way down.

 

I can't go where you go.

Remember that time we were just two kids sitting on the curb, tossing rocks into the street, talking about the future and where it would take us? Or the time we perched ourselves on top of the railroad car, wondering if we stayed there, where would we end up? On Halloween, we terrorized the town, shooting shaving gel on the windshield of every parked car. It turned cold and windy that night and we sat on your porch swing and shared your jacket.

That bridge we used to cross isn't there anymore. They tore it down and put something more stable further down the way.

That last night the world had frozen over. A thin sheet of ice covered everything from the wooden bridge planks under our feet to the heart barely beating in your chest. We watched the icicles fall one by one. They shattered on the frozen stream below and echoed against the rocky walls of the ravine.

You swung your legs over the railing, turned to face me from the other side and dared me to push you. I told you to fuck off and quit playing around. You were trying to scare me and it worked. You said if I didn't push you, you'd jump anyway. I tried to act nonchalant. I shrugged my shoulder and said whatever. 


I knew you were just crazy enough to do it.

You laughed and called me a wuss.  I tried to distract you with a kiss. You were so cold, but the kiss was so warm, I melted into it. I didn't notice you were pulling me with you until it was too late.

I tried to hold on, I swear I did. I spread my wings to fly, but I wasn't strong enough to carry you. FLY, damn you! I screamed. But you wouldn't spread your wings.

When you hit the stream below, there was no echo against the rocks, no scream of regret, no blackbird's lonely call. There was nothing but the dull thud of hopelessness hitting bottom.
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Moving On

We're not that close these days. You ran off to New Mexico, and now you're on the verge of getting married to a girl I've never met, but I'll probably like. Or maybe you're already married. If so, I guess we really have grown apart.

I can't even remember if you called to wish me a happy birthday. You haven't missed one yet since we split up, not even when you were in Fallujah. For some reason, though, you just weren't at the top of the list of people I wanted to hear from.

To dream about you now seems ridiculous. I'm not at a point in my life where I need a friend who really understands me. I'm not missing you lately, and I haven't met anyone who reminds me of you.

But there you were in my dream, smiling, teasing me with your empty promises.

Your mother was there, in the dream, and she was pissed at me. She's been pissed at me for this entire time, I think. She always wanted to be my friend, but I couldn't bring myself to do much more than tolerate her. So into the dream she goes.

My hysterectomy was in the dream, and the kids were there, waving from the side of that crazy cruise ship with the wings flapping. What was that all about?

I stood on the dock, half-way waving goodbye to the kids with one hand, clutching an I.V. stand with the other. I wondered for a second Where are the babies? My grandsons? And then reminded myself they hadn't been born yet. After all, the kids on the ship were only small children themselves.

And then we were back at the resort.

He was waiting for me in the lobby. In the dream I knew he wasn't real, but he could be real, if I could learn to open up, give myself over to him completely. His smile lit me up. His tender touch ignited me in a way you never had. As much as I loved you back then, I never gave myself to you fully. I always kept part of my heart in that safe place, scared you would stomp it to death.

And you would have. I was right to guard my heart from you.

I climbed those stairs to your room and laid on the bed beside you. I watched you snore and wondered where you'd been, what you'd been up to. Why don't I know? Weren't we supposed to still be friends? Isn't that a promise we made to each other?

You opened your eyes and looked right into me, and I knew then, that yes, we'll always be friends.

But you won't always call to wish me a happy birthday.
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Can't rest, can't hide

Dreams about snakes are the worst. I hate snakes. I'm afraid of snakes, and when I dream about them once, they will ususally sprout up again in another dream, teasing me, taunting me, scaring the fuck out of me.

This morning, just before I woke, I dreamed I was on some sort of mission with my ex's dad and my grandson and a guy from work who I used to have a major thing for, but not so much anymore since he married some pregnant girl.

We were on a road trip. I guess we needed to travel in order to achieve our mission. We ended up having to share a motel room.  I suppose there were no other rooms available, or maybe we were just simple poor folk and couldn't afford two rooms and still have enough gas money to get home.

I slept on a cot in the room and my ex's dad and the guy from work slept on the big bed with my grandson between them. (Everybody kept their clothes on. This is not a sex dream.) For some reason I got the impression that were were trying to protect my grandson from some unknown evil out there in the world. Something was after him, and it was our duty as his guardians to keep it from getting him.

I was sleeping and dreaming in the dream. I dreamt about my old high school friend who killed himself several years ago. He was trying to talk to me in the dream, but he couldn't form words because he was little more than a small cloud of black smoke, but I knew it was him, and I knew whatever he was trying to say was very important. I felt like he was trying to pass through me, as if he could get his message across by some kind of weird ghost osmosis, but it wasn't working. I could feel his presence and his urgency, but I couldn't translate it into a recognizable message. Perhaps if we had been better friends in life, I would have known what he meant, but we weren't, and thanks to his fatal actions, we never would be.

In that dream, just as he was beginning to be able to talk, a group of demons slithered out of the Universe, grabbed him and pulled him down to Hell. As they were pulling him, he corporealized, and their talons tore into his flesh as he screamed and struggled to free himself. His blood was gushing out. As he was sucked down into the crevice that had opened up for him, his blood spattered across my face and began to burn me like acid. I screamed in pain for myself and in fear for my dead friend's soul.

When I dream inside a dream, I will sometimes be able to fool myself that the dream I'm waking into is reality. Sometimes, I know the difference. I woke on the cot in the motel room, kicking at the sheets and yelling my friend's name. When I realized I had been dreaming, I felt foolish and tried to hide myself under the sheet, but the guy from work was already awake and crawling into the cot to comfort me. At this point, he turned into my ex-boyfriend. For about a half of a second, I wondered about that, but my thoughts were quickly interrupted by a loud rattling sound.

Turning, we both saw a large yellow snake head poking up through a hole in the ratty carpet. It was laughing at us. Laughing! It had found us, and it was about to devour us. We hopped up, and my ex's dad hopped up to deal with this increasingly dangerous situation. My grandson had crawled under the bed. He was giggling at the bright yellow snake head. It looked so funny to him, and if we didn't know it was trying to kill us, we might have thought it was pretty bizarre.

My ex's dad tried to stomp on the body of the snake that was still trapped by the carpet, but the snake was too quick and slithered out, toward my grandson. My heart was beating so hard, I couldn't hear anything else.
Thankfully, my ex-boyfriend snatched my grandson away and kicked at the snake's head, sending it through the air toward the guy from work. (I wondered only for a millisecond about why the two of them were there at the same time, when just a minute ago, one of them had actually transformed into the other. Something to ponder later, since we had more pressing issues to think about at the moment.)

I reached for a weapon, but only found a fork I'd been using before the dream began. When the snake came for me, I plunged the fork into its face, but it retracted and pulled away. It slithered under the cot. I was desperate to kill it. When it sprang itself at me again, I let out a war cry and sunk that fork right into the meaty flesh of the snake. I stabbed it into the floor and twisted the fork so the flesh tore away from itself. within seconds, the head popped off. There was no blood.

My ex's dad, for some unknown, ridiculous reason, grabbed the snakehead and bit into it, feasting on it like corn on the cob. Disgusting, I thought. But not near as disgusting as watching his face corrode from the venom. The skin around his mouth was eaten away and fell from his jaw in bloody chunks.
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Don't Try to Find Us

As far as I'm concerned, there are no definite, die-hard, one-size-fits-all rules for dreaming. Each dream is as unique as the dreamer. Some folks say you only dream in black and white, and others claim you can't read in your dreams, but I know both of these are false statements. Some folks say you always know when you're dreaming. Some say they never suspect it until they wake up and sigh with relief.

The other night I had a dream that was as real to me as the keyboard under my fingertips. I could see every vivid color, every slinking shadow, every trick of the light from the corner of my eye. I could smell every tantalizing aroma, and every acrid odor. I could taste the honeyed kisses on my lips and feel the liquid heat and the sharp cold and the rubbery floor under my feet. I could read the love notes written on cerulean paper and the words across the window backlit by a periwinkle sky. I could hear every baby's cry.

It was the baby's cry that woke me. I was startled by it because I realized in the dream that I was hearing a sound that came from the depths of my real house. I sat up and stared into the darkness, confused by the heavy silence. I struggled to hear the cry again. Lyric, my grandson must have awakened, turned over, and gone back to sleep. I waited, stretching that part of my mind out to him, that mother's intuition that strengthens with the addition of grandchildren. He didn't make another sound, but the shuffling I heard from the kitchen, just off my bedroom, worried me.
I threw the sheet back and ventured out.

In the space beside the refrigerator, I found her.

A small, blond-haired, blue-eyed child, malnourished and dirty, as if she'd been sleeping wrapped in newspaper under a bridge.

I was shocked to see her there. My hand automatically covered my mouth to keep myself from scaring the poor urchin with my gasps of horror. I reached for her, but she curled into the space between the fridge and the wall. It took quite a bit of coaxing to convince her I wasn't going to hurt her, or eat her. She stared at me with those giant sapphire eyes, unblinking.

Who had left this girl here? Had they been in my home? Were they still here? Or had she simply wandered in the back door, which is often left unlocked for the ones who return home late?

I carried her in my arms like a baby as I searched the house. She must have been at least two years old, but I thought she was closer to three. She was all knees and elbows. She might not have eaten for days.

Content with my cursory search of the house which yielded no invaders, I fed the child.
Not too much, I thought to myself. Her stomach might revolt and she'd end up puking it all up.

I read once that after the Jews were rescued from concentration camps in WWII, many became ill or died because their bodies had become accustomed to starvation, and the sudden nourishment was too much of a shock to their skeletal bodies. I didn't want that to happen to my new little friend.

I gave her a bath next, wondering if I should call the police or social services. Somebody was missing their child. Surely they had reported it. But on the other hand, this child was a skinny sack of blood and bones. She had scrapes and bruises. She had a look in her eyes that said she'd been through hell.

Whoever'd had her hadn't bothered to take very good care of her. Why should I attempt to return her?

I dressed her in one of my daughter's shirts which fit her like a dress. She smile and patted her hands down the front of it. She was starting to feel more comfortable with me. I guess she'd decided I wasn't hungry enough to feed on human toddlers.

When I turned her around to brush her hair, I found the note. Actually, it was a tattoo. I rubbed my hand across it a few times trying to get the ink off her skin, but it remained etched into her permanently.
 Her brothers had done this to her. My blood boiled and my skin heated with with growing fury. Why would they scar her like this? How could they defile her this way? What were they trying to prove?

Please, save our sister. Don't try to find us. Our mother will hurt her again.

And suddenly, I knew exactly who this child was. I could see her mother's face. I could feel her brothers' desparate love. I could taste the bile in my throat as the realization of this tiny angel's life unfolded in front of me.

I wrapped my arms around her and sobbed into her  soft, freshly washed hair. She cried with me.

It was the baby's cry that woke me.

It was the most realistic dream I've ever had.
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Thumpers

We let the demons in.
We might as well have slit our wrists to dye the carpet red, we were so accomodating. We invited them to sit comfortably in the parlor and offered them iced tea.
Nevermind that it was laced with incrimination. It had no effect on them whatsoever. They greedily drank down the poison, wiped their mouths and politely asked for more.
While we whispered secretively in the kitchen, they were perusing our family photographs, taking stock, making plans.
While we were arranging petit fours on a tray, they were drugging the dog and conferring with the cat.
By the time we returned, tray in hand, smiles pasted across our faces, they had returned to their seats on the cushioned sofa, skirts pulled down to cover their scandalous knees.
We knew what they were. We knew they were there, not to kill us, but to destroy us just the same. We knew they would do it so skillfully, and quietly that we might not even notice the bombs they'd planted.
We looked at one another, raising our eyebrows in acknowledgement.
At that moment, we both understood that we would not go down without a fight.
So what do you do with a group of skirt-wearing, kitten-petting, bible-thumping demons?
You invite them into the parlor and offer them cake and tea.

I Could Hear You Laughing

I had a dream last night that you and I were chasing each other through a house that had never-ending rooms. I could have dealt with it better if there had been hallways. It might have given the house more definition. Perhaps I would have felt I had more choices, this door or that? Kitchen or bedroom?
It wasn't like that at all. Once I opened a door, my eyes immediately focused on the next doorway, and I had to get to it to go through it into another room that had a doorway into yet another room. The doorways faded away as soon as I passed through. There's was no going back, only forward.
I could hear you laughing in the distance, calling for me. I was looking for you. You were looking for me.
The gremlins and pixies were everywhere, tripping me, snorting giggles, distracting me with bubbles and funeral music.
When I finally caught up to you, you were staring out the window toward the soldiers on the battlefield.
You couldn't see me at all. You'd forgotten to keep looking for me.
Somebody had wrapped you in duct tape, like a mummy. It covered your entire body in neat, silver lines all the way up to your neck. Your wild, red tendrils of hair snaked out and up and seemed to writhe with your every breath. You smelled of gunfire and gasoline and carefree adolescence.
"Are you going to die now?" I asked.
You turned to me with those deep black, crazy eyes and said, "I will if you will."
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