Sweet Dreams

I wish I could. I'm not allowed I guess. I dream vividly and violently. I try to explain it away as it's just me pulling in whatever it was that I saw or read last before slumber but it doesn't always add up. Then I think it's me trying to cope with my fear of the unknown. But not just regular life unknown, the evil unknowns of the world. The unspeakable acts that you never want to say out loud for fear that if you say them they will come true. And for that I bet I can place the blame on our media. Just read the news and it will scare you daily. For example, just recently a woman was abducted right across the street from my house...at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. They ripped her clean of her jewels, beat her and tossed her in their van. Lucky for her they dumped her out not long after (raped or not they didn't say but at least she was let go). So maybe my dreams are a pitiful attempt at facing my fears or worse it's my way of acting out what I secretly desire to do deep down inside of me.

To give you a glimpse of what I speak, here is how last night's dream played out:

I'm driving my old white '93 Chevy Cavalier out to Orland Park from Chicago (for those not familiar, Orland Park is a southwest suburb of Chicago). It's late afternoon in the middle of a rainstorm. It's all grey and hazy. I can't seem to keep my eyes open or keep steady control of the car. It's like I'm really drunk and numb. A few times I drive off the side of the road or drift into the other lane causing people to honk at me. I say to myself i I need to get off the road and rest or I'm going to die or kill or both. I pull off onto a frontage road that leads up to a new Holiday Inn hotel. It's new construction so the roads are all gravel, muddy and wet. I barely make the turn for the road leading up to the hotel, I fishtailed it. I roll my window down to look at the ditch I almost flew into. My hair gets all wet and stringy from the wind blowing in the rain through the window. I remember how it smelled. Like wet concrete and wood.

That's all I remember about that part. The next scene is where the getting gets good. I am pulling into the driveway of my old childhood home where I grew up. It's now evening and the house is lit up all warm and glowing. It's humid out. I walk inside and run into my father. He asks me about my golf clubs and where are they? I think for a minute and say they are at that club where I was going to play a game with friends but we hadn't decided the date yet so they let me just leave them there for when I came back. My father says I should really go get them in case they lose them. I agree and leave the house through the garage. The garage door is open so I walk right out to the driveway. As I get in my car and start reversing out of my long, dark tree lined driveway, I look up to see my mother walk out into the garage to get something. At the same time I see two twentysomething men appear from out of the shadows and walk across my driveway in front of me. Almost like they didn't even see me. I immediately sense very bad thing will come of this.

I watch them walk up to my front door where my brother lets them in. They seem to not notice my mother and the open garage. I watch how the black doorstep is flooded with light as he slowly opens the door. They push their way in. I drive back up to the garage and tell my mother to get in my car and lock the doors. She's questioning me and I have to tell her there are intruders in the house as I shove her in the direction of my car. I have to save them. If anything goes bad, I tell her to drive away. I frantically look around the garage for a weapon. I panic that I'm not seeing anything suitable (imagine that, no weapon in a garage??) Then it comes into view, high up on the wall but not so high that I can't reach it. A hatchet. Perfect for my small hands and for what I know I'm about to do. I grab it and I can feel the weight in my hands, I smell the old rusty steel. It suits me well.

I head for the door inside my house. I glance over at my mother one last time to make sure she is secured in the car. She is terrified. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it against my breast. My wrists and neck are throbbing. Just as I am about to climb the steps inside one of the men descends down toward me. He has a smug look on his face. He's blond, large build but looks to be older now, 40's, deep lines in his face. I know what he's starting to think. Lucky him to find this petite, defenseless girl. I can't possibly give him any trouble and the kind that I can give would just excite him.

I let him draw nearer. My fingers grip the hatchet behind my back so tightly it hurts. I refuse to let it leave my hands. He is now in between the two cars parked in the garage (our old orange '77 vette and my brother's red Camaro year 90's). Soon as he is standing in front of me, ready to claw and clutch at me, I swing the hatchet with all of my being around my right side and impale him right in the middle of his chest. The dull thud reverbrates through my hands and up my arms. I yank backwards. He stumbles to my left and falls on his back onto the front corner panel of the vette. I proceed to hack the holy hell out of him. Blood splatters, pieces of flesh fly but I don't stop. There is no sound except the gruesome sticky sound of me hacking him to pieces. I stand back, wipe a bloody strand of hair from my eye, take a deep breath and look at him. Clearly I have killed him but, like most of my other dreams, I can't believe he is dead. I have to take it further to be sure. I lean over him with one knee on the car and proceed to chop away at his neck until he is headless. This all happened in a matter of minutes.

I look back at my mother and she is speechless. I start to head into the house again and she crys noo! I tell her I have to go. I can't leave them in there. Again, just as I'm about to walk in this time my father steps out. He is scared and just says in a monotone voice "Hello Melmar. How are you?" I know he's trying not to give anything away just like the intruder told him to do. At that moment the other intruder slips past the door and sees me. He too rushes out to meet his fate. I let the same situation play out. The intruder comes towards me but is not smug, he is angry and just wants to murder me. He's yelling something. Then just as he is within arms reach I axe him the same as I did the other. Repeatedly until his chest is a shredded mass of skin, organs and fat. Only him I leave intact, believing for once I have killed sufficiently on my first attempt.

My brother slowly walks out to the garage. We are all there now, as a family and unharmed. I look down at my bloodied hands and feel for the first time how swollen and raw they are. Just like how they feel after I've hit buckets upon buckets of golf balls with no glove. No one speaks. We just stare at each other frozen in stunned silence. End dream.

Welcome to my dreamland. This isn't even the worst of them.