The only light showing in my small studio apartment is the cool blue glow from the midnight light shining through the shades. This is what my eyes identified first after I awoke from my disturbing slumber. The sound of the ceiling fan was humming in unison with my frantic panting for air. As I sat up and pivoted my legs off of the side of the bed, I got a head rush and everything went dark. A few seconds later, I had recovered enough to venture to the bathroom. I slowly stood, and shuffled closer to the bathroom only to bump my side-table on the way, sending numerous medicine bottles, some empty, some on their way to the floor. My chilling feet drag on through the dirty clothes and papers scattered amongst the floor and eventually lead me to my destination.
A bright flicker from the fluorescent bathroom light shot pain through my head, and flashed an image of man with stitches around his not to recently shaved scalp, gorges instead of eyes, skin is loosely covering a boney frame, long arms and fingers like sticks outstretched, reaching for me, as he limps nearer. Then darkness returns as the fluorescent light struggles to survive, and I walk the cold bathroom floor to the sink. As I arrive, the light returns to greet me staring at my face in the toothpaste splattered mirror. My hair is a mess and my eyes are almost swollen shut from the bags underneath them slowly taking over. A warm splash should calm the nerves and relax the mind. I hold my hands to my face for a little bit to help massage in the warm soothing water. Through the blur when I reopen my eyes, for an instant I see eye sockets staring back at me instead of my tired face, and stitches around stubble instead of shaggy brown bed-head.
I quickly kill the light and follow the cleared path from earlier back to my bedside, here I quickly fumble open a bottle of cough syrup with codeine in it and take a swig. My head hits the pillow and I let out a forced cough to make myself feel better for using the medicine to sleep.
Once asleep, I immediately return to the previous dream to be greeted by the shuffling dead man. This time, I can’t wake myself up. Each time the pale man takes a step; his body lets out a creak as if he was a 100 year old wooden door. There was a blue luminosity to this generic hospital room we were in. I inspected the room to see if there was an easy way out. The man was coming from the shut door, and my back was up against windows looking out to darkness. Seeing as how the door would be easier to escape through, I slowly approached the man. He reaches for me and I push through him to get to the door. I turn and make sure he isn’t coming after me, and see him fall hard to the floor with his arms still reaching and his head in its hunched position off of the floor. His body was stiff with rigor mortis and he let out even louder creaks as his arms and head slowly came down to rest on the floor. I turn back to escape through the door and start to hear something in the distance as I get closer. There is no light coming from underneath the door like you would expect and this noise can’t be identified. It sounds like a humming and beeping at the same time. It fades in and out and becomes deafening as I open the door to nothingness and I get sucked in, pulling me out of the sleep and jumping out of bed to turn off the alarm clock. Time to go to work…
Razor blade, pocket knife, scissors, computer screen. I need to concentrate. I wonder if other people have some of the same problems as I do… I feel like I’m going crazy. I just got this new job working for some bland corporation entering meaningless data into a box. The inside of this stale, uncomfortable place of “business” is like a casino, designed to shut the outside world out and keep the employees inside disoriented, with no windows or clocks. I’m not too big on watches or jewelry of any sort, but ever since the start of this job, I’ve had a timepiece married to my wrist. I’ve learned to deal with the subtle vibration, every second from the tick, the pulled hairs, from the band, and the eventual tan line. After locking it away in my desk drawer last week, I came to the conclusion that knowing how much longer I had until I could escape outweighed every tick annoying like the alarm in the morning, because each tick brought me that much closer to leaving.
I take a break from the L-496’s and the 23-T’s to go visit my friend Judy upstairs in research. I always like to take my break up there because they have cookies and candy for people to try. The only problem is they ask a million questions afterwards. Judy was one of the askers. We both went to the University of Kansas and graduated last semester. Before graduating we sent out applications all over the place, thinking we could find a place together to save some money. Lo and behold, we both get offered jobs at Rhynocorp, where we work now, which does all kinds of stuff that no one really cares about. The only discrepancy in our ingenious plan is how Judy met “the one” right after graduation, leaving me with twice as much to pay each month. That’s life right?
No cookies or candy today, all they have are bars that look like condensed shredded wood chips. I pass on those. I look past the island with platters of indigestion waiting to happen, and scan the room for Judy. She’s not in her office, I know this because she has glass doors that look into it and show her glorious view over the countryside. Who knew Montana had so much to offer the obsessed nature watcher? Scanning past a couple of test rooms, I see Judy in room 214. She sees me after jotting something on her clipboard and shoots me a hello half smile. She jots another random note down and then looks again to raise her finger and tell me to wait a minute. Judy is just like me when gauging time, one minute usually ends up being ten and a half an hour can be one or two hours at least. It’s a bad habit, I know, but I’ve got other things on my mind. I’m terribly bored already so I grab some of the wood chips and sit down at one of the chairs that must be intended to be uncomfortable. I wonder why I got sucked into the door. Why was it so dark behind the door and out the window? This could be poison... The gnawing of the “Ultra Health Bar'' is starting to give me a headache, plus I see Judy finishing up her session and heading this way, so I ditch the bar in the plant I was sitting next to, so Judy doesn’t have to interrogate me (company policy).
“What’s going on Judy? Actually working I see? That’s new!”
“Yes, I thought I’d squeeze in some legitimate results for the boss before nap time” She said.
“Well, my fingers started to cramp from all of the creative genius that was flowing from them into my newest work of art. I call it a database. So I figured I would give my head a rest and come see what you were doing for lunch today” I said as I realized that I was indifferent as to whether or not she could go or not. Any place at this point was better than in the dungeon of data.
“Well, I’m not sure how much more paperwork I’m going to have to do for the new health bars. Evidently some people who have sampled it are trying to get reimbursed for the pain and suffering they endured during and after they ingested it. Therefore I might have to take a deferred lunch period.”
I hate it when she tries to impress me with her vocabulary as if watching me struggle to follow along would be some sort of entertainment.
She kept on going, “… and I told her the reports were numerous and thorough enough to…”
All the while, I’m thinking, “Were his eyes gone because I’m blind as to when or how I might be dying until I’m already dead? Why was he reaching for me yet so quick to fall? Was he trying to steal my eyes for himself or maybe my brain for his own, if it was missing and thus, the reason for the stitches? Was he reaching to show affection? Maybe he wanted a hug, and maybe I die bitterly lonely because I gave out pieces of myself [figuratively] to different people throughout my life. Was that dream symbolic, or was it simply a dream?”
“…put a recall on the tainted merchandise, a.k.a. the unappetizing health bar you threw in the fichus” she finished.
“Yeah, well if you wanna go to Johnny’s and have a burger and a beer for 4 bucks, let me know boss!” She hates it when I call her boss, that’s why I love to joke with her about it. I walk away with a smirk to let her know that I know she doesn’t approve of me calling her ‘boss’.
I’ve liked Judy ever since we met, but not in a typical way. If I think of the type of girl I want to be with, she has the traits that I want. Yet, I wouldn’t want her to be the one I actually end up with. I know you think I’m full of it, but honestly, I like how I am when I’m around her most of the time, and I like how we interact. But I don’t quite like the way she handles herself with relationships. With no clichés, I can say that I like her as a friend and nothing more. Sometimes not even as a friend so much because she acts as if she is higher than everyone else. Girls do that occasionally, I believe, and when they aren’t doing that or acting normal, they are talking down on themselves to get positive reinforcement in the form of constructive compliments. I know, some guys do it too, and I’m not saying that all girls do it, just that, Judy does. She is attractive, I admit. And when I first met her, I had a crush on her because of her appearance. Yet, this lustful attitude quickly diminished as she moved from boyfriend to boyfriend, explaining to me how there were butterflies in her stomach and that this new boyfriend could fill a void her old one created or couldn’t fill. I went along with the charade because it was amusing and because all of my other friends are spread out like dandelions in the wind across the world. My best friend Greg is in London serving this country, as Will does the same in the Middle East. John is in Kansas practicing veterinary medicine while still going to school to become a doctor for it. Ryan is Up in Canada playing hockey for the maple leaves. Park was my roommate my freshman year at KU, and is now in Los Angeles with an established architecture firm. Another former roommate of mine, Kale, resides in Orlando doing dental work for celebrities. Year by year, our contact with each other grows weaker and it saddens me to realize this. But I know I can’t change it, I can only deal with it. The problem is how.
Lately the people who have known me for a while have been saying that I’ve been acting strange. What’s funny is that I don’t feel like I’m acting any differently than I have been most of my life. But I do notice subtle variations in some things. For instance I’ve been hearing things I usually ignore, and ignoring things that I usually have much interest in. An example of that would be how, ever since I started listening to music in my life, I have fallen asleep to some sort of music at night. However recently, along with the dreams, I can’t get to sleep with music on. In fact, I can barely get to sleep with the music on or off. This might be part of the cause of the problem. I’ve heard that sleep deprivation can do interesting things to the mind and the body, and it makes me wonder what kinds of things these psycho dreams are doing to my mind when I actually do get some sleep.
The small strip of steel moves around the circle and reminds me that there are only two more laps until its noon and I get my lunch break. Perfect timing for Judy to call,
“Hi, I’ve filed all of the paperwork, and I’m done until 1:30. Did you still want to get that beer and burger at Johnny’s?” she said.
“Yeah, meet me at the stairs in a minute and we’ll go.” Ultimately I was glad that she called to come with me because I am going to have a beer for lunch no matter what, and it’s better not to drink alone because drinking alone is a sign of a true alcoholic, and becoming an alcoholic would put me one step closer to the steep downward spiral of life that I’ve been warned about from so many people not to fall into.
I wonder what it's like to be in a bar fight. Johnny’s was a typical bar you could put in movies, with looming smoke, regulars sitting at the bar, and arbitrary people sporadically placed about it. The waitress leads us to our high top table at the back of the joint. As we walk by the bar, I glance around at the guys sitting there, imagining throwing a stool into the glasses hanging up in front of a mirror on the wall, and breaking a bottle into a weapon. I grin and nod at any one of them who acknowledge that we are bypassing the bar and drinking at our table. Once we sit, we order right away because I only have an hour lunch break and it takes 15 minutes to get here, plus we came knowing that we each wanted a Bud Light beer in a bottle and a burger for four bucks.
“It’ll be right out” she said while taking the menus and obviously not caring whether it came in 2 minutes or 2 hours.
“So, what’s new with you Judy? How is the new boyfriend? Is he everything you’ve hoped for and more?” I asked.
“I’m wonderful!” She said, “Tommy and I are engaged!”
All I could say in response was, “Say what.” Judy is impulsive but not usually to this extent. Maybe the guy had no eyes because he could never have seen this coming. Maybe that guy was reaching out for a hug or something because he was going to be alone from then on which would end up killing him or sending him into the darkness that he was surrounded by, symbolizing cold loneliness, and that guy is me.
“Well, we’re engaged to be engaged. Officially engaged, without an official engagement ring. So maybe it’s an unofficial engagement, leading up to an official engagement. But regardless, we’re engaged to some degree!”
When was North Korea or a terrorist going to drop a bomb on Montana? “Congratulations” I replied. “Did you set a date or anything, whether it’s for an official engagement or for a wedding?”
“Well right now, the wedding is penciled in around mid-June of next year.”
“Awesome! That’s around my birthday!” I exclaimed, only waiting for her surprised reaction.
“Great, that’ll be twice the reason to party and celebrate!”
“Yeah, except I’m not going to the wedding then. I plan to not be in the country for the 4 weeks surrounding my birthday. I intend to backpack across Europe, or sightsee it at least.” Not to mention, I really don’t like supporting her impulsive life changing decisions. At this point, the big question on my mind is when is the divorce?
“Oh! You have to come! I’ll cry if you aren’t there. Am I not a good enough friend to you that you won’t even come to my wedding?”
“No.”
“Well am I not special enough that you can’t change some plans for this?”
You see what I mean by her fishing for compliments? “You’re special to me and everything, and I cherish your friendship, it’s just that I already have the trip planned out in my head and it works really well how it is. I don’t want to mess with something when nothing is wrong with it, ya know?”
Her rebuttal was typical, “But there is something wrong with your plans, you’ll be missing from the most important day of my life and how am I supposed to thoroughly enjoy the happiest day of my life if you aren’t there to help me enjoy it? Besides, it is a lot easier to change plans in your head than it is to change an entire wedding.” By the end of this, she was speaking very sternly through her clenched teeth. The food and beer is finally here, saving me from this pointless debate, and I need a drink after this. I finish off the conversation by agreeing to be at the wedding no matter what.
On the way home from work, the drive is becoming a blur because I am so tired. My eyelids must be magnetically attracted to my cheeks because it’s ridiculously hard to keep them open. I turn on the radio and hate every song on every station, so I throw in a CD of R&B and slow songs. For normal people, it isn’t the best choice of music to keep them awake, but for me, it makes my mind race which keeps my body awake. Another song about having someone to hold, and having someone that loves you as much as you love them. My tire could blow and send me into the cement median then ricocheting back into another driver, flipping my car and careening off the road. I sing along, and groove to the music as it soothes my disgruntled attitude I developed today at lunch and work. I arrive at my apartment that I call home, and decide that a nap would serve me well. So I march into my gloomy, poorly lit room.
I have this crazy dream during my cough syrup nap, which I think might be about me being dead. It starts out with me, my sister, Vicki, who is two years older than me, and her boyfriend in her white Toyota 4-Runner going up a tree-covered icy mountain. All three of us are sitting in the front seat with my sister in the middle driving. My Mom is in the backseat too, along for the ride. It is obvious that we were on ice, so Vicki floors it, trying to make it up the mountain while doing fishtail turns. We slide out of control and the passenger side door, where I am sitting, ends up 2 inches from a huge tree that would have won the battle. I take control, thinking that it is my job and duty, and even though I might not be too sure that I will be able to get us out of the mess, I know that I am the one who is ultimately responsible for saving us and getting us up the mountain. Now I, all of a sudden, have control of the 4-Runner and I floor it straight up the mountain. I go right by the trees and right to the top, where an old minivan pulls out and I have to slam on the brakes to stop from hitting it. I get out, Vicki and her boyfriend are gone, along with the minivan, and I fall to the snow and start crying. My Mom gets out of the SUV and tries to comfort me. But the feeling I get seems to be that of acceptable crying, like I was almost expected to cry. Suddenly, my face was on wooden stairs as I was crying. I bite into the wood and wedge my head in between planks as if for some comfort. We then poofed into an old fashioned house with old fixtures, old furniture, old everything. Bits and pieces of my family are inside this house with me. My Aunt and my Uncle are there, my Grandparents, although my Grandma looked about 50 years younger, and who I assumed to be my Grandfather, yet I never get a good look at him is wearing an old fashioned overcoat like what I wore for Halloween which was my Grandfathers. It could be my Great Grandfather though. Plus my Mom is there still and we are getting ready to eat it seems. I fall to the floor and start bawling again for some reason, and it still felt like it was warranted. I couldn’t help it and it felt like it was ok. Like something had happened to where anyone would be expected to cry. What was really weird was the fact that they asked about Judy. My family doesn’t know the significance of Judy in my life at all, in fact, only a few of them know about her as my friend at all. We start to talk about an Uncle Bob. Realistically, I have no Uncle Bob. My mom insisted that I sit on this couch with her for our tea time, or dinner.
Waking up from a dream like that is confusing because so much went on that made little to no sense. The best thing I do when this happens is I lay in bed with my eyes shut and rethink the entire dream again, remembering as many details as I can, and then I get up and quickly jot down what I can still remember. This particular dream intrigues me though. I think I’m going to send it to my friend Greg in London. We used to try to analyze each other’s dreams late at night when we were hanging out and we couldn’t think of anything better to do. It was fascinating to see how many different aspects could tie into a seemingly simple or disorganized dream. I type up my notes from the dream I had a minute ago, and I send it via email to Greg. There is a 6 hour time difference, so the only time I have a chance to talk to him directly is when it’s early in the morning here or when he is staying up late. That isn’t very often for both of us that we’re available at these times.
Now it is back to bed because its 1:30 am and I’m planning on sight-seeing tomorrow since there is nothing else to do as of yet. A little bit more cough syrup and a pill that is supposed to help something I don’t even remember anymore, before bed and I am out like a light.
Normal sleep, light sleep, sweet dreams. Deeper sleep, harder sleep, different dreams. I see a bright rectangle directly above me while I’m lying on my back surrounded on all sides by something. Gracefully, a cloud of dirt flies from the aged hand of a pastor right into my face and turns everything black for a second. When I reopen my eyes, I am beside my freshly buried gravesite with a lone pastor wiping the dirt from his hands, descending from the hill we were on. There is neon green grass with a deep blue sky and silver-chrome type clouds. The wind was blowing through the trees making a swish, yet I also seemed to hear whispering from the breezed trees. I know that the pastor and I were the only people that came to that site on this day, along with the gravediggers. I looked around for someone to come from behind something and care about my death, but there was no one. The reality hits and I cover my face with my hands and fall to my knees. But now I hear chit-chat and laughter. I uncover my face and realize that I’m in Judy and Tommy’s house. They are watching some movie I can’t make out in what looks to be part movie theater in their house. Judy doesn’t seem to be affected at all by the fact that I have died. I guess she hasn’t heard yet. The movie ends and Judy gets up and walks over to her kitchen table. She takes a tack and pokes her finger, only to sign something with her blood. I approach the table, curious to see what she signed, if it was in regards to me or if it was something else. As I got up to a sympathy card, the blood from her finger burst into flames and slowly caught the whole card on fire, reducing it to glowing ashes. I look around for Judy and there is no one in the house anymore. There is no one anywhere. Everything fades and I start panicking. I run upstairs to Judy’s room, searching, I open the door and turn on the light. Doing this causes a huge flash and everything goes white. I woke up to a narrow beam of the sunrise light gleaming right through my blinds and onto my eyes.
It is a Saturday morning so I call Judy to see if she wants to come over and hang out, or maybe watch a movie. I hope she agrees because I’ve really been wanting to see the movie Clockwork Orange again, and I want to make sure I’m still alive. She tells me that she is currently “busy with Tommy” and that she will call me later when she gets a chance. I know that she won’t call me; I’ll have to call her if I ever want to talk to her about anything. Even when she needs something, or has something to ask me, she still seems to wait until I call her to ask me as opposed to just picking up the phone and calling me for once. Everything is a game.
Water into the electrical sockets, slipping and falling head first, apartment catches fire while I’m in the shower trapped… I spit out the toothpaste waste and smile real big in the mirror to make sure my teeth look clean. I clean up my room so I don’t have to wade through the clothes all over the floor, and open up the windows to get some fresh air in the apartment. I check my email really quickly to see if Greg has responded yet. Sweet, he has,
“You need to hook up with a girl and make some friends over there. That way when I get back from this tour, we can party it up like we did in the old days! What’s up with the old crew? Do you still talk to them at all? Write back. I’ll leave you with some words of wisdom:
1. Do what YOU want to do not what others want for you
2. As far as YOUR life is concerned always think of yourself first (what makes you happy)
3. Do more of the things that people tell you not to do
4. When trying to accomplish personal goals, don’t think about how it will help you with others; think about how it will help you.
Okay now that I am done boring you with things that I think let me tell you something that I know.
1. When you don’t take showers you stink
2. Ain't is a word cause aint is in the dictionary
3. Blondes don’t always have more fun.” Greg has a way with words.
I have a renewed sense of purpose for the time being, thanks to Greg’s inspirational words. I decide that I am going to go sightsee Yellowstone National Forest or any nearby forest. I enjoy being out in nature, it soothes, and seeing as how it’s a Saturday afternoon and I don’t have any available drinking buddies, nature is my other best friend.
I jump in the car, start heading to a forest, and turn on the radio to listen to some debates on the radio about different issues like the economy, politics, and stem cell research. It is interesting but it is delivered in such a boring manner that I lose interest. I started thinking about Judy and how she seemed really serious about getting married. Maybe she’s trying to seriously start a permanent life and a family. What would this mean for our friendship and how we hang out now? We wouldn’t be able to go out for a beer or go out partying if she’s pregnant, married, or has a kid. Burning blood, stubble stitches, chronic crying. Do animals in the wilderness live such complicated lives? Is everything so difficult for the animals that live harmoniously with nature? Why is it so perplexing and complex to live life for us as people? Life seems to go way astray from simply working each day just to survive and live, to humans. Animals are allowed to obey the laws of nature, including survival of the fittest, whereas people try to make even the weakest of our kind included in the ‘fittest’ category. If we were animals, I’m sure Judy and I would have started some kind of life a long time ago because it doesn’t even matter about whether you – flat, ricochet, careening off the road, flipping a few times, hitting my forehead against the steering wheel, seatbelt and glass shards cutting into my skin. Coming to rest I feel disoriented. Am I in a movie or something? Everything feels numb, and I see myself bleeding, I see the engine is on fire, but I feel no pain, no excitement, nothing. Is this how it ends for me? Is anyone going to care at all that I am no more? Is anyone going to find my car in the middle of the woods on the side of this highway in the middle of nowhere? Am I glad this finally happened naturally?