I've been having dreams lately. Well, the same dream over and over to be more accurate. The same horrible dream. I thought it was cool the first time I had it, being a fan of horror movies, but now there is nothing I wouldn't do to stop having this dream night after night, every night.
The dream starts with me just hanging out alone at home, not doing much of anything. Some nights I waste by watching crappy shows on television, some nights I'm reading a classic science fiction book by Isaac Asimov or Harry Harrison, sometimes in the dream I'm making dinner - it's almost always ramen noodles with a bit of chopped green onions, hard-boiled egg, pork and seaweed - a great meal for a dream or for reality. There is always the feeling that I am not normal, that I am the sort of person who is a little slow, a little helpless and not very apt at taking care of myself.
A sudden, blinding headache, a picture on the wall that I notice and can never seem to quite make out, and then a phone call that bursts into the dream like a ruined bell falling down the tower of a long abandoned church. The dreaded phone call. The phone call is where the dream goes bad, every time.
"Hello?" I say.
"Hello Bob. You ready to go?" says the voice on the line.
"Sure." My usual reply. I don’t know why I don’t just tell him no.
Fifteen minutes later there is a knock on the back door. He never comes to the front door. I open it and he walks in. "Hi Bob, jump in the car and let's go, I have a big night planned for us tonight."
"OK Bob" I say. "I'm ready."
We get in the car and Bob drives somewhere. It is always somewhere far away, around an hour or so, sometimes two. Sometimes we drive to a house, or a grocery store, or a mall. Wherever we go, it is to find someone. A person. Someone that Bob can do horrible things to.
One time Bob followed a guy from the grocery store to what was apparently the office he worked in. He went inside and came back a few minutes later, dragging the guy, unconscious, and put him in the back of the van. Then he dissolved the guy in a barrel of acid.
In another dream he told me that the lady in the house we visited was turning into a zombie and he crept inside her house through the sliding glass door in the back, and stabbed her in the back of the head with a replica samurai sword while she sat in front of her television. Then he dismembered her, chopped her into little bits and bones, and left the pieces scattered all over her house and yard. Before we left I saw her hand, lying on the bathroom floor, twitch seven times.
Another time Bob noticed a skateboarder kid at the mall, and he simply waited till the kid skated into a dark area behind the place and mowed him down with the van, speeding off before attracting attention from anyone.
Every time I have this terrible dream, I try to stop Bob. But he is insane, the worst kind of insane - a powerful insanity - and he won't listen to me. It's that feeling, that dream feeling, where you feel like you're underwater and moving in slow motion, like you're drugged and can barely move, that feeling of complete helplessness where you can't change what's happening, simply observe with a sinking feeling the frightful events unfolding in front of you and try to feel sympathetic towards Bob's victim of the day and try not to weep like a child, try not to experience the guilt that comes with not being able to do anything to prevent what’s happening. The running in slow motion feeling, like you're being pursued by a nameless evil and no matter how fast you move your legs you just can't seem to put any distance between you and the demon that's chasing you down the hallway of the house you grew up in. That's how I feel when Bob is committing his nightly atrocities on the poor, unsuspecting innocent public.
I can't have this dream anymore. I refuse. I don't know why my brain plagues me with this nightly hallucination. I figure the only way to stop myself from dreaming the dream is to stay awake. I’m taking caffeine pills and I drank a couple of Red Bulls. I have a Five Hour Energy drink here too, in case the pills and Red Bulls don't last all night. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've been awake for almost fifty hours now.
You know, now that I think of it, I'm not really sure if I was asleep all those nights or not.
Hold on, there's the phone...
