A Nightmare - Preface
I was sitting in a dark room, totally disoriented, as if the black darkened space was rotating and turning around and around. There were loud, abrupt noises coming from each corner of the room, as if they were sounds of distress, seeping from the cracks in the walls. I got up to go towards the disturbing echoes for help, as those distressful sounds continued to get louder and louder. There was a glowing light coming from underneath the crack of the door, flickering, looking as though the adjacent room was on fire. The intense heat was protruding from the steel door, as I placed my hand over the burning doorknob. It took all my power to push that jammed entrance door open, as I was carefully trying not to burn my hands. It felt as though there was an intense fire was protuberant from the next room, as the gray paint from the steel door began to peel. Loud noises, as if they were screams and cries for help, became louder and louder and I walked around that open room, looking for where all the shrieking sounds were coming from. I took off my shirt, as the heat in the room became intensely hot and almost unbearable. Sweat was protruding from my forehead and eyebrows, as I was having difficulty seeing around the darkened room. The noise and the cries for help kept getting louder and louder, as the screaming became more prevalent. The shrills were sounding more and more like the sounds of distressed babies. I kept walking around that room, as the intense heat kept getting hotter and hotter. There was another door at the most distant side of the room, as now I could see that the building was on fire. More and more cries for help, with the distinct noises of babies crying. Not one baby, but many babies, crying louder and louder. When I opened the door, the flames from the fire seemed to attack me, and I tried to avoid getting burned from the sudden combustion of intense heat and fire. Looking at the other side of the room, there was a large flame distended in the center. Men and women, dressed like doctors and nurses, were holding babies, as if they were newborns, wrapped in blankets, crying in distress. Suddenly, I could see one of the doctors throwing the baby he was holding into the hot fire, as the babies continued to scream and cry louder and louder. I tried to stop the doctor from throwing that infant into the burning inferno, but he continued to laugh, as more infants kept getting thrown into the burning flames. I began to wrestle with the man dressed as a doctor, trying to pull the infant baby away from him. I kept hitting the doctor in the face with my right hand, trying to get him to hand me the baby he was holding. I was desperately trying to get him to hand me that baby, trying to rescue it from being thrown into the blazing inferno. The man didn’t flinch. It was as if he couldn’t feel the pain from any of the punches I was directing at his face. He continued to wrestle the baby away, flinging it into the burning fire in the center of the room. There were suddenly more doctors, holding more crying infants in their hands. More and more babies kept being thrown into that fire, and I kept desperately trying to stop them, urgently trying to save their lives. I then tried to put out the fire, grabbing a blanket sitting on a nearby chair. But the fire kept getting bigger and larger, as more and more babies were disappearing into the growing, hot flames. Suddenly, my clothes started to catch on fire, as I couldn’t stop the children from being murdered and thrown into the blazing inferno. I started screaming, as the intense flames started burning the skin off my hands and arms, while the intense cries of babies became deafening. All that I could see and hear were the engulfing flames of fire. I kept screaming as loudly as I could.
The babies are burning.
CHAPTER ONE
A Bad Dream
“David? David?” I felt someone shaking me a hard as they could. “
THE BABIES ARE BURNING! ” I continued to loudly scream.
“What? David! Wake up!” a familiar female voice was getting louder and louder, as I could feel someone trying to feverishly to bring me back to consciousness. I was being awakened by my girlfriend, Rosa and the dampness of a very wet pillow. “David are you alright?” she asked, rubbing her hand across my wet forehead. I immediately sat up in bed, sweat protruding from my face and chest. I felt both of my hands, as if a burning hot sensation was instigating an incredible amount of pain. There was a burning feeling coming from each hand, as if they were on fire. I immediately got up and went into the bathroom, turning on the light. I quickly turned on the water facet, letting the cold-water rush across both of my hands. They felt as though I had been burned, as a painful sensation was coming from them. As I shut off the water, I looked at my fingers. There were burning welt marks on both of my hands and fingers, as if I had burned them in my sleep.
“David? You were yelling and screaming. Are you okay?” Rosa kept calling my name.
“Yes,” I slowly answered, wrapping a towel around both of my hands, trying to subside the burning sensation.
“Are you alright? This is the second night you’ve had these nightmares. You were loudly screaming in your sleep.”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized, looking over at the bedroom clock glowing a red light from my nightstand. It was only 3:37am.
“Go back to sleep, honey,” as I smiled and kissed her on her forehead. I knew Rosa had to get up early to be at the hospital. I quickly walked into the kitchen and with my hands still covered with the towel and managed to put them under the ice dispenser on the refrigerator door. The several ice cubes brought immediate relief to both of my hands, and I continued to cradle the freezing cubes of ice. Still holding the towel in my hands wrapped with ice, I walked over toward the balcony window. It was a warm summer evening in June, as I managed to open the sliding door and walked onto the veranda, still holding the towel in my hands. I stood over the railing of the balcony, staring at the Lakeshore Drive traffic bustling twenty floors below. My luxury condominium on North Lakeshore Drive Avenue faced the open, dark vastness of Lake Michigan, as there were only a few flickering lights from the DuSable Harbor. The blackened sky served as a darkened backdrop for the bright, illumination of all the stars dancing across the heavens. The star constellations up above were amazing, as I was easily able to pick out the Big Dipper from the rest of the shining stars in the sky. I momentarily found a peaceful solace in staring out towards the Great Lake that early morning hour, as if to bring me peace from the tumultuous nightmare that I had just experienced. I obviously had a very bad sleeping disorder, and it was getting worse. I’ve always had trouble sleeping most of my life, but my nocturnal rest issues were now becoming uncontrollable. I was having a difficult time sleeping, and it was getting to the point to where I was going to need to seek professional help for it. As an obstetrician at Chicago-Western Medical Center, my days were normally long and intense, starting at six in the morning and lasting well after seven or eight in the evening. I needed be well rested. I needed to get every bit of my sleep to get through my daily, stressful schedule. I had taken sleeping pills and other over the counter drugs to help my sleeping condition in the past, but to no avail. I was certainly having trouble falling asleep, and when I was sleeping, I was having these intense, disturbing nightmares. It was too early to get up, knowing that I had to be at the hospital to do patient rounds at six o’clock in the morning. But I was terribly afraid to go back to sleep. I was just freaking out. I couldn’t understand how my nightmares of babies screaming and hot burning fire had caused burning welts to appear on both of my hands and fingers. The babies are burning . I continued to say it to myself, over and over. I couldn’t forget that phrase that had horribly shaken me to my core and awakened me from that dreadful nightmare.
It was so bizarre. I continued to look down below on Lakeshore Drive while still holding the ice cubes in my hands. I then suddenly, heard the faint sounds of sirens and the honking of loud horns. I then noticed several fire trucks and ambulances with their red lights and sirens, near the corner of Lakeshore and Randolph Streets, at one of the adjacent structures down below.
One of the buildings was on fire.
