The Dreamer

I’m so fuckin’ tired.

I’ve been up for two days straight. My main staple these days is coffee. I gotta stay up, but the shit makes me so constipated. Damn coffee, even my urine smells like black mocha piss every time I take a leak.

I wonder, how long can a person last without sleep? I should google that. The computer is already on because of my constant Netflixing and gaming. I shake the mouse. My eyes are seared by the blinding light. I hurry to dim the backlight. Why do they make those so bright? You know, a nice dim backlight is sufficient. It doesn’t irritate the eyes. I press the dimmer, much better, but now my eyes are getting heavier. I can’t win. My body craves sleep, and I’m trying everything in my power not to fall asleep.

First thing that pops on my screen is Yahoo News. Great, more random ass stories that no one gives two shits about and yet, they’re on this Yahoo reel nevertheless. Bombing in Iraq kills two soldiers. Uh-huh. Father kills family. Another one? Funny cat videos. The reel glides slowly by. I stop on the picture of a missing girl. Hey, I've seen her before. My hand glides across the screen, and clicks the picture of her.

Jenny Blake, age 12, was taken on her way back home last Thursday. That’s the same girl who was selling Girl Scout cookies not too long ago. At the time, I couldn’t believe that girls still sold those door to door. In her case, her parents were right there besides her trying to sell the most cookies in her little club. I bought the Carmel Delites and sent her on her way. I still remember her little smile and her, “Thank you mister,” followed by her curtsy. Her parents are proud of her politeness, manners, and kindness. There’s a nice picture of her. Not many types like her. For such a young girl, she actually has a little give a damn about herself. Damn that sucks.

I scroll through the rest of the article. It's the usual run-on. If anyone has any information, please contact, blah, blah, blah. Well that was depression hell, which in part is making me sleepy. Time to play some C.O.D.

“So how long you finna play games now?” Raya asks as she comes into the kitchen.

“I dunno. It’s 9 now, so I figure maybe 4 hours. That gives me at least one hour of sleep.”

“I know this your process, but you gotta get some better sleep.” She pulls out the skillet.

“Raya, we’ve been through this,” I put my headset on to drown out her sighs and woes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work.

“I’m serious Will, you be actin’ like an asshole when you don’t get sleep.”

“Uhhh-huh”. I mash the button.

“You be actin’ cranky.”

“Yep.” Here she go again.

“Irritable. Your eyes are bloodshot.”

“Yes you’re right, I’m sorry.”

“And I stole 500 games at GameStop and now I’m wanted by the police.” She act like I don’t hear her. I roll my eyes.

I sigh, take the headset off and hug her from behind. “You’re right babe and I promise, I’ll go to sleep soon, but you have to wake me up.”

"It was bad huh?" She asks.

I pull away from her. The weight of her question hangs in the air as I try to forget about the last dream I was in. A brutal attack, the cold. I shake my head. "Yeah, it was bad."

"You want to talk--"

"Nope." I plop down on the couch and continue to queue up in the game. Wired. Wide awake really. The type of tired that's run purely on adrenaline. Call of Duty has this battle royale mode that is pure genius. Shooting, knifing people left and right. Hiding. These other gamers are amateurs. I sniped Killer Bunnies. And look, Fly Guy just landed right in my cross hairs.

“Hello? Did you hear me? Go see my friend she's a sleep therapist. You’re not even fuckin’ listenin to me. I’m tryin to help you out.”

“Why don’t you talk like a lady?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, you can’t talk a little calmer, and—Dammit, I just got killed by NinjaBees”

“So what do you want me to sound like?”

“Try suburban.”

“Fuck you, is that suburban enough?” She laughs at her little comeback. I join her, happy that she doesn’t take shit so seriously.

“Oh yeah, just like a soccer mom who does meth.”

Raya sits down a bit and watches me hunt down NinjaBees.

“So you’re doing all this just to get one guy.”

“Yep.”

“Why do you play these types of games? Don’t you wanna be the hero? I’d actually play with you if we get to be heroes, not assholes who fuck shit up. That’s just doin’ too much.”

“This is about power Raya. It’s about who can kill the best with the best kind of skills. You can’t see if you’re the best if you’re pre programmed to win the game. This is different; you’re going against different people who also believe they have the skills. You know outwit, outlast, outplay.”

“Wow, you totally used that from Survivor. Well if you’re gonna play then I’m gonna go to bed. I’m beat up.”

“Alright, I’m going to bed in several hours.”

“Goodnight Will.”

“Goodnight Raya.”

Finally! She goes to sleep. I can finally take care of these poor saps who believe they can play the game. There’s a strange humming in my headset. What the hell was that? It was like a constant low hum. I give a couple slaps to my headset. Still nothing. Fuck it. I go into the next round, which I’ve never seen before. Ah, it appears some super nerd made a new level for us to explore. Somehow, I’m at this level by myself. No other players about me. This level is gray with destroyed walls, shattered glasses. Paper raining on me like I’m being baptized in destruction. My weapons are gone. What the—aw shit I fell asleep.

- -

First thing’s first, I have to find that dreamer. If I can find this person quick, I may get out of this uninjured. I walk forward in this desolate street. All the cars are broken down. Even the air tastes gray. The street lights flicker, but when I pass them the lights turn off. In the distance I can see a huge wall. I make my way to it. As I get closer, I smell the something putrid, something rotting. The wall is made with huge gray bricks intermingled with dead bodies. They’re all women and, animals. Who the hell thinks of this fucked up shit?

Ok, ok the other side. Right, easy enough. What a dumbass. A bunch of rotting bodies ain’t gonna keep me from waking his ass up. I’ve fought ogres before, weird dream people that are filled with stars and psychedelic colors. This wall, psh, piece of cake. Climbing shit was my occupation as a twelve year old ding dong ditcher.

So I climb. I climb over some girls in their school uniforms, women in their Sunday dresses, climb over girls with pigtails, French braids, ponytails, girls with open eyes, closed eyes, some with no eyes. I pass them all, forgetting the feeling of climbing over their soft, clammy grey bodies. A feeling of dread hits me in the pit of my stomach as I climb up. I pretend I’m just climbing over a branch if it’s an arm or a leg. A cluster of leaves if it’s one of their faces. This isn’t real I have to keep telling myself, pushing back the wave of nausea.

I reach the top. Just as I throw my leg over to the other side, my pant leg gets stuck on the fingers of one of the girls. I give my leg a little shake. Nothing. Shake again, harder, still stuck. I reach down to free my pant leg, then she grabs. Dammit. I twist and pull. The bitch got a pretty nice grip. The whole wall now moves. The girls and women are growling at me, and aggressively pulling me down. I punch any fleshy thing I can. The wall peels me off the wall like ABC gum. It’s scratching and clawing me on the way down. I tumble down to the ground elbow first. Touché dreamer. At least you’re a bit clever than some, but I ain’t giving up that easily.

I get a running start and leap as high as I can, kneeing and elbowing judiciously at the vicious wall. I’m almost to the top at half the time than before. But of course the wall retaliates with twice the ferocity. The wall begins to now bite me and hurl me down with such malice I almost think I know this guy personally. Catching my breath, I assess the wall. The girls grimace once dead and lifeless, now hostile and even animalistic. Now I go to one of the girls with their arm completely away from the wall. If only I can pull out one of them, maybe it will diminish the wall’s strength. I go, pulling with all my might. Zero, a goose egg. She doesn’t even budge. I pull her arm in all different directions. Her bones aren’t even breaking from the pressure. Just slick, grey, whirling like an octopus’s pissed off tentacle. Winded I stop. I gotta do something different. I refuse to be stuck in Alice in Horrorland.

“Hey,” I hear a soft whisper coming from the abandoned building east of me. I don’t see anyone, but I follow where I had heard the voice. It’s better than the savage wall angle. If I stay there any longer, they might eat my clothes or turn me into a zombie, or worse, like them. I enter the grey building. Inside, there’s another door open leading to a basement. A red light pulses as if to say “danger”. Fuck that. As I turn away to find an alternate route, one that doesn’t have me potentially strapped down on a torture table getting fucked over like some B rated Pulp Fiction rip off. I see a girl in the corridor of the basement. She turns, and it’s Jenny Blake from Yahoo News.

“He’s through there,” she points a little too eerily for my taste, back through the red light basement door. I take one last look at the demon wall, which I can still hear the hell cats calling from where I am now. Fuck you very much. I follow Jenny into the basement door.

She leads me to what seems to be a tunnel of some sort. It’s wet. Horizontal pipes align the walls in all shapes and sizes. Some pipes are as cool as a winter’s breeze while the others are steamy, which pours through the bolts.

“Jenny,” I call her but stop. This isn’t her. I can tell. She doesn’t have the same pull like the dreamers have. I can only follow and hope she’s leading me in the right direction.

“He’s hurting me,” she says as she walks in her Girls Scout uniform.

“I don’t know if I can take anymore,” she leads me further into where apparently pipes come to die.

“Jenny, what does he look like? What does your—the dreamer look like?”

“It’s hard to breathe down here.” Jeanne starts to touch the pipes. I can hear the flesh sizzle when she touches the hot ones.

I pull her hand away. She looks down at it and continues down the hallway. The dreamer. He's the one who is making her do this. He's the one who probably killed her and is reliving the trauma is his mind. Disgusting.

“Jenny, I’m going to get you out of here. I’ll save you, just get me to him.

“It’s too late for me,” is her reply. Jenny’s smiling like she’s glad of her exciting rendezvous. Footsteps are now behind us. I look, but nothing is visible. Only the red pulsing light that is now beating faster. I look back for Jenny and she’s gone. I hope that at least you died so that you don’t have to endure this bastard’s bull shit. I can only imagine what she went through if this is a sneak peek. Rumbling sounds start to emerge from behind me.

“Get out!” is heard from behind. Oh I’ll get out alright. You bastard. Little Jenny, I’m going to find him. For you little one. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Good, I’m ready to wake up, but not before I do some of my own scare tactics on this dreamer.

Emerging from the dripping, steaming hell hole of a death trap, I see a beautiful scenery: lush green grass, singing robins, a house with a white picket fence. I take a double-take to make sure I just experience the last several minutes of hell and damnation, but the obscene tunnel is gone. Figures.

As I get closer to the house, I see that it’s one of those plantation style homes. One you would see from Georgia or Texas. Traditional brick homes with the big ass porch that wraps all around the house. I hear arguing from inside the house. I do the natural thing that any good American would do, I listen in.

“I blame you for our son.” The man in dark blue jeans and plaid shirt yells.

“Me? You’re the one that takes him hunting, and now he’s skinning the neighbor’s cat? Burning him to hide the evidence? How do you think I’m the one to blame?” The woman in pink scrubs screams back.

“You baby him. Tell him it’s ok that he doesn’t have friends. That’s weird. At least I try to teach him to be a man. You just make him overly sensitive and cry all the damn time.”

“Well, he wouldn’t learn how to kill if you haven’t taught to.” She plops down in the chair, while the husband, I presume, paces the kitchen.

“Well wait a minute, wasn’t that cat the most beastly thing in the neighborhood? It scratched him first.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t give him the right to kill it that way.” She shakes her head and puts her head in her hands. “You know something’s wrong. Something is really wrong with him. What do we do now?” she asks her husband. Her eyes are eager to be led by him. He scratches his head and freezes. They don’t move. I get a strong pull towards the back of the house.

I hear a little boy laughing saying, “I see you.”

I found the little bastard in his little overalls. He is bloodied from something he’s killed. He’s no more than six or seven with hazel eyes and black curls all over his head. “Did you like my girlfriend? She’s pretty.”

“You don’t deserve to live you little imp.”

“You’re not very nice. Imma teach you a lesson, like I did to Mr. Scout. Things that hurt me don’t deserve to live.” We circle around each other, sizing one another up. The boy lunges at me with a tiny blade in his hand. I kick him square in the chest. He falls back. I rush over to raise my foot just over his head. He rolls. I miss, but he cuts me on the leg. I see my leg gushing blood. I look at the boy now. He’s aged at least ten years. The little bastard is a teenager now. He rushes me. He tries to knock me to the ground, but he’s too scrawny. I’m just about to take him to the ground when I feel myself rocking and lose my balance. Damn how did I fall? I must be stirring in my sleep. I fall on my back and immediately he starts punching me. I try to get him off. He’s heavier. I glance up in between blows and he’s older, a man now. He grabs me by the hair, picks up the little blade and whispers to me, “Who’s the little imp now? You ain’t gonna steal none of my girls away from me.”

Just as he’s placing his blade against my neck, I feel stupid. I got all gung-ho about avenging this girl I don’t even know, and now I’m going to die. Raya is going to find me in my chair with my throat slit. I failed at getting the dreamer to wake me up and now I’m going to die. Just as he’s going to deliver the final blow, he whispers, “Don’t worry, you’re gonna enjoy it, just like the rest of them.” His hand slowly rakes across my neck and I wake up with Raya hovering over me with a huge ass needle in one hand, and a cloth with the other around my neck.

“You told me to wake you up. You didn’t wake up. You’re bleeding, oh God you’re bleeding.”