Chapter 11: To sleep, perchance to dream

I woke up in the middle of the night. Well, I assumed it was night; I really had no idea. I was covered in sweat and had been jolted awake by possibly the most disturbing dream I had ever had. I was walking down some street—I had no idea where the street was—when there was a flash of light. A naked woman came up to me as if to kiss me, which is exactly what she did. However, as she was kissing me, she bit me hard enough to draw blood. The woman then vanished.

I started walking again, and as I did, pieces of me started falling off. As each piece fell off, I picked it up and ate it. As I swallowed each piece of myself, they each regenerated. I did this until my lower jaw fell off. Of course, I couldn’t eat my jaw because, well, I no longer had a jaw to chew with. At that point, I was overcome with shocking pain. I couldn’t even scream. The only sound I could produce was a horrific moan.

That was when I woke up. Fortunately, my jaw was still intact. I was soaked with my own drool, but at least I could chew.

I opted to not tell anyone of my dream. The last thing these people needed was to think I was losing what was left of my mind. A Mark Twain quote came to mind: “Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.” Fitting?

With my secret in check, and my jaw intact, I got up to search for a towel to dry the now-cooling sweat. I quickly found the bathroom, though I bumped into several doorjambs as I attempted to write while stumbling around in dimly-lit halls. I was somewhat surprised to find a bra and panties laid out on the towel rod to dry. I couldn’t pull my eyes from the shiny fabric of the garments. I reached out to touch them, and as I did, my head did its thing and jerked to the right. The really sorry aspect of that sad moment was I had a nice, long string of drool hanging from my lower lip. The drool was flung from my gaping mouth and splattered on the mirror.

The metaphor was not lost on me. Nor was it lost on Bethany, who must have silently crept up behind me while my gaze was locked on her finery.

“They’re my only pair, otherwise you’d be welcome to them,” she said with a cute smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I get it, people are into all sorts of things. It’s cool.”

Bethany reached across me and pulled her undies from the rack. All I could do was watch. I didn’t say a word. For some reason, all wit had left the building. I should have grabbed her hand, and said in my best Bruce Campbell, à la Army of Darkness, “Give me some sugar.” But then, I figured the reference would be lost on the bed-head, sexy redhead.

Or would that be ‘bed-red-head.’ Or maybe ‘red-bed-head’?

It didn’t really matter. What mattered was that the drooling Tourette’s boy was going back to his sweat-bed alone. No redhead in the…

I gave up.

I grabbed a towel and made my way back to bed. During the time I had spent flinging drool in the bathroom, my bed had dried. Unfortunately, the drying process had left behind a fairly rank smell that was the secret love child of teen locker room and old-man sauna. The smell accosted me, violated me, and dropped me to my knees for a sweet round of dry heaves. Fortunately, the heaves stopped long enough for me to write awhile before giving myself over to the Sandman.

~

NOTE: I’m not really sure where this journal is heading. I keep thinking it’s a Pulitzer-bound memoir of the Apocalypse. But then I don’t know if my writing will ever see publication, or even another pair of eyes. But this journal is helping me get through what is easily the biggest tragedy of my life, hell, my generation. Strike that. The worst tragedy in the history of mankind. Hopefully, someday, someone will find these words and learn something from them.

But then, who knows? Who really fucking knows? And at this moment, I couldn’t really give a rat’s ass. I’m exhausted. There will be plenty of time to hope for the future…after another attempt at sleeping.

~