Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been sick.
Nothing crazy, just a minor summer bug over the last few nights. But one thing about me when I’m sick: I’m strangely susceptible to fever dreams. And I do mean strangely. It’s almost as if the sickness manifests solely to allow my body to complete its one true function, the terrifying distortion of reality in real time. It’s so prevalent that if I suddenly found myself to be a mutant and sought to join the X-Men, my power would be to achieve a core body temperature of over 100 degrees and freak the fuck out.
So anyway, combining this propensity for the insane with my horrible habit of falling asleep with my TV on full blast – as well as the contents of half a bottle of Nyquil churning in my gut – I managed to have one of the most effed up dreams of my life last night.
It opened with a small gathering of well-dressed people pre-gaming a party as the well-dressed do in a small South Philly apartment, one that strongly resembled that of my best friend. All faces in attendance were familiar, notably including my girlfriend and said best friend. Once proper pre-gaming had been accomplished, we made haste for the Schuylkill, where we were to attend a fancy yacht party hosted by my girlfriend’s entire family.
Shit was tight.
Guys wore black suits or tuxedos, ladies wore white dresses or gowns. Everyone had drinks in hand, nothing crazy or sugary but proper neat pours of life-giving brown booze. I can even remember the taste of the single malt I shared with Mr. My Girlfriend’s Dad (Lagavulin 16, if I’m not mistaken) as we stood by the starboard rail, clinking glasses often and discussing the future.
Sometime during this conversation, I realized I’d forgotten something direly important back at Best Friend’s apartment. I ran down the block (because naturally, Dream Philadelphia allows for Boathouse Row to run adjacent to Passyunk Avenue near its intersection with Catharine) and just before I made it to my destination, I was abducted and knocked unconscious.
I came to in a white room, strapped down to a bed, a man in a white doctor’s coat leaning over me with an apathetic smile on his face, if such an emotive look ever existed.
“Where am I?” I was frantic, maybe even a little sweaty.
“Where I need you to be.”
“And who are you?”
“The man who needs you here.”
“And why do you need me here?”
“To kill you.”
Hold the phone. Kill me? Even in my dreams, I’m too lovable to murder. What gives, fever?
“You see, those people on that boat, they’ve scabbed the world. And you’ve been colluding with them. It’s a shame it has to be you, I understand, but this is how I prove my point.”
“But wait! I don’t want to die!”
“Nobody does.”
“I have too much to get done! My book, my family, school, my whole life!”
“Everybody does.”
I sat silently, my head held in place by tape, my eyes on fluorescent lights shining from the ceiling. Even in a dream, I knew I had no response. I understood gravity, futility, and finality.
Even as he lifted a nondescript syringe over my face, the entirely non-threatening yet terrifying medical man uttered the phrase “I’m sorry” before I jerked awake, covered in fresh sweat, my comforter ripped to shreds, Harrison Ford yelling at Sean Connery to not call him Junior on TV.
Now, I’ve had nightmares throughout the course of my existence, as we all have. Whether it was Cookie Monster bashing my head in with a baseball bat as a kid or being shot on the front line of a forgotten theater of a forgotten war as a teenager, I’ve certainly been scared by my dreams before.
But this one? This one terrified me. I couldn’t get back to sleep at all, but why? What made this dream more unbearably scary than some of the more grotesque and morbid things I’ve dreamed in the past?
All I can think of right now, a full day removed, is the look on the man’s face. That not caring. That look of “Hey man, everyone dies. Why shouldn’t you?” That almost businessman-like approach to the topic of death. I’ve come to the conclusion that he is one in the same with the good little Christian perception of St. Peter up at the pearly white gates, dodging whys and whens and hows, just explaining the now, the prescient.
This comfort with death – bureaucratic death, if you will – is easily scarier to me than anything with blood dripping from its fangs. The highest heights, the spindliest spiders, they pale in comparison to my fear of the end, the brick wall marking the finish line in my one-man race through life.
And why’s that? Because, as referenced by surprisingly accurate Dream Me, I have shit to do. Lots of it. Nothing I can take with me. And I certainly don’t want to leave business untended to just so I can go and be dead. I want to finish those things I’ve started, most notably my current BIP.
You know the adage: live hard, die record-settingly old, and leave a bookish corpse. Or something.
That all being said, you can bet I’m scared to life by my subconscious mind right now. Apparently, it wants me to finish this thing. And that’s exactly what I’ll do.
My goal is the end of December, this year. I’m just over 20% of the way through my outline. Think I have it in me? Words of encouragement are certainly appreciated.
And between now and then, I am staying the fuck away from yacht parties with my girlfriend’s family.
Alternate Route 