I decided to start writing mine down. Here's last night:
There’s a big to-do going on. It’s on a boat. A big boat. More like a small cruise ship. There are flood lights blinding me if I dare step out on the deck, like a UFO hovers above. The rain beats down on the metal floor like constant machine-gun fire. Groups of well-dressed business types, sipping martinis and champagne, eating caviar, seem unaffected by the lights or the rain as their ties and dresses whip noisily in the wind.
Then, for a moment, the sound of the downpour yields way to the same words over and over: Recession, Economic Crisis, The Market – OH GOD – The Market. The wind picks up, carrying these dozens of people with it, off the deck and into the cold ocean. While they sink I can still hear their lamentations as the cold blue sea takes on hues of red and white.
I turn towards the inside of the ship which seems much more comfortable. The cabin is roomy with cushioned chairs, round oak tables and lit with hanging chandeliers. Moondance plays on a loop, I’m told, but I just started paying attention so I’m still enjoying it. Seated at the tables is everybody I’ve ever known. You! And you! Except there’s a slight issue…
Everybody is drunk. The Dome when you’re 19 drunk. And maybe somebody slipped something in your drink drunk. Everybody is too busy laughing and falling over themselves to notice me noticing them so I’m safe for now, I think.
I’m with a man who I think is my brother, but he repeatedly enforces that he is not. I ask him if he smokes. He does not. “Good. Me neither!” I holler as loud as I can if trying to convince myself of the fact. He says he has to go to the bathroom, and asks me to hold his gun. I oblige, and, naturally, start to play with it. It’s a semi-auto pistol so the first thing I do is release the magazine to see how many bullets it holds. Except this magazine is full of cigarettes; fourteen to be exact. I smoke them all. Unsatisfied, I cock it and another cigarette is ejected from the chamber which I also smoke.
I don’t know how, but now I’m sitting at a table with an old friend. In a state of stupidity some time ago, I had told her that we could not be friends anymore. She understands I had made a mistake in doing so when I apologize, and asks how I’ve been. I tell her I’ve been sober for five months now and she congratulates me. Sitting beside her, unseen until now, is another woman. The news of my sobriety draws her attention, but she says nothing. Is she smiling or scowling? I can’t read her. I smile and draw a picture of a walrus fucking a teddy bear on a cocktail napkin (seemed like a good idea). I still can’t see any expression on her face. I have wronged this woman, I know this much, but her blank stare is making me uncomfortably indecisive on what to do next. Can I do anything?
The room is now just our table and the walls grow closer by the second. I want to make things right, but there’s not much time now before we’re crushed. I look down at the table in front of us and see a shot glass with something brown in it, and another handgun. When I look across the table again, the two women are gone. Me, a shot of some liquor (Jager, probably), and a handgun alone in a room whose walls are now pushing my shoulders into my chest. When I grab the shot glass, it’s contents turn to sand. Nothing to do now but to put the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. I somehow get off three shots and am still alive, so I pop off three more. It is now that I realize my throat is clogged with cigarettes, and I can’t breathe. Purple in the face, I wonder if I will die from asphyxiation or being crushed first.
I woke up without being sure.
Why can’t I just dream about dolphins?
There’s a big to-do going on. It’s on a boat. A big boat. More like a small cruise ship. There are flood lights blinding me if I dare step out on the deck, like a UFO hovers above. The rain beats down on the metal floor like constant machine-gun fire. Groups of well-dressed business types, sipping martinis and champagne, eating caviar, seem unaffected by the lights or the rain as their ties and dresses whip noisily in the wind.
Then, for a moment, the sound of the downpour yields way to the same words over and over: Recession, Economic Crisis, The Market – OH GOD – The Market. The wind picks up, carrying these dozens of people with it, off the deck and into the cold ocean. While they sink I can still hear their lamentations as the cold blue sea takes on hues of red and white.
I turn towards the inside of the ship which seems much more comfortable. The cabin is roomy with cushioned chairs, round oak tables and lit with hanging chandeliers. Moondance plays on a loop, I’m told, but I just started paying attention so I’m still enjoying it. Seated at the tables is everybody I’ve ever known. You! And you! Except there’s a slight issue…
Everybody is drunk. The Dome when you’re 19 drunk. And maybe somebody slipped something in your drink drunk. Everybody is too busy laughing and falling over themselves to notice me noticing them so I’m safe for now, I think.
I’m with a man who I think is my brother, but he repeatedly enforces that he is not. I ask him if he smokes. He does not. “Good. Me neither!” I holler as loud as I can if trying to convince myself of the fact. He says he has to go to the bathroom, and asks me to hold his gun. I oblige, and, naturally, start to play with it. It’s a semi-auto pistol so the first thing I do is release the magazine to see how many bullets it holds. Except this magazine is full of cigarettes; fourteen to be exact. I smoke them all. Unsatisfied, I cock it and another cigarette is ejected from the chamber which I also smoke.
I don’t know how, but now I’m sitting at a table with an old friend. In a state of stupidity some time ago, I had told her that we could not be friends anymore. She understands I had made a mistake in doing so when I apologize, and asks how I’ve been. I tell her I’ve been sober for five months now and she congratulates me. Sitting beside her, unseen until now, is another woman. The news of my sobriety draws her attention, but she says nothing. Is she smiling or scowling? I can’t read her. I smile and draw a picture of a walrus fucking a teddy bear on a cocktail napkin (seemed like a good idea). I still can’t see any expression on her face. I have wronged this woman, I know this much, but her blank stare is making me uncomfortably indecisive on what to do next. Can I do anything?
The room is now just our table and the walls grow closer by the second. I want to make things right, but there’s not much time now before we’re crushed. I look down at the table in front of us and see a shot glass with something brown in it, and another handgun. When I look across the table again, the two women are gone. Me, a shot of some liquor (Jager, probably), and a handgun alone in a room whose walls are now pushing my shoulders into my chest. When I grab the shot glass, it’s contents turn to sand. Nothing to do now but to put the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. I somehow get off three shots and am still alive, so I pop off three more. It is now that I realize my throat is clogged with cigarettes, and I can’t breathe. Purple in the face, I wonder if I will die from asphyxiation or being crushed first.
I woke up without being sure.
Why can’t I just dream about dolphins?
