Living the Dream

LIVING THE DREAM

Do you believe a house can cause you to dream?

We moved into this house for my career. I needed a quaint little town to hole myself up in and work. I’m a writer and I’m writing my follow-up novel to my collection of essays, “Meta-Neural Statistics: Imperialism of the Mind”. I wanted to start fresh and create a new novel, a new story from the ground up instead of working off of any pre-existing story of mine. Doing so has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember and now it’s coming true. My wife and daughter are my rock and my biggest supporters. They were hesitant about the move at first but in the end agreed that it would be good for us. I kept hearing Stereo Falls was a really peaceful neighborhood and those are words a writer loves to hear.

We've lived on this block for about four weeks now, my wife, daughter, and I. To the left of us is a house usually inhabited by old people and young unwed mothers. On our street alone there are two churches of two different religions, however no rivalries ensue, to which I’m happy not seeing suburban crusades. In between the two is a vacant lot that used to be an apartment building until it went up in flames just within our first week of being here. While the residents were out, a friend of the family stopped by to cook and the next thing the family knows is they're coming home to nothing. True story, we were outside when the family got home; to see their reactions which were as tragic as you’d imagine. The family lost everything they owned. Seeing the look on their faces was more horrifying than the fire itself. Luckily (if you can call it that) they were the only family currently living in the apartment building and no one was hurt.

And next to this now empty space is a soon-to-be vacant lot. This is every street's typical creepy looking house. Looks as if it's rotting every minute you see it. The old woman who stayed there had passed away some time ago. A condemned sign has been on the door for a long time now. The mailman would refer to her as the cheesecake lady, though I never understood the reference. But a more descriptive name for her would be ‘cat lady’ as she was your stereotypical old lady with cats all over the place. As a matter of fact, they're still there to this day. I’m almost certain that the cats own it and the elderly woman was merely a tenant. The rotting house stands (barely) right across the street from our home, covered in cats. But then again, if I were them, I would stay on the outside as well. Lord knows when that thing’s gonna come down on its own without the city’s help.

Down the block, on our side of the street, are some houses with quiet owners. In fact we see them so seldom I wonder if they're still there. Then, as if all that's not enough, several houses down is the town old folks’ home. They say it’s a retirement home but I believe it’s for the mentally disabled as I frequently see people there talking to themselves or holding conversations with the dog. Then it comes down to the house on the right. In the past four weeks I've seen more people live in that apartment building than anywhere else in town. I'm pretty sure it's a crack house or at least a drug house of some kind. I know, not exactly the place to raise kids, but it’s temporary. When the book’s done we’ll be off to a more permanent location. Every neighbor we've had next door has been trouble makers. The police make their rounds in this neighborhood more often than the ice cream man. Though I do wonder, why the repeat visits if it’s just going to continue? I would argue that it would be good to either actually fix the problem or just not come around at all. Seeing police on this block is false hope.

There’s been an unsettling feeling for a while now but it’s been so hard to pinpoint. I’ve lived in worse neighborhoods so I know it’s not the surroundings. I’m sure someone would suggest that our house is haunted but I don’t believe in that crap. But there is something… I’ve been having the strangest dreams. My wife says it’s just a subconscious brainstorming as I’m still searching for a topic for my novel but it feels like it’s something else. It can’t be my imagination going haywire, it just sounds too absurd, and then again, so does a haunted house making you dream in particular ways. Maybe it’s the town, maybe it’s the house, who knows; it’s probably just nerves, stress. I've been so paranoid as of late but don't want to startle my family. When I’ve brought it up at the dinner table both my wife and child claim to have been sleeping just fine. I wake up from my dreams and it feels like I’m still in them. Sometimes I know I’m dreaming but I can’t bring myself out of it. Sometimes I wake up distraught, so I come downstairs to work. Upon moving in I immediately set up the basement as my office. It’s quiet, dark, and peaceful. I’m at my desk right now. My eyes are heavy but I don’t want to go to sleep. I’m tired but I’m even more tired of feeling held captive by some ridiculous dreams.

My desk holds my typewriter, which I inherited from my grandfather when he passed, my notepad, an old coffee mug full of pens and pencils, and a framed photo of my girls from when my wife took our daughter to get glamour shots. I have a wastebasket full of wadded up rejections, or edits rather. I’ll get a few pages into an idea and then it comes to me how terrible it is so it goes in File 13. The spiders down here have been getting pretty bad. I need to do some dusting and de-webbing. This morning there was a slug trail on the floor. I guess that’s what I get for opting for the basement; however, I’m happy with it. I can hear what all’s going on above me if the girls need anything. I’ve been pulling a lot of late nights like this one. I live on coffee. Energy drinks are stronger but I’m sticking with my black gold. I used to have a bit of a problem with my intake of energy drinks and it got away from me so these days I stick to coffee, cigars (not that it’s that healthier of a habit), and my jazz records; all part of my writing ‘ritual’. I’m quite taken with Charles Mingus and have a fairly decent collection of his work. My wife and daughter aren’t big fans of jazz but down here it’s the house music, my theme music.

Spiders again… The light from my lamp reflects off of their eight eyes. I tried stomping them but it doesn’t seem to bother them. Insects impervious to the human foot; we live in a frightening world. My eyes are dry and everything’s getting a bit blurry. My coffee’s magic spell has worn off and I’m getting drowsy. For some people it’s a sign of a need for rest, for me, however, it feels like I’m at the top of the rollercoaster and it’s about to plummet…

The fuzzy little black spiders have found their way up to my desk; awfully ballsy of them. Well, I thought they were spiders… No, I-I know they’re spiders but they don’t look like it. They all look like me. Tiny, palm size versions of myself in all black and they’re all looking at me. One has his arm in a sling. He’s pointing at me, “Yeah, that’s him! He’s the guy who stepped on me!” There’s an uproar among them, among my little selves. I’ve fallen asleep. This must be a dream. I didn’t think I’d fall asleep down here; thought I’d be too busy but they’ve found me…  The dreams found me.

The little me’s, the spiders, climb on top of my typewriter while others join them onto my notebooks. I don’t know why I can’t move, I’m trying. They have my pens pointed in my direction like spears. I can hear their angry chatter but it’s indistinct. Ouch! They’re poking at me with pens while others dance on my typewriter jumping from one key to the next. They’re typing, “Are…we…awake…?” I’m fighting but something’s holding me back. I can’t move and for a split second all of the little versions of me in black clad are actually spiders covering my things and typing with their legs like fingers. I blink and shake my head and there I am again staring back at me. I muster up the energy and begin typing furiously stamping letters into my little selves splattering their blood on the paper. They squish, squirm, and squeal as they die by my keys. I’m still being poked, however, so I slam my fist down on them, SHIT! The pen is stuck in my hand! I pull it out as the spider people laugh and stare at my blood with culinary intentions. I stab down brutally killing one with the pen and swat another as it attempts to escape. Beneath my palm he’s all broken up like a man who’s jumped to his death from the top of a skyscraper. My desk and work is bloodied with the juices of spiders masking themselves as clones of me smaller than that of an action figure. The paper on my notepad curls as if it were burning. The spiders are gone.

All the red in the blood seems to fade before my very eyes leaving just a clear gelatinous slime. What in the hell is going on? My natural curiosity has me touch it. It’s thick and slick, but doesn’t carry much of an odor. I notice, past the slime on my hand, my family’s picture: the girls have duct tape around their mouths and their makeup is running from crying. I know it’s not real. It can’t be real…but it’s disturbing none the less. Lord, I hope it’s not real.

“I don’t know why you try to fight it…” A voice from behind me. I turn to see, GOOD LORD! It’s a SLUG at least three times my size. He’s sitting up and looking at me, talking to me. It’s green and grey with black blotches and a beige tone underbelly.

“…What?” I reply, though I’m unsure why.

“Why do you try to fight it?” Again, he’s monstrously large and draped with slime. His voice is wet, if that makes any sense.

“Fight what?” I’m talking to a slug…

“Sleep… If you don’t sleep, you don’t dream.” His demeanor is quite casual and doesn’t appear aggressive in the slightest.

“I don’t wanna dream. I wanna wake up.”

“How would you know when you’re awake? You daydream. You constantly have a free flow of thoughts and ideas. You have the same conversations every day. The radio plays the same songs every day. You see the same commercials on your television day in day out. Does that really sound like reality…or just a recurring dream?”

His voice is deep and there’s a bass-like gargle in his tone. He’s slimy and large and appears to be pulsating.

“No… No, this is a dream.” I dare not tell him that he indeed makes sense.

“Is it? You’re alone. You’re a writer living his dream. Your wife and child are nowhere to be seen… Have you ever considered that your happy family life is the dream and that you’re actually just a sad and lonely man who dreams his ideal world while spending his real life talking to a slug and fending off spiders?”

“No.” I refuse to believe it. If I shake my head any harder my neck will break. “I’ll show you this isn’t real.” I tell him as I - WHOA!

Ugh. I’ve slipped in his trail and landed on my back on the floor of this dank basement. I’m covered in his slime and my back and head are reeling. The slug peeks his head over into my view.

“Are you still with us?”

I can hear him move as he slides along my floor. It’s a wet tearing sound. He leaves my side. I can’t move. I hear him slither away but with his size it sounds more like someone being dragged. It was clear the intentions of the spiders were malicious or at least defensive to say the least but I must admit I’m at a bit of a loss to what the slug’s are.

“Hey, wait…” Nothing answers. He’s gone. The ceiling above me is spinning. It’s spinning a bit too much. Dust and various particles are falling down on me. I turn my head to dodge but there’s just too much. Pieces of the wood are falling down…it’s rotted. Soon after the wood chunks fall, termites follow. They’re tiny like any other termite and they’re all over me as I’m lying in the slug’s trail on the floor. I attempt to brush off the termites and get up but they’re ravenous. They bark and snarl with gravely tones as if they were rabid, wild animals. Their volume is quite thunderous despite their size. I’m up and they’re brushed off to the floor where they scatter whimpering like scolded dogs.

The ceiling continues to fall but I step to the side this time. My heart races as I’m watching my house collapse. The house is crumbling before my eyes to where I’m on the main level… Wait… The house hasn’t fallen, the basement has risen. I look around me and I’m upstairs now. I call for my wife, “Claire!” and soon my daughter, “Lacey!” No one answers. I’m concerned. I’m walking through my house but it doesn’t look like my house… I’ve seen this house before but only in a dream, or, this is my house and I’ve dreamt of other places… That damn slug has gotten to me. I know this house. I walk through it and it’s vacant; it’s always vacant. Claire and Lacey aren’t here; they’re never in this house. Why? Why here? The only thing I can think of is this was the house that was here before it was torn down for this current building to be constructed, but that’s crazy.

“Hello!?” I call out to the emptiness of the house only to hear my voice echo back at me from all sides. My eyes follow my ears and dart back and forth all around me. I turn the corner into what is supposed to be the kitchen to find an old woman standing here. She’s gray and frail and taking a cake out of the oven. She doesn’t seem to notice me and I’m cautious about approaching her. She sets her cake down on the counter and turns to me as if I’d been here all along.

“Well, the cheesecake is done. Here in a bit you get to have the first bite.” She smiles and the wrinkles on her face stretch and her eyes are now cat eyes illuminated with a greenish yellow. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to step out for a moment.”

She walks past me to the front door, looks back at me, and opens the door as she falls into a gaggle of different cats. Her human body is no more and this group of cats of various sizes and colors are scattering in its place. They all look back at me before they leave the house and right after they exit the door slowly closes on its own.

I’ve got to get a grip on it.

“Reality’s depressing, isn’t it?” Huh?

I turn quickly to see who’s behind me, of course, it’s the slug. He’s eating the cheesecake.

“What?”

“Reality. It’s awful. Unpredictable. See, if you were dreaming everything would be just right. You’d be happily married and employed. But, no, you’re just like me, trying to make it in this cruel world.” The slug laughs, “We’re both trying to watch our…salt intake.”

The slug smirks. What ARE his intentions?

“This isn’t real!”

“Oh it isn’t? You might wanna check the back of your head…”

I do and my hand is bloodied. The fall. I cracked my skull when I fell. I’m bleeding and I need to tend to it, but it doesn’t hurt. I’m so confused.

“Confusing. That’s life for ya. This cheesecake is delicious. You should try some.” The cheesecake is covered in his slime. “…Might wanna get some before the cats come back.” His goo is dripping all over the kitchen floor. My head is smashed open but doesn’t hurt… This giant slug is trying to tell me that my life is a dream and that my dreams are real; how cliché. I’ve seen way too many movies and read way too many stories to even entertain such a thought.

“You’re not real.”

“Oh, everything’s real. It’s just a matter of perspective. It’s all in how you look at things; doesn’t change its existence, just how you view its existence.”

And for a moment faster than a flash of lightening I find myself kneeled down talking to a normal size slug on the floor. But it doesn’t last long and I’m back talking to this big slimy bastard. There’s something else in the air… I hear something.

“Do you hear that?” I ask the slug. He pays no attention and continues eating. I follow the sound. It sounds like a woman crying. I walk into the living room and pull back the curtains to see a woman surrounded by flames. She’s crying and screaming out, “My baby! My baby!” I gotta help her. The smoke is thick and filling the room. Briefly behind her I see across the street that both churches are covered in condemned signs and the windows are boarded up. Out in front on the lawns of said churches their congregations are kneeled down facing their houses of worship with their heads hung singing hymnals in somber tones. My attention is quickly redirected to the woman in need of help facing the flames. But wait… The fire isn’t out there; it’s this house that’s burning. The woman in the window isn’t who she was a moment ago, she’s now my mother still crying and screaming, “My baby!”

“Mom!” I call out to her. She bangs on the window’s glass with her palms but she ignites along with the flame and begins to melt quickly. The skin of her hands sticks to the window and her hand’s skeletal infrastructure pulls out of her flesh like the bone from slow roasted BBQ. She continues to scream. My heart is in my throat but simultaneously I know it’s not real. My mother died years ago from lung cancer; a different kind of smoke caught up with her. Regardless of its realism or lack thereof it’s still painful to see. The house continues to burn around me. With seeing my mother burn before my eyes I give up and I sit down on the floor. I’m done with this dream. I’ve had enough. To my right side the little slug squirms his way over to rest beside me and to my left the spiders, ‘real’ spiders, gather and we sit together in the center of this burning living room.

Police race down the street with their lights flashing and sirens at top volume one after the other as if it were a parade. I don’t even bother responding or reacting anymore. We hear the neighbors scatter, shouting “It’s the cops! Hide the shit!” No one notices this burning house but me and my…friends. And now they’re gone too. I’m alone. My wife and my daughter are nowhere to be found. I’m about to burn alive and I don’t even have a giant slug here to comfort me, not that he would do so if he were here. The billowing smoke and clouds of ash form what looks to be a snowy, albeit darkened, mountain side and sure enough Claire and Lacy come sledding down laughing joyfully, my wife behind my child holding her. They fall once the cloud collapses, screaming as they plummet. I grit my teeth seeing this, knowing it’s not real. I sit through the fire and wait it out.

The burning comes to an end and I’m tired of sitting in the ashes and I stand up brushing myself off. I walk back through the house of soot to where my desk would be and sweep off piles of ash. My typewriter is there, unscathed, yet it’s covered in more than half a dozen “spiders” or at least the little clone versions of me. I’ve had it with the dream games and brush them off my work, “Get outta here. Get lost.” My variants scurry away. I shake the copious amounts of ash, dirt, and dust off of my chair and I sit down and begin typing hastily. I can’t tell you what I’m writing but it’s pouring out of me. I guess I’ll figure it all out soon enough.

“Baby, what are you still doing up?” My wife’s voice.

I snap to it and I’m typing with the fury of a driven man. My basement office is normal and nothing is covered in ash, there are no spiders and no giant slug. Even as I come to and realize where I am and realize that my wife is fine and indeed my wife, I still can’t stop typing.

“Sorry, honey, just getting some work done.” I had to say something regardless of how absent minded it was.

“Ugh, a slug trail!” My wife screams and jumps back.

I assure her, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“But there’s a slug in this basement. That’s gross.”

“Don’t worry. He’s fine. There’s nothing wrong, just let him go.”

“He’s fine…? Babe, you need to get to sleep. A rest will do you just fine.”

“I’ll be up in a minute.”

She looks around at the webs on the ceiling, “I think tomorrow you should do some sweeping and spraying down here.” She looks grossed out by the thought of spiders.

After my dealings with spiders I couldn’t agree more, “My thoughts exactly.”

She exits. I continue to type feverishly. Without much of a pause my hands remove and replace the paper with factory ease. My fingers type with precision and there are no mistakes to speak of. My wastebasket will be barren now that this novel is writing itself, using my hands as its tools. My fingers have cut off communication to my brain and I have no clue what my hands are doing anymore. I’m not even attempting to read along. I’ll just have to wait like everyone else. I don’t know what it is but I know it will be real…from someone’s perspective. I think tonight I’ll sleep better than I have in a long time. I feel anything that was once holding me back or troubling me burned to ashes along with that house and its contents and inhabitants. Maybe it wasn’t something in the house spawning such dreams. Perhaps it was my inner fire and ambition that burned it all away. I’ll never know but I guess it’s like the slug said, “It’s all in perspective.” Tomorrow I’ll read this and see what my dreams have brought me.  

Just for good measure… Just in case… Before I turn in for the night I check my hand and the back of my head and I’m fine. Time to go to bed…or wake up, depending… That damned slug...