Only in dreams, p.1
Only In Dreams, page 1
ONLY IN DREAMS
Copyright 2016 DELL SWEET, All rights reserved, domestic and foreign
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
KNOCK PREVIEW
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Only In Dreams
ONE
Doctor Alan Meiser's office
Tuesday: Late Afternoon
“How are you doing, Joseph?” Alan smiled at me. We had spent a few weeks since the accident getting to know one another. He was working to get me to open up. Talk it all out. Get past it.
“Good... Better, I think.”
“Yes? … Well, that is good then... feel up to talking about it?”
“It?”
“The accident?”
“Um... Okay... I...”
“Just start from start, where ever that may be for you,” he told me.
“Okay. I... Well, It was early evening when the phone rang...”
The Accident
“I got it,” I said. Bobby's excited voice sounded in my ear as I picked up the phone. I tried to speak, but gave up after a second. Instead, I just called out the news to Ann as Bobby told me. Sort of play by play with my own little spin.
“Bobby asked Sarah to do something, honey... I don't know what,” I said. “It might have been sexual,” I added.
“Asshole,” Bobby said.
“It had something to do with her asshole,” I called out.
“Double Asshole,” Bobby said laughing.
Ann padded in from the bedroom smiling. I held up one finger.
“Bobby asked Sarah to marry him?” I said. “Holy crap, he popped the question,” I said amazed.
“About time,” Ann said, “She said yes?”
“Yes, of course, she must have, but he hasn't said what she said.” I listened.
“Stupid,” Ann said. “Of course she said yes.” Ann took the phone away from me. “It's about time,” she said. “Uh huh, Uh huh. Put the boss on... You think you are. Now put the real boss on...” She waited... “Finally,” she said once Sarah was on the phone.
I was floored. I thought Bobby would never get married. I hadn't seen it coming. “Honey,” I said; she looked over at me. “We should go celebrate!” I mouthed.
“Hey, Sarah, we should go celebrate. Joe and I decided to have a baby today... Today... Nope... No, I wouldn't kid you... Yeah... We have to... You guys are getting married! Getting married! And we're going to have a baby as soon as I can get pregnant... You bet I am,” she laughed. “Today... I'm not wasting time... No... No... We'll pick you up... We'll go out dancing... We have to, I won't be able to dance in a couple of months and you'll be an old settled down married lady... Wow... Wow... Do you realize our lives are changing right now... Forever? Hey, for real, we'll have to enjoy ourselves tonight... Love you too, we'll come get you in... Oh yeah... Yeah... Okay, two hours... Okay... Okay,” she hung up and looked at me with a huge smile on her face.
“We have two hours... This would be the best night to start a baby,” she told me as she took my hand and lead me toward the bedroom.
Early Morning
I Shifted in the chair and then looked at Doctor Meiser. He motioned for me to continue and smiled reassuringly.
“I was the designated driver, I had two drinks early and then I drank coke for the rest of the night. The girls danced all night while Bobby and I sat at the table and talked about how much our lives had changed since we were little kids growing up in the same neighborhood. The last dance was a slow dance and we all got up to dance. It had been a long day. It felt so good to hold Ann close as we danced...”
We left early morning after last call and headed out of the city. As we sat idling at a crosswalk, Ann and Sarah giggling and talking excitedly, a young woman with mascara running down her too-pale face staggered into the crosswalk, stumbled into the passenger side fender and sprawled across the hood. After a brief second she straightened back up and made her way around the car. Her long black hair hung listlessly around her face as she finally negotiated the car and the rest of the crosswalk. I shook my head. The light changed and I put her out of my mind.
The traffic was light going out of the city. The girls talked back and forth, Sarah leaning over into the front seat, Bobby smiling and looking happier than I had seen him in a very long time. I left the city, merged into traffic on the river road and headed for home. It was all so normal until it happened.
The tire blew in an area where there was a slight drop off from the river road. It dropped down into a grassy area with picnic tables right alongside the river, like a little park. Bobby had said something, I lifted my eyes to the mirror and the tire blew.
The wheel spun in my hands just like that. One second fine: I could feel the road in the steering wheel as the tires passed over the expansion joints in the concrete. Thump... Thump... Thump... It could lull you into not paying attention, and I have often wondered if that was what happened, if it lulled me into relaxing. The next second my world came unglued.
Thump... Thump... Bobby spoke... Thump... I raised my eyes and the wheel was torn from my hands, spun through my grasping fingers, leaving its heat stinging against my palm. Gone before I could catch it.
Because the road dipped and the land fell away? Maybe, I don't know. The tire blew on the passenger front right at the entrance of the little park so there was no guardrail to stop the car. The wheel spun, the car dropped off the road, became airborne, and as I was turning I saw a tree coming for the passenger side of the windshield. I tried to get the wheel back and steer, but I was airborne I couldn't get the wheel, I couldn't steer. And there was no time anyway. We hit the tree hard with the right front, slued sideways in the air, and then the car continued on and dropped into the river.
I was ejected through the driver's door which sprung open as the car hit the tree. The car slued to the right, the same side it hit on. The door popped open, the car slued again, I would've hit the door and stayed in, but since it was open I fell out onto the ground in a sitting position. The car flipped end over end once and then dropped into the river. I watched it all in slow motion from my seat on the ground.
I sat stunned for a few seconds and then began to look for Ann. Then Bobby began to scream.
Loud... In pain... In a panic.
When I looked I saw that the car was sinking into the river: It was also being carried away with the current. The car was nose down. Since Ann was not with me I realized she had to be in the car: Maybe trapped from the damage to that side.
I dove into the water just as the car sank out of sight. Bobby surfaced in front of me, trying to grab my arm, blood flowing from a wound on his head. I pushed him away, fought when he tried to hold me. He suddenly let go and I managed to get past him so I could reach the car, but I never caught sight of the car again after it sank. I had no idea where it had gone. I dove, but the water was black and depth-less. Each time I dove it was farther to get back to the shore, the current was carrying me away...
“The last time I made it to the shore, coughing and choking, two bystanders got me and held me. I fought, but I had no real strength left. I sat, weary, my mind locked away from me someplace and waited for the day to be over with.” I looked up at the doctor. I hadn't even realized that I had been looking at the floor. Not making contact with him at all.
“It doesn't matter, Joseph. Don't look at it like you are telling me...”
It amazed me that he seemed to have read my mind, but I suppose he was used to people looking away, or staring at the floor as they spoke.
“Don't think you have to meet my eyes. Just look at it as you are telling the story to yourself... As if you didn't know the events...”
He nodded at me. I nodded back and began again...
The Aftermath
“The divers hadn't found the car until the next day, over two thousand feet further down river from where it had gone in, stuck on a sandbar that jutted out from an island in the center of the river.
Ann had been killed instantly, so they said. Crushed when the car hit the tree.
Sarah had gone through the windshield, as she had been leaning over the front seat. They found her three weeks later, washed up over twelve miles downriver.
Bobby had been killed instantly they had explained to me. The force of the crash pushed him into the driver's side rear door. As the car spun off the tree the front of the car dropped down, hit the top of the picnic table just right, flipped it up into the air and back. Bobby's head was pushed out the rear window because of the force of the crash. The broken table hit his head and he continued on into the water, most probably dead before he landed. They found him later in the day. By that time I was in the hospital: Sedated, with my scratches and broken thumb.”
TWO
Five years later
Strangely, today I found myself thinking back to the accident. It's been almost five years. Incredible. Seems hard to believe it. For the longest time I would begin to think about it and suddenly find several hours had passed while I played it over and over in my head to see what I could have done differently. There were so many things. So many things. It was a long time before I had begun to pick myself back up and get on with my life. I finally realized that whatever I could've done
So a few years have passed and I have recovered as much as I could be expected to, at least from the physical things. They keep telling me the mental stuff will be awhile. Maybe, but it didn't seem that way to me. I had a broken thumb, a few scratches and that was it. Ann, Bobby and Sarah were dead, gone for good.
Even so, like any of us, time has moved on. I met a woman, Elisa and slowly the wounds began to heal. Time stopped dragging. I stopped constantly finding myself lost in thought. I began to live again. Elisa and I were talking about moving in together. From there the world was open. That was when the dreams began, just a few weeks ago...
Wednesday Morning
I opened one eye and peeped at the clock. Red numerals in the near dark bedroom. 5:58 AM. Time, lots of time... I could sleep longer. I wrapped one arm around Ann and pulled her to me. She snuggled next to me and I dropped off into sleep once more. The warm press of her body comforting to me.
I came awake again a few minutes later. The clock read 6:05 AM. A little more gray had seeped into the morning. My arm wrapped around Ann and I pulled her even closer. I felt her respond, pressing herself closer to me... More time, I thought... More time... I drifted off, and when I peeked at the clock again it read 6:21 AM. Still time. I let one hand stroke her arm and then wrap across her breasts as I pulled her into me. Her own arm grabbed mine and pinned it to her breast. I snuggled into her warmth and lost myself for a few more minutes.
The next time I opened my eyes the clock read 6:32 AM. I pulled her close to me once more. This time she giggled and began to turn into me as I pulled her.
Her face turned, her hair falling across it as she turned toward me. Her softness pressing more fully into me. She brushed her hair away with one hand and I found myself suddenly screaming in the dark of my bedroom. I came awake instantly...
I lay breathing heavy, trying to calm my racing heart. The dream had been so vivid, so real. I had held her and it had felt so good, so real, so right. She had turned to me and I had opened my eyes and really seen her. Seen what I was holding. A rotting corpse. She was coming closer, holding me, her hands suddenly clutching harder, trying to drag me down into the grave she stank of.
I was covered with sweat, but my heart slowed and I got myself up and made it to the shower.
Friday Morning:
The red LED's of the clock switched from 6:47 am to 6:48 am. My eyes were struggling to stay open. It had been a long week. Elisa and I had been out late and she had wound up staying over. Not the first time, hopefully not the last.
I remembered the night before: Dinner out. A few drinks, coming back home. Making love to her. Life was starting to fit a pattern again. Patterns. Routines, it felt good, but it made me afraid too.
I moved one hand lower and began to stroke Elisa's bare hip, loving the way the smooth skin slipped under my hand. Occasionally allowing my hand to slip across one buttock before sliding back up to stroke her hip once more.
I had thought I was only attached, but I had, had to admit to myself that I was more than attached. Somewhere in the last few months I had fallen in love with her. I had felt it as it happened. There was simply nothing for it, but to be grateful for it. To thank the creator for it. Sometimes love did happen again. I had thought that after Ann...
“Hey,” Elisa said. “I'll give you six weeks to stop that.” She turned into me, catching my hand between her legs.
Her dark eyes smiled up at me, but they were serious. They pulled me in. I lowered my lips to hers.
Saturday Morning
I woke all at once, sat up and stared into the dark bedroom. Something had awakened me, although I could not recall what it had been. I sat for a moment and then looked at the clock, 5:18 AM. Far too early, a weekend too, I let myself fall back to the bed and a second later I was walking down a cracked sidewalk... Familiar, but I couldn't place it at first... Somewhere... A large house, split into two apartments. One on each side. I knew this place. I knew it, it was...
I walked into the wide central hallway and to the apartment door on the right: As I walked a flood of memories came back to me...
Sledding in the winter... Sleds stacked up in this hallway as we went off to have a snowball fight or to see a movie. Smoking cigarettes in the hall closet, positive we would not be found out. Not realizing that the smell was drifting out of the closet and up into the second floor hallway where my family lived. Telling stories. Camping out in the hallway after a real camping trip in a nearby field was rained out. We kept sneaking back into his families apartment for things. Crackers, Peanut butter. Too many memories to process. And I wondered if they were coming to me because I wanted them to come, or if they were coming completely of their own. Or maybe pushed my way for a reason. I didn't know, saw no way that I could know. I stopped in front of the door and listened.
Dead silence and nothing more.
I lifted my hand to knock when a voice came to me from the shadows at the rear of the hallway. The voice froze me in my tracks. I turned slowly and was shocked when my friend Bobby Siles stepped from the shadows and into a small pool of yellow light cast by the bare overhead bulb. He had said my name, Just the once, but there was no mistaking his voice.
“Bobby,” I managed.
His eyes seemed flat, but other than that it was him.
“Aren't you going to ask me how I'm doing?”
I shook my head. The emotion was almost overwhelming.
“It's funny,” he continued, ”I saw Ann and Sarah this morning. I asked them to come with me, but they said they would pass.”
“Don't do this, Bobby.” I said.
“Don't do what? I didn't do anything... You did.” He walked closer to me as he talked.
As he came closer, stepping from the shadows, I could see what the years in the grave had done to him. His face cracked as he talked, small pieces flaking off and powdering the front of the moldy gray suit he wore. The grave smell hit me like a physical force. 'Not real.' I told myself. 'Not real!' But it didn't stop what stood before me. It didn't drive away the smell. It didn't kill the memories.
His chest heaved as if he were struggling for breath. Rot and corruption drifted from between his yellow, too-long teeth as his over-bright, black eyes focused on me.
I realized he was changing as he talked. He had seemed nearly normal at first, now he was looking as though he might actually look after five years in a box in the ground. I wondered why my wife Ann had not come. Why his wife wasn't there to accuse me as well. I didn't question whether or not this was real: I believed it was, and that was all that was required. If I believed it that made it real. Telling myself I didn't believe in it made no difference at all. He was still there.
“Oh, I am me,” he said. A fat worm tried to crawl from his mouth as he talked. His yellowed teeth shredded it, half fell to the floor the other half fell back into his mouth. I felt my stomach flip hard.
I had thought that he was the only one who hadn't been out right killed except me. I had been desperately looking around to find Ann when Bobby had begun to scream.
I was on shore, the car had continued into the river. I had run and jumped into the river to find the car and Bobby had... Tried to stop me... Tried to stop me from finding Ann... Saving her.
Afterward the State Police had told me there was no way that I heard Bobby scream. He had already been dead, but I knew better. I knew. Their facts didn't matter.
“Ain't reminiscing great?” Bobby asked now. “Remember when we got caught smoking that time by the babysitter?” He turned and pointed to the hall closet. The door hung halfway off the hinges, yawning open. I could see two little boys in there, coughing, passing a lit cigarette back and forth. Taking pretend puffs and pushing them out of their mouths before the smoke could make them sick.
“No,” I said.
“Oh,” Bobby said. “Sorry for bringing up the past, but hey, I've got no future to fill you in about... Know why that is?”
I didn't answer.
“I said, do you know why that is? Huh? Because my best friend killed me. Deader than that old dog we found out in the woods that one time... Remember?... What were we... Nine? Ten? Just like that,” he finished.
