Nightmare Scenario
I had trouble falling asleep last night, probably the late dinner and the excitement of Olaia’s sleep-over with her cousins, Mariam and Robertito. Whatever it was, I tossed and turned before falling into a shallow slumber. I began to have a disquieting nightmare.
I find myself in a hospital, with rows of patients. It’s strangely bright and open, almost as if it’s in my house. Something is happening, something big, tragic. I must get my family out, I think to myself. Out of where and from what, I can’t say, but there’s this urgency to move or run or something. There is this hurried hopeful movement all around. Something is coming, but it can be dealt with, or so everyone believes.
I snap from the dream briefly and focus on my sleeping self. I’m asleep, I halfway realize, and then as if to make sense of the disconnect, my dream seizes upon the realization and weaves it into the plot.
You are asleep. You know who comes for you in your sleep. There is some realization that there is a Freddy Crouger, nightmare type scenario playing out, and even though I’ve never seen a single slasher movie in my life, I’m now in one. He’s coming for you, and there is nowhere to hide. I choke, the realization coming over me. There is only a split second of angst for myself, as I realize that I am in control. But the rest? These people here don’t know they are safe, that they are in control. I begin to run around, making tons of noise. "I know who you are!! You can’t hurt these people. You can’t hurt me. You’ll all be okay," I shout. I’m getting mad now. I want to find this character and tear his head off.
Suddenly, I’m accompanied by a middle-aged Mia Sara, Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend in "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off." We’re walking inside a plush carpeted hotel. The hallways are wide and tall, and everything looks like it’s covered with various earth-toned crushed velvet. She is talking to me, in a sort of evil villain/philosopher tone. "You will have a choice," she says. She is communicating with me in some way beyond talking. I am filled with feelings, emotions, anxiousness at what is to come. I’m unsure why I am here or what I am to do.
"Answer me truthfully," I say to her, for some reason knowing she cannot lie, "am I in Hell?"
"Yes." And she dissappears. I follow the corridor and exit into a dark street. It still feels closed in, like a movie set of Las Vegas. I am drenched in seeminess. It’s not unpleasant, just drenched in some sort of manifestation of selfishness, lust, greed. Women proposition me on the street in their high heels, fishnets, and bustieres. Street hustlers call my name, with gay grins and bejeweled hands. "Comeon, wanna try yer luck." It’s tempting. Looks like it might be fun. Just for second, I think…. no feel, this isn’t so bad. It’s sad, but not evil as I had imagined it.
I am traveling now through the streets, flying, running, I don’t know which. I absorb the scene before me with ever increasing ownership, and I keep accelerating until it is all so much blur or images, faces, seeminess, sex, greed, gluttony, envy, aimlessness, despair, and loneliness. I boldly shout to them, "Repent!! Repent!! Jesus - God loves you! You are all loved by God." I fix on myself, and how I sound. Repent, evil doers was not my intent. I hear in my head the cries of a fire and brimstone Baptist preacher, facing his congregation wagging his finger at the unworthy. My feeling as I fly through the wasteland and all the emptiness is not that they are evil, but that they are lost, worthy of love. "Repent!" is a call to reach out their hands, and to not let their despair keep them from redemption. I am aware I am in Hell, and I know with every fiber of my being that Hell cannot exist where there is a willingness to be redeemed. If the love of the Creator is infinite, there is no possible reason for these poor creatures to live in the dark unless they choose to. And no one, I know, would willingly choose to give up being loved. I will deliver the message, "Repent, and ye shall be saved!!" I am filled with such strength, force of will, to be saying such things. I want to save them all, share with them what I know. No matter how far you have fallen, you can still be saved. I know this.
And on a dark street I come to an instant stop. In front of me are three figures ready to accost me. I take a bold step toward them to deliver my message. They immediately transform into monsters dripping blood, fingers stretched out in contorted razor sharp claws, eyes rolled back, all night of the living dead-like. They had been normal human figures a moment earlier, but suddenly turn hideously grotesque.
I shrink for a millisecond. I am startled, and fear for a brief instant, but it isn’t fear of dying or being attacked, it is a point of infinite revulsion, like all possible nausea compacted into an impossibly short period of time. Get away from me, I think.
And as quickly as it had come, the next moments fill me with ever increasing compassion and I say, "fill me" because I don’t get the sense that I was the one doing it. I become bolder and bolder. My speed picks up again, and I race toward the figure on my right at an impossible rate. I embrace his torso and speed off, my arms wrapped as tightly as I can possibly imagine around his breast, him facing away from me, my chin on his shoulder. "Don’t worry, He loves you." And my embrace strengthens like my life depends on it. I will hold onto you.
I ask him how his life had been in this place. Had it been tough. He tells me at first it wasn’t so hard, but then there were those that beat him. He had been kicked down and bloodied, living on the street, in the cold for so long. "It’s not so bad." I ask him what it was like before, in life. "The same," he says.
The night fades, replaced by a brightly lit plaza of intricate stone work. I come to a stop and release this person to whom I had clung to tightly.
"Sorry, about that," I say wiping spittle off his shoulder.
And I awake in a sweat, hot as hell, my pillow wet from drool. Yeech. I adjust my covers and sigh. "Hon, I just had the weirdest dream. I don’t even know if I can call it a dream."