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."