And I Never Do Wake Up

Just the other night, I ended up in the back of a cop car with toy guns. It was prom night, and this year’s theme was “guns.” Not Western, not cops and robbers, not some disco-infused, anti-terrorism campaign, just guns. It didn’t matter what you dressed as—you were in costume as long as you brought a fake firearm. There were cops everywhere to look around and make sure everyone’s firearms were fake, I guess. There has to be a better way to do this. Oh yes, I suppose you could have literally any other theme for a school event, but dreams are dreams.

Back inside the cop car: I am seated behind the officer with two other high schoolers in the vehicle. The one to my right ironically dressed as a court jester, the one riding shotgun unironically dressed as a cop. The kid-cop shows his gun first, obviously fake. He smiles to the cop with satisfaction. The cop extends his arm to the backseat and asks for the next gun. I look to the jester, but since he isn’t paying attention, I hand over my fake gun. Wait, I’m pretty sure it was fake? Oh God, please tell me I brought the right gun from my house. For some reason I can no longer remember. How heavy was it in my hands? Why can’t I remember? “K, clear,” the cop says in a tired voice, handing back my gun. Oh, thank God it wasn’t real.

“Next,” he says, his hand still extended in the backseat. The sweaty Jester sits next to me resting his pointer finger just below the slide of his airsoft pistol—proper gun safety etiquette, nice. “Hand up the toy, I have to check everyone here,” the cop demands impatiently as he turns to face the backseat. I glance at the visibly shaken jester as his short breaths crescendo into hyperventilation. The police officer recognizes the situation and screams “HANDS IN THE AIR” with an alarming amount of fear in his voice. In a rush to draw his gun—BANG. I was already halfway out of the car when the shot rang off. Oh my God—he shot that kid. Why the hell did we have gun-themed prom? I stumble further from the vehicle as high schoolers turn around stunned. Who is at fault here, the officer for being skittish? The kid for acting suspiciously? Probably the class president for organizing this nightmare. Then—BANG, BANG-BANG from inside the car. Three more shots go off, and the jester steps out, nervously scanning the now-panicked crowd. A tall clown watching from the edge of the parking lot wielding no weapons points a finger at me. “Jester. He’s there.” I hate these kinds of dreams. I take off across the parking lot and sprint down the stairs leading to the football field. Glancing back, I see the jester about 15 yards behind me, the clown 5 yards behind him. The clown barks at his jester, “If you don’t catch him, I will do to you what we were planning to do to him!” The clown continues to berate his high school compadre, fueling their chase with fear. Usually in my nightmares my feet are slow, or I’m tied down to something. In this dream, I’m running with superhuman endurance, and the clown and his jester fall far behind me.

I wake up. Am I awake? I am sitting by the fireplace in my childhood home, writing a story. Okay, still dreaming. Ah, this is one of those dreams with weird abrupt segues. Let’s see, what am I writing…? “He sees the clown in the distance behind him, losing steam with every hard breath, his clown shoes tirelessly slapping the concrete." No... I am writing my own dream. I feel like I am lucid dreaming, as if I have some awareness of the dream itself. I look down at the paper and an icon pops up like a video game menu: “Does he get caught?” A choose your own adventure. Okay, he does not get caught. Simple as that—all I have to write is “He runs far away.” Just put the words on the paper, *he doesn’t get caught*. Simple enough. As I move my pen towards the paper, I can feel my body slipping. This does not feel like a lucid dream at all. I have no control or awareness. Suddenly, I am back in my body on that road near my high school. I look to the sky like Jim Carrey at the end of The Truman Show. “Please,” I pray to myself, “please don’t write that I get caught.” I continue stumbling down the road, the clown and the jester in the distance behind me.

After taking a few good strides, I feel my body beginning to slip again. Yes, please, another segue. Get me the hell out of here. My soul begins to exit from my feet, slowly deflating my body up through my torso. Thank you, Jesus. Take me now. Just as the euphoria of safety hits my head, something else does. A stop sign. Ow, what? Then, something hits my stomach—sobriety, terror.

 My soul wasn’t slipping from my body, only from my legs. All the life is gone from my legs. I cannot feel them; I cannot use them. All sensation is now concentrated in my hypersensitive upper body. Semi-gracefully, I lean onto the sign-post and twist onto the ground, trying to hide while keeping an eye on the jokers. They are stopped in the distance, staring a thousand yards in my direction. It looks like they are talking to each other. I don’t think they see me. The taller one starts to climb onto a parked car while the other takes a few more casual steps in my direction. I am now doing everything I can to press my body down into the dirt behind the stop sign, but gravity has never felt so weak. No matter how hard I try to stay down, parts of my body or clothing continue to rise on either side of the light post. Weird, it was a stop sign a second ago. The taller clown jumps down off the car, and they both start walking intently, then half-skipping. Now laughing hysterically, they both break into a dead sprint. Desperately, I try to claw and drag my dead weight out of the dirt, but gravity has never felt so strong. Why would I have written my own story like this?

The jingling from the bells on the clown’s collar and the jester’s pointed hat ring terror down the street. The jokers’ rapid, slapping shoes sync up rhythmically until the sound of one giant clown materializes. They arrive at my impotent body which lays sunken in the dirt and continue to laugh violently despite being out of breath. The tall clown leashes his jester and waddles towards me, squatting as he walks with a disturbing intensity. “Remember what I said I was going to do to little Jesty if we couldn’t catch you?” I stayed silent because I didn’t want to remember. If I couldn’t remember, then how would my subconscious recreate the punishment? It’s all me creating the dream for myself, right? The jester spoke up from an awkward distance, “You said if we caught ‘em, we could sing a song together.” “Not what I was thinking, but yes… I did promise a little tune for Jesty. We jokers do love a good tune... Let’s keep it short though, we don’t want to keep him waiting now.”

They manhandle my body into an old wooden chair and sing down onto me in a trembling monotone:

“Oooh myyy—what’s a sober clown to do

Someone needs to laugh but he’s all out of booze

Oooh myyy—what’s a blind man to do

He opens his eyes to find he’s deaf, dumb, and mute

Oh my God, we don’t say in vain

We would if we could, we don’t even know His name

If just one bug knew how all the flowers bloom

He’d hang himself inside his own cocoon”

Their psalm screeches to a halt and the large clown rolls a full-length mirror out in front of my face. The jester clumsily grips my ears and hair back, and the clown brings a scalpel down on the crest of my forehead. Blood drips down into my eyes until my entire world turns red. I close my eyes out of horror until the scalpel breaks sunlight crashing through my eyelids. As the blood dries around my naked eyeballs, the burning realization that I can never blink again sets my mind aflame. The clown hacks away unevenly at the thick cartilage surrounding my ears. Blood drips down my water-resistant reflection and pools at our feet. My large naked teeth gape open as I choke on my scream. No thoughts left, just waiting to die. I stare down onto my blood-soaked clothes trying to avoid eye-contact with my own faceless face. The jokers look on motionless, but their bells continue ringing through my head.