from another classroom. He removed his mask, beaming, and suddenly I felt I knew his face, though I didn’t know how. Then a larger figure emerged from the gloom behind him. It seemed almost to emerge from the seeker, overwhelming him, swallowing him. The figure was wearing the same costume as the seeker was, only it was green with spatterings of red and pink. I then realized the figure wasn’t wearing a costume of fabric, but of flesh sewn together with twine, rotting and leaking blood and human oil, pocks revealing pinkish-white tissue. The figure brandished a huge pair of garden shears. It raised them, separated the blades, and decapitated the seeker. There was no blood, and his head fell away like that of a wooden doll. The figure raised the shears again, this time moving toward me, and I raised my hand to protect my face. It clamped the blades over my fingers and cut them all off, save my thumb. I could actually feel neurons firing in my brain. I felt the momentary search for a pathway that would elicit the correct degree of pain, but none could be found, so I awoke as my fingers fell and dissolved away. Blue light from the television scorched my eyes. I was shaking all over. Sweat had soaked through the hem of my blanket. By now the dream had begun to fade, confusion beginning to subsume my fright. I was unsure of what to do. I thought about waking my father, but I was afraid he would be angry if I bothered him, though there was a good chance his anger would collapse into concern when he saw that I was genuinely afraid. In the end, I dragged the mattress over to the foot of the couch and tried to fall back asleep, allowing the action of the still-playing movie to shove the lingering unpleasant thoughts out of my head. I still shudder when I think of that dream, of that flesh-adorned figure. What was so jarring about it was that it came from nowhere. I’d never seen a film like it, nor had I read a book or played a video game that remotely resembled it. Something malign and odious slithered forth from innocence, plucked the apple from the tree, and shoved it down my throat. II. Dreams are not exclusively nocturnal. Not satisfied with disturbing our hours of rest, they also creep into our waking hours as well, and cripple our relationship to the present. Dreams had while awake are referred to as “daydreams,” though it isn’t just time of day that differentiates them from what we simply refer to as “dreams.” Perhaps saying we are awake while daydreaming is misleading (and possibly just wrong), but I think it Page 39
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