Untitled Nightmare

This was but one of the tales my mother used to tell me to frighten me. This is the tale of the stream. This is perhaps the one I remember clearest because my dreams were haunted for quite sometime after first hearing it. In fact, I hate to admit, I sometimes still suffer this dreadful nightmare. The story begins with four friends out on a camping trip.

The first of which had been successful in most everything he had done in life. This made him arrogant. One of which could take nothing seriously, comic relief. Another was brilliant, but kept mainly to himself which set him apart even from the four. The last was predictably a combination of the other three. His personality changed depending upon who he was around. The foremost mentioned is the originator of this story’s conflict.

The first decides that he should issue a challenge. He thinks that he can canoe down the river faster than any of the rest. He is bound determined to win, he even puts a modest sum on his claim thus grabbing the attention of the others. The others, competitive as he agree and ante up the cash.

They set up the race so that there would be three checkpoints. The final one being the finish line itself. And at each checkpoint they were allowed to stop and breathe for two minutes before being prodded along the river. At no point throughout the race were they to touch solid ground. They had no clue at the time that this race would never end. That it would go on and on in my dreams for all of these years.

Little more than fifteen minutes after the race was proposed, it was underway. The most arrogant of the four regretted the route that he had mapped up soon into the race. Ten miles, and upstream too! That would take nearly all day to do normally. Still the adrenaline assisted him and the threat of losing the bet also kept him going.

Nearly an hour into the race the quiet one felt a burning in his arms as if they were about to fall off. They still had a long way to go, he thought, and that was enough to keep him going. He was not the only one who wanted it to end however, the clown wanted nothing more than to go ashore, but he knew that they would never let him hear the end of that one. He tried desperately to rationalize this thought. The guys, he thought, would probably love me if I let this end here. But he knew that to be false.

Soon the malleable one who changed his personality like a shirt, saw the smart one not too far ahead of him. He paddled as hard as he could to try to reclaim the lead that he had lost not to long ago. Even though he was paddling as hard as he could it still felt like he was losing ground. This guy was good, he thought. It was then that the all-too familiar voice in his head spoke up: “Slow and steady wins the race.”

Yeah, he thought, that’s just great. I’m losing this race and all that my mind can do to help me is to turn into Confucius. He tried to make himself laugh by inserting the old wise saying of the funny one, “He who stands on toilet is high on the pot.” This did earn a laugh from his racing mind.

He soon decided to let up on the oars. He thought that if he was going to lose it was better not to overexert himself in the process. Soon he was shocked to find that he was gaining on the leader. As he passed him the smart one just looked at him disbelievingly. He shouted curses at him asking him where he had come from and he told him where he could go, if you know what I mean. It is a bit ironic perhaps, because if he knew where he was going maybe he could have prevented his eternal repetition.

Then the whole world began to shiver. It all seemed so fake, like one of those dreams where the killer is right behind you and you take off down that endless hallway, never getting anywhere. What the canoe-ers thought was up became down, what was down was up. Soon they forgot where they were or what they were doing.

Soon he heard a distress call from in front of him. Damn, he thought, he got in front of me. As he came around the bend he saw the cause of the distress. A wall of nothing. When I say nothing I don’t mean blank space or a waterfall or anything. I mean nothing. A space devoid of all matter and existence. Something that the human mind cannot comprehend.

As the wall devoured him he thought he heard a child reciting an old song that always haunted him:
“Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream”

Then there was nothing.

_______

Then I awoke with a scream. My four-year-old body reacting with a loud cry. Then my mother came in to rescue me.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I had that dream again.” I replied. “The one with the boats.”
“It’s all right son, just remember, dreams mean nothing.” the last word out of my mother’s mouth seemed to be pure evil.

_______

When he heard this he knew that he would be damned to spend the rest of eternity reliving this child’s nightmare. But of course you know how it goes…life is but a dream. But from now on the words of that childish song had been changed from “merrily down the stream” to “warily down the stream.”
Pleasant Dreams.
Mu ha ha ha!!!