Weird Dream

They say Utah summers are some of the hottest, which is true. I’ve lived in Utah my whole life; the summers are more than usually sweltering. This particular night was different. I couldn’t figure out why. I sat on the couch watching TV. Nothing on, guess that’s what happens in a low income family with a 2 bedroom apartment and can’t afford cable. I shut off the TV with a feeling of numbness. I thought about sleep, but that sounded completely off from what I really wanted to do that night. But what DID I want to do? I couldn’t figure it out, all I could feel was numbness. I got up and stretched, purely out of habit. I didn’t feel like I needed to stretch, I just wanted to. I crossed the room to the computer, thought about turning it on and getting online, but that didn’t sound fun either. I just felt… numb. I couldn’t explain why … I’d felt numb before, but never like this, this was the numbest of numb. I gathered some loose change and thought about going to the gas station for some coffee. But that didn’t seem right either. I put on my shoes, as if something had told me to, and walked to the front door. I stopped myself with my hand on the doorknob, “What am I doing?” I asked myself. This numb feeling I was experiencing was way too weird for me to comprehend. I walked away from the door and into my bedroom; I hit the light switch and realized I didn’t want to go in my room. I didn’t really want to go anywhere. I didn’t want to be here, I didn’t want to leave home, I didn’t want to… BE.

I stood in the center of the living room and looked around. This was so strange, nothing, absolutely NOTHING felt right. After about 20 minutes of standing there, I put the change I’d gathered earlier into my pocket, picked up my keys, and walked out the front door, all of this in a trance-like state. After locking the door behind myself, I stopped and looked out into the night. Suddenly I didn’t remember getting ready to leave. I just found myself outside, a handful of quarters, dimes, and nickels, and a set of keys. I turned around in a complete circle, trying to figure out where I was going, looking up into the sky I realized that everything was too quiet. I breathed in, the air tasted stale. I started to walk… the air way too cold for a Utah summer night.

I walked, I didn’t know where I was walking to, I just walked, clutching my arms around my mid-section in a pathetic attempt to keep warm. As I walked I looked at my watch; 4:15 A.M. “How the hell did it get this late?” I asked myself aloud. I shrugged the time off and continued to walk. This feeling of numbness following me every step of the way. I stopped in my tracks and stared up into the night sky. As if I was waiting for something, without knowing what. A drop of water fell on to my cheek, I smiled… I’d always loved the rain, it almost seemed to turn me on when I was walking in the rain. After that one drop, the rain began to pour. I continued on my unknown journey with a grin on my face. Before I knew it I was standing in a 24-hour grocery store. Water dripping from my hair onto to the floor. I looked around, one plump, middle aged woman was running one of the many cash registers, and a man of about 30 was mopping the floor. They both seemed to look at me as if to warn me for something. Still feeling numb, and in a trance-like state, I purchased a candy bar. The plump woman looked at me, as if I was an alien. “Be careful out there, young lady.” She stated as she handed me my change. I tried to smile a friendly smile and went out the main door, back into the deliciously wonderful rain. I reached into the plastic bag for the candy bar I’d just purchased and pulled it out. To my surprise I didn’t look down to find an Almond Joy… it was a knife.

A huge knife. Suddenly I was filled not with numbness, but with terror. Why in the hell had I purchased a knife and seen it as a candy bar inside the store. I turned for some reason, and looked into the window and the plump woman who’d sold it to me, she was grinning maliciously and waving. I had only one instinct at this point: Run. I ran, I ran as fast as my body and soul would allow. I didn’t know where I was running to… I just ran. I could no longer tell if the moisture on my face was rain or my own tears. I continued to run, fleeting dangerously fast through the rain, but it seemed like this darkness I was in never seemed to move. I stopped running, and looked around. To my terror I was in a pitch-black alley way. Cautiously, I made my way out and to the street. 6:15 A.M. I realized after glancing at my watch again. There should be cars, people should be out and about, people should be going to work!

There was nothing. The buildings around me appeared to have been abandoned for years. I collapsed, the numbness had returned, none of this made any sense. I wanted nothing more than to see a human, see any form of life. Find out what the fuck was going on. I closed my eyes and silent tears found their way down my face. The plastic grocery store sack was still clutched in my hand. The rain had stopped pouring, and the sun was up. But there was nothing, no cars, no people, no sound. Suddenly I heard footsteps behind me, grateful I turned to face this other human being. Whoever it was, I wanted to hug them, to thank them for proving my sanity. It was my mother, “MOM!” I shouted and threw my arms around her. Tears streaming down my face, she just stared blankly ahead, not taking into any account that I was even there. I HAD gone insane, and didn’t even realize it. I collapsed on the ground and pulled the knife out of my bag to examine it. It was then that I heard the laughing.

I looked up to see who it was and recognized the cashier from whom I’d purchased this mystery knife. “What the HELL is going on?” I asked her, filled with rage and confusion. “My, my, my,” she started “has it really taken you this long to figure it out?” she continued to laugh.

“Insanity takes the best of us, look around you, you think you see nothing, but when you collapsed in the middle of the street you caused a 14 car pile up.” I looked and realized that this street was filled with cars, and I’d just hugged a tree. The buildings around me were over flowing with busy business men and women. The little shops between them had customers galore. “Insanity starts when you think the world has no real purpose, when you get bored.” She continued “when you think you’re buying a candy bar but it turns out to be a knife, Insanity creeps up on you when you think what is happening to you is numbness. Insanity is what drives you to kill when you think killing is something you’d never do. Insanity, my dear, is what the sane refer to as “ordinary.”

None of this made any sense, none of it, at all. Was I really going insane? Or was this just a really strange dream and I was going to wake up any moment. I collapsed once again and closed my eyes, not knowing if I should believe anything that had just happened. When I opened my eyes I found myself in the grocery store, handing the woman my money to purchase the candy bar. As I walked away I laughed to myself at the fact that I’d imagined all of that nonsense in a matter of seconds. I reached into the bag and pulled out my Almond Joy, wincing, but when I saw the wrapper I laughed at my own stupidity once more. “GOD I’m retarded sometimes!” I whispered to myself as I walked out the automatic door.

Something again told me to turn around once I was out in the rain, and saw the woman at the cash register wink at me. I turned back around and shivered, that couldn’t have been real. It was just too weird, didn’t make sense. I started to walk home, but realized, I was in such a trance when I came here, I didn’t know where I was.

I turned back to the store to go in and ask for directions, only to see a hundred year old building, abandoned, and boarded up. I was so filled with confusion that I was over flowing. I found a patch of grass to sit down on and try to figure things out. I eventually fell asleep, only to wake up at home, in my own bed, I began to laugh at such a strange dream I’d just had.

I felt my hand clutching something under my pillow, so I pulled it out, to my own horror I stared down at the knife I’d purchased in my dream. Pulled back into a trance, I walked out of my room, and laughed at the joy of repeatedly stabbing all the members of my family, until they were nothing but mush. I went in the kitchen and cleaned the knife. Knowing what I had to do, I walked directly back to that store, just a block away from home. And did the same to the plump woman I’d bought it from. I laughed this whole time. I went back home and went to bed, dreaming of my next victim.

Just then I felt like I was outside, I opened my eyes and saw that I was standing outside my bedroom window, I was me again, and inside I could see myself, grinning in my sleep, clutching that knife. I woke up and came outside, and then I killed me. It was such joy that I couldn’t resist. I had gone insane. And it all started with the illusion of feeling numb, and going for a midnight walk. I’d never been so happy in all my life.

Or was it life? You decide. Maybe it was nothing but one of those strange, unexplainable dreams in the mind of a rather twisted teenage girl. Look into yourself; have you ever had a strange dream like that? How do we not know those are really dreams? Maybe no one will ever know… and maybe… life is nothing but an illusion brought on by simply being bored. Think about it. Next time you have a weird dream, a dream that doesn’t make sense once you wake up, maybe you didn’t wake up. Maybe life isn’t life. For all we know, we’re part of someone else’s weird dream.