Blogs by David A. Schwinghammer
Arnie's dream
8/21/2009 9:12:34 AM
Arnie has a scary dream about Bernie.
Arnie awoke with a start, his heart beating so hard it felt like it was about to explode. Had he been having the drowning dream again?
It hadn’t been the dream that awoke Arnie; it was the people upstairs, a man and woman arguing. A glass broke, a soprano voice in counterpoint to baritone ridicule. He imagined a prostitute and a trucker fighting over him trying to short change her, he a big beefy galoot with tattoos on every available inch of flesh except his face, her a silicone enhanced, bleached-blonde with lipstick so red it glowed in the dark.
The fighting stopped and he heard bedsprings springing and the headboard rocking. Some people actually started a fight to make the sex more stimulating. He put the pillow over his head and went back to sleep.
In the dream there was a knock at the door, the secret knock Arnie and Bernie had agreed upon, sort of a ratatatatat. He woke up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, looking over at the radio clock at the side of the bed. In the dream it was a quarter to three and nothing like the Frank Sinatra song. He got up, too dazed to put on some clothes. When he opened the door, Bernie stood there, scantily clad and ghostly blue. She did not speak but led him around the corner of the motel. They continued on until they stopped just before a dumpster with the lid open. When he reached for her hand, she popped like a child’s balloon and disappeared. He looked down and saw the torso of a nude woman inside the dumpster. Under a newspaper he found Bernie’s severed head; her eyes were open and she seemed to be accusing him. “Why did you do this to me?” she said. “I only wanted to be free. Is it so terrible to want to be free?”
Her hand rose from the dumpster and grabbed his wrist; he shook it off, screaming like a little girl.
When he turned to run, a police car skidded to a stop in front of him, its bubbletop flashing red. He turned to run and the cop fired a warning shot in the air. “Stop…I’ll shoot to kill,” the cop yelled, but Arnie kept running his arms pumping, his lungs heaving as if he were running the Olympic hundred meters. The cop fired again, the bullet ricocheting off the asphalt. He fired yet again, the third shot piercing Arnie’s side, Arnie falling face down in the parking lot.
Arnie woke up breathing hard. He looked over at the side of the bed and it was still only 3:15. The noise above had stopped but there was no way he would be able to get back to sleep. He lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed smoking. The dream had been so real he was tempted to go outside to check the dumpster, but he just took another drag on his Lucky. When he’d smoked the cigarette down to a butt, he switched on the TV. Ordinarily he didn’t watch the boob tube, but what else was there to do at 3:15 A.M.? An old movie was on. “Anatomy of a Murder” with Jimmy Steward. Always liked Jimmy, but he was in no mood for more murder after what he’d just dreamt. He shut off the TV, then lay back on the bed, thinking about Bernie. She’d gotten married only a year after he’d left. He’d have to talk to her about that. When you worship a girl all your life, propose to her, and she says she’ll never get married because she’s afraid her marriage will end up like her parents, you take her at her word. Then she turns right around and gets hitched almost as soon as you’re gone. Yeah, she owed him an explanation all right. He was shivering. The goddamn thermostat did not work. He went to the closet and got another blanket, then wrapped himself up and lay back down. Surprisingly he went right to sleep and did not dream.
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