We were living under opression,
B and I. Kept under the heel of our
landlady,
her son, and her mother.
I don't know what they did. It wasn't important. We had to end their
reign of
tyranny.
In a living room, my living room, two worn couches face eachother. Their backs to
opposing walls. The darkened room is lit only by the orange glow of a single
shadeless
lamp.
Behind B on one couch the landlady is lying dead. Behind me, on the other couch
lie her mother and son. We talk in subdued voices, it seems to be appropriate
considering what we've just done.
"
That unpleasantness is done with, time to get on with life," I think to myself.
For B it was not to be so.
I was injured during the
skirmish, so B tells me to sit down. I collapse between
the two bodies on the couch behind me. B starts arranging the room, righting planters
that have been knocked over, arranging cushions on chairs. The entire time he's calling
me by his
nickname for me, telling me it'll all be Ok.
Then he shoots me.
B shot me in the chest. I was too shocked to say anything, too shocked to think anything.
All I can do is watch him sit down on the couch and say "Oops, I shot you with the bullet
meant for me, I didn't plan for you to get hurt."
B picks up my
rifle and shoots himself in the forehead.
The next thing I recall is being in my mother's house in
Nelson. It wasn't Nelson though,
everything was happening in
the city of my dream. I feel remarkably mobile for someone who was
recently shot in the chest.
C had just got back into town. No one told her yet. I didn't know, and didn't exactly break
the news in the most gentle way.
"B's dead?" she asks
incredulously.
"Oh no," I say getting up to hug her. I press my face to hers and whisper, "I wish I'd known he was hurting that badly. I would've tried to stop him. I wouldn't have let him have a gun."
"Can I see him?" she asks.
I take her to my mother's basement. The cold
cement floor is a shock to my bare feet. The
bodys are here, wrapped in blankets. I'm not sure which is B but I have a feeling. While she's
looking around I walk over to one and pull the blanket back to reveal the face.
B looks like a
puppet. His face, made of powdery white
plaster, has no colour in it except
the blood from his wound.
It's not a crusty dried dark blood, the blood looks like
acrylic paint. B really looks like any mask that could've been made in a theatre's workshop.
I cover B's face and we go back upstairs. Standing in the kitchen, we hug, but don't speak.
Anything that needs being said is communicated through our
embrace.
She's very warm.
My brother wakes up, thinner than I remember him, and drags his blankets into the living room. After dumping them on the floor by the coffee table he comes into the kitchen and demands breakfast.
My mother tells him to clean up his mess in the living room.
"
No, make me breakfast. I JUST HAD SEX," he screams.
He didn't. He was only 12, it was just his excuse. It was also
the non-sequitur that ended my
dream.
To avoid associating B and C with such an odd dream I've done the Warholian thing and used letters of the alphabet to identify them. I would be 'A' if I my name was ever used in the dream, and my brother would've been called 'D' etc.
Although this is a sad dream, I wouldn't call it a nightmare. During the dream I was never angry at B for shooting me. Even though I only got six hours of sleep, I woke up from this dream better rested than I have for a long time. I blame the Turkish coffee I drank last night for it's strangeness.