Sound; Connor crying.
Sight; Connor grinning at me while letting loose the AK-47 gas.
Taste; Wendy's Jr. Bacon cheeseburger.
Touch; Cradling Connor.
Smell; You would've thought Connor's shit doesn't stink, but trust me on this one, he rivals Adam.
To sleep, perchance...
- just out of the shower this morning -
4:13 a.m.
"Adam, wake up, wake up! I had a nightmare, honey please wake up."
"itsokaywhathappened," he replied, his voice thick with his own dream.
"Are you awake enough to listen?"
"MMmmmmmhmmmmmm, gorightahead."
Interior, my parents now my father's home.
Before renovations, I see signs that my mother is still there, I walk down the hall and my older brother's room is still occupied by boy things, and my old room as well. It is exactly the same as it was while growing up there. The effect it has on me is tremendous. But this is only my surroundings...
I am lying in the living room, on the old pink sofa, with a man who is apparently my boyfriend. He is also Eminem, bleach blond and bad attitude. Fully clothed, we touch, kiss, roll around with each other, he always ends up above me, angry, full of angst that somehow I have provoked. He seems so angry with me but can't seem to cease fondling my body, so I leave the room only to have him follow me.
He pushes me into my bedroom, still decorated with a mixture of everything it held over the years... red and pink Strawberry Shortcake curtains, the walls painted the purple I chose at 14, tables and furniture long thrown away since then.
While he pushes me, I'm grateful that he has even chosen to touch me. I have no idea what I have done to provoke him today, but after he pushes me into the room I see that he wants to touch me, and I'm grateful. I know he's about to leave me. I just know. While watching him preparing to fuck me, I start to realize this isn't about wanting to touch me, this is about hurting me one last time, to show me the disdain that he's felt the entire time we've been together. I'm startled when the rape begins, he's thrown my clothes over my head, but somehow I still see his face. He's enjoying himself immensely. He enjoys the joke he's played on me. He finishes and swaggers out the front door onto the walkway, I'm following him, begging him not to leave. As he reaches the sidewalk he turns around and winks at me, causing a pain in my chest, that helpless frustrating what can I do to stop this feeling.
Then as he reaches the pavement of the street, a dropped Caddy pulls up, being driven by the actor who played Chopper in Freeway, and also was in the Tu Pac video right before he was shot. There's an attractive girl, but an obvious ghetto rat in the passenger seat and they're all laughing at me. I watch him flip the seat forward to climb into the back of the Cadillac and then time almost stops.
Out of nowhere, another Cadillac has built up speed, at least 90 mph, and slams headfirst into the rearend of the car. I watch the glass exploding, the bloody body of my pseudo boyfriend limp, caught in the seatbelt of the front seat where he had been trying to squeeze past into the back.
The driver hangs like a discarded child's plaything in the driver's seat, and the laughing girl has been thrown clear. I watch her run away. I also watch the group of men in the second Cadillac turn their guns on her. She makes it maybe twenty feet.
After witnessing this, my legs aren't supporting me and my grip on the door frame is lethal. Then the men in the car look up at me. My legs decide to join the show and I run. I run through the house, I can't find my brother or my father, but my mother is in the bathroom folding clothes. I yank her out and take her into my bedroom, locking her in a closet. The feeling that my brother and father aren't in danger is very real, and I trust it. I focus on the now.
Entering my parents room, I take the bottom of my shirtdress that I had been wearing a rip it shorter I know, cliche, but I did it then grab the small but accurate 380 I know is in the standing dresser in the left corner of the bedroom. Stepping lightly back into the hall, I peer cautiously around the corner towards the front door. The street is clear other than the bodies and smashed Cadillac. The second car is nowhere in sight.
Taking the opportunity to run up the hallway into the kitchen, which faces the park behind the house, I reach into the last drawer on the left and retrieve the .45 that I know is already loaded. The three windows in the kitchen are right above the counter, and the counter is where I'm standing. I look up and out, and stand face to face with a group of 15 men, armed and mean enough to eat a snake, setting up some sort of assault/stakeout area on the playscape that look directly into the house. They see me and laugh. They don't see the weapons. I continue to stare, wondering what I could have done to possibly deserve this, staring at the alley to our house that runs parallel to the park. I realize then that Adam will be home soon.
I bolt for the front door. I have to get to the alley entrance, which is unviewable from the park, and stop Adam before he pulls in and is right in the path of these men. I make it out the front, down the walkway, to the street and am faced with the shell of the Cadillac and the broken corpses inside. I carefully walk to the passenger side, near the sidewalk and peer in. The driver isn't dead after all, his chest hit the steering wheel and completely compressed it, leaving a hole that was more like the divot on a golf course. He has his hand pressed against it, and a handgun in the other. His eyes catch mine and he looks at me for some sort of explanation, which I don't have. He lifts his hand heavily and discharges the gun against his temple, pointing towards me.
I stand in my shirtdress, barefoot, not cold but certainly not hot, and try to think of how I can keep Adam from ending up in their path. At that moment I look up, still standing in the street, to see the Cadillac - which now looks like an ice blue Chevy Impala - coming towards me with more speed that it had hit the first car with. I leap, up across the hood, the .45 in my stronger right hand and the .380 in my weaker left. Over the hood, up the concrete rise, over the fence, back towards my house, catching the glimpse of police cars blocking the entrance to the alleyway. Knowing that my husband is covered I leap and leap and leap. I move down the pathway between my house and my neighbors. I had to move or I would be seen by the men at the park, and the men who had just tried to run my over were turning around, I had little to no time and less ammo. Still moving at a frantic pace, I make it halfway down the path between the house and hit the dirt, lying half in thick mud that was caused by rain I hadn't realized was falling until then.
I pressed myself down as fast as I could, praying, just praying that they wouldn't see me, I realize that I'm wearing highly visible white socks. I mentally scream and curse at myself for wearing white socks, then try to press them further into the mud without creating too much movement. I raise my eyes to the playscape, and see one lone man peeking towards me, but not actually seeing yet. I know I'm about to be caught. I also know I'm taking someone with me while I go. I snap the .45 forward and aim it at the head of the peering man, who's wearing a cowboy hat and a bandana, with what looks like a Jerri Curl. I squeeze the trigger at the very same moment that he sees me. I know I'm dead in moments, and my eyes begin fluttering because the rain falls harder.
They flutter so hard that I begin doing so in my bed, I wake up with my chin on the pillow, mimicking the position that I had been holding in the mud, arms forward as if to aim. Relief floods my body and it's almost like a wave of narcotic through my blood stream. I had known I was about to die. Instead I'm at home, with Corn Pops in the cupboard and my husband lying beside me.
I start making noises to myself to further remove myself from the dream state, then turn to shake Adam and make him listen.