I'm ten years old, riding in the back seat of the car, feeling kind of sleepy, so I decide to lay down. When I do, and I see the back of the driver's seat from that angle, I realize where, and more importantly, when I am. This is the night of the car accident that changed my mother's life. We're going to be hit, and she's almost going to die. She's going to be in pain for the rest of her life. I know I'm having a nightmare. Wanting to wake, I shake my head back and forth really hard. That never fails to wake me, ever.
Except... this time, I don't wake up. Terrified, I try again, and again, until it hits home that I'm not getting out of this. I'm going to watch her suffocating again.
I think that maybe I came here to dream about changing it. I tell Grandma not to turn down that road, but she does. I tell her not to pull into that lot, but she does. I tell her to wait a minute, that there's danger down the road, that she can turn around after he passes, but she smoothly turns the car around and pulls back out onto the road.
I feel the car turning right, a sign that the accident is impending. I hear the tires squealing as the other driver loses control. I scream at Grandma to hit the gas, get out of this space, but it's too late. Suddenly, there's the sound of metal crashing and screaming, glass breaking, tires screeching, and we're moving sideways faster than we'd been moving forward. I hear Mom's head hit Grandma's as I am thrown on the floor, covered in beads of broken glass.
Then, it all stops. For a second, everything is still, and then I can hear Mom trying to breathe with two collapsed lungs, a high pitched whistling, wheezing sound coming out of her throat. I know what is going to happen. A bus driver is going to call an ambulance. It's going to feel like an eternity until they arrive and use the jaws of life to get my mother out of the car. They're going to separate us, taking her to one hospital, and me to another, where Grandma and I will pray for hours, worried the whole time because we are unable to get any information on my Mom. Mom will live, but her doctors aren't going to be able to figure out how. She's going to be in terrible pain for the rest of her life, and she's always going to be discriminated against because her disability is invisible.
Except, this time, there is no bus driver. Instead, a tall man in dark clothing comes to the window and calls her name. I can see two of my mother, one overlapping the other. The bottom one is wheezing and struggling to breathe. The top one is looking at the man. He holds out his hand, and she cringes away from him.
The man howls in fury, pounding on the outside of the car, bellowing that no one escapes him, and it's her time. I realize that what I'm seeing is some kind of monster trying to steal my mother's soul out of her body. I climb out of the broken window, onto the hood of the other car, and scramble across. I throw myself onto the tall man, kicking and punching, trying to defend her. He tries to shove me away, and I grab on tighter. I can see the bus driver who is supposed to come to the window and then call for help. He's trying to calm the kids on the bus, who are yelling and pointing at us. I let the man push me away. I drop to the ground, crouch down, and grab his knee, pulling so that he loses his balance and falls. When he does, he drops out of the kids' line of sight, and they get quiet. The driver gets out of the bus, and starts walking toward the car.
The man tries to get up, and I start stomping and kicking at him, intent on keeping him away from Mom's door. I'm screaming and yelling, "No! You can't have her!" over and over, as he keeps shouting her name and telling her she has to come. When he tries to sit up, I tackle him and try to hold him down, biting into his arms and shoving my knee into his gut, anything I can do to save Mom.
I can hear sirens coming in the distance, but it seems to be taking forever, prolonging the wrestling match for my mother's life. The man, who is bigger and stronger than me, finally pins me to the ground, looking triumphant. Before he can do anything else, the EMS is there, ripping open the car and taking my Mom out into the ambulance. I've delayed him long enough; she's going to make it.
Enraged, the man glares at me, calls me a thief, and tells me that I owe him, and one day he'll show up to collect.
*********************************
I'm sitting in a courtroom, next to a man in a suit. I figure out right away that the man is my lawyer. I'm accused of murdering a neighbor who I can clearly see is very much alive, sitting on the witness stand talking about how I "killed" her. I am thinking that this case should be dismissed, but my lawyer is actually arguing instead, questioning the woman's credibility based on flimsy crap that I know isn't going to stand up, instead of just pointing out that - hey, there she sits, alive, so I can't have killed her!
Witness after witness comes forward to describe heinous acts I never committed against this woman, acts that would be evident if I had, by anything from leaving scars to causing her death. By the end of the trial , I'm incredulous. I can tell by their faces that the jury is convinced I'm a brutal murderer.
They leave the room. I ask my lawyer why he didn't just point out that the woman is not dead. He tells me that doing so would violate her privacy rights, and that if she says she's dead, no one has the right to question that. Again, my jaw is hanging open. I ask, what about my right to a fair trial? Don't I have the right to have all of the facts presented in my defense? I'm told that no, if it involves someone's medical status as living or nonliving, I don't.
I ask how everyone can ignore the obvious, that she is up and moving, talking, coherent, and even testifying in the case. Isn't all of that evidence that she is not dead? According to my lawyer, only an expert such as a doctor is legally allowed to diagnose someone as being alive or dead. Since no such diagnosis was offered, the jury is required to disregard any evidence of the victim's living status.
Finally, the jury returns. The foreman reads off the verdict: Guilty.
Totally shocked, I sit and listen as the judge sentences me to be executed for my crime. The method of execution is that I am to be tied between two posts and chopped to death with a machete. Horrified, I turn to ask my lawyer how many appeals I have, but he's white as a sheet, and there's a bailiff grabbing him from behind. He tells me that he has to serve my sentence with me, and it's going to happen right now. He thought we'd won the case by proving that the woman had been caught lying repeatedly, but we've lost, and there is no appeal. I'm dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the courtroom by a large man. Outside the window, I can see three tall wooden posts. My family, sitting behind the defendant's table, are sobbing and holding each other. I feel like I am going to puke.
The big man starts shoving my hands into looped ropes that tighten around my wrists. I know if I don't get out of this, it's really going to happen. I'm going to feel that blade cutting into me over and over until I die.
I can hear the sharp, wet, squishy sound of the blade slicing into my lawyer, followed by his first of many screams. Another man grabs me, and I know it's too late. I'm done for.
*********************************
I'm at work, at my old job instead of my new one. It's about halfway through a full shift, and I'm getting hungry. I step into the back room and grab the quart of milk I bought to keep me going, and guzzle about half of it. When I come back out to the front counter, my coworker is crouched down on the floor, reaching for a dropped pack of cigarettes. She doesn't pick up the pack, but instead, stays in that position. I call her name. She doesn't answer. I get down to see if she's all right, and I see that her skin has kind of a gray tint to it. As I watch, her cheeks begin to crack and sag, and then her lips, and her lower eyelids. Her hair falls out, and her ears droop out to the sides. she falls over sideways. I back away, looking around for help, but there's no one.
I grab the phone and dial 9-1-1, listening to the phone ring on the other end. No one answers. I run to the cooler to get my boss. She's draped over the drinks, her flesh dripping down onto the floor. I flee the store, heading out to my car, which won't start. Cussing and slamming the door, I run the three blocks home to my apartment, passing wrecked cars and rotting neighbors along the way.
When I finally reach the complex, there's no one outside. I have no idea if people here are all right or not, because I've only seen people inside my store and outdoors. Bursting into the apartment, I see my husband and son sitting on the couches, watching anime online. Relieved, I start to tell them what is happening outside, but as soon as I start to talk, my son's jaw drops, and his tongue rolls out. My husband's lower eyelids begin to droop, and I notice that both of the guys are gray. There is hair all over the cushions around them, and bald spots are forming on their heads.
*********************************
I'm in a shopping mall. It's really crowded, like around the holidays. Everywhere I go, people are staring at me with angry looks on their faces. Whenever I'm not actively shopping, they're running into me on purpose. I'm trying to avoid being in the hallway outside the stores very much. At least when I'm shopping, the other patrons leave me alone.
I find something that I want to buy, take it to the counter, pay, and walk out of one store, headed for another. When I get into the hallway, all of the people there converge on me. Someone takes my bag and runs. I try to go after him, but there are dozens of hands on me, people hitting and kicking, biting, and spitting on me.
I'm screaming and struggling, but I end up on the floor. I realize I'm going to be trampled to death, but I have no idea why everyone is so mad at me. The only feeling I have is that I'm an outsider, and they're attacking because I'm not one of them.
*********************************
That was the last remotely coherent dream I had last night. After that, it descended into a night of faces and noises, and the feeling of things pinching and biting me. I kept almost waking up, then finding myself confronting yet another horror. The last thing I remember before waking was having a sleep paralysis dream where I was in my bed, but I couldn't move. I could see part of the room, but not the whole thing because I couldn't turn my head. Off to the side, I knew there was something waiting for me to stop paying attention so it could attack and eat me.
All day today, I've been haunted by last night's experiences, mostly the decaying dream and the car accident, with the feelings from the night of the accident cropping up at bad times, like when I was working with customers.
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