Drunkard's Dream
By
Doug Farnan
Copyright (c)2002
The house was vast, but it was much more then that, it was endless. That is to say, I could find no end to it, or any entrance for that matter. Nor did I have the slightest notion of how I had first entered the house. There were many rooms, too many rooms…and there were people, lots of people. No matter what room I looked into there were always people, and they were always engaged in some activity. In some rooms, people were playing cards, other's were watching T.V or telling stories. Still in other rooms they were shitting, peeing, puking, and screwing. Always something and always the same. That is, in each room people were involved in different activities, but the activity for any individual room remained the same.
How many rooms were in the house? Was it a circle without ending or beginning? I did not know, but whatever it was, I was trapped within it. Not really within it, more like on the boundaries of it. For you see, even though there were so many rooms, countless rooms, I could enter none of them. I could only watch from outside. I would see the faces of the people laughing, crying, faces of fear, faces filled with delight, faces of wonder, faces of strife. So many faces and so many expressions but all those faces had one thing in common; they could not see my face. If I even had a face. I could feel form and structure, but I had never seen my own reflection so I was never sure.. I was in a strange place and yet it seemed very familiar to me. As if I had been there all of my life.
Some rooms I would quickly pass not wishing to see what was inside. I knew what was there because I had passed the rooms many times before. There were some rooms that I always stopped by they were filled with life and wonder. These rooms would make me happy but only for a short while. The people inside were having so much fun, I longed to join them but I never could. It was like there was some kind of shield at each door. I could never pass through the shield nor could anyone ever see me outside the shield.
There was one room in particular that scared me the most. It was always the same scene, a terrible scene. There was a drunk, dirty old man and he was attacking a little girl. The old man was tearing at her clothes and laughing. In between sobs the little girl would call out someone's name. I could not quite make out the name. Soon a boy of thirteen or so would enter through another door into the room. The old man and the boy would start to scream at each other and then they were in a horrid fight. The old man would quickly overpower the boy, but the boy would not stop. The old man would slam the child's head into a mirror. The boy would slump sadly to the floor, but when the old man started back toward the little girl, the boy would rise to his feet once more. The boy seemed very brave and the old man very stupid and cruel. The boy would continue to fight with the old man, losing badly, until the little girl ran from the room calling someone's name. The boy battered, bloody and bruised would then be thrown toward the door from where I watched this scene unfold. The boy would always disappear just as his body was flung toward the doorway. He too could never pass the shield but before he disappeared I could see his eyes. I knew those eyes. I knew them all too well. They were my eyes before. I could hear the old man screaming inside the room, "Don't you ever come back here again, or so help me I'll shoot you on sight", and for some reason, I knew the boy would never return.
The moment was captured in time and would always be the same. The boy would never return and the girl would get away. Something was different this time, however before I had always felt extremely cold when the boy was thrown toward the door. But for some reason this time I didn't, in fact, I felt quite warm.
It all started pouring back then. Consciousness returned to my mind like an unwanted stranger but the questioned remained, why wasn't I cold? I now understood I had been dreaming, but why wasn't I cold? After all it was the dead of winter and I was sleeping inside a cardboard box. So, why wasn't I cold? As my mind tried helplessly to solve this dilemma, my body began to answer it instead. My arms were on fire. Not just my clothing but my flesh was burning. As I flung my arms desperately to put out the flames I noticed my legs were also set ablaze. I was on fire. I was burning and in an unbelievable amount of pain. It was all coming back to me even with the pain. I was going to learn what caused my fate. It was but a small Sterno can I had lit to keep warm. I must had knocked it over in my sleep….hell I hadn't been exactly sober, maybe I even did it while I was awake,. It didn't matter now. Nothing mattered anymore. The pain was drifting away and for the first time in many of years I felt warm inside and out. The flames were burning and
I finally was able to venture beyond the shield, into the other realm.