Over the past week and a half or so,
I've had a recurring dream.
Now, I have no prophetic powers
so I spend quite a bit of time contemplating
the meaning.
Essentially, it is a collection of every
nightmare, darkness, fear that I have ever had.

The dream starts with me sitting in an auditorium
with everyone I have ever known.
I am called to the stage,
then each of my so called friends proceeds to
publicly pelt me with every imaginable
instrument of torture that my flesh has known.
Time does not seem to follow the same rules
in this pseudo-reality
what feels like days translates to minutes,
takes an hour to equate to a lifetime.

After hobbling away from that chaos,
I search for a place to hide,
only to find verbal assaults and derogatory onslaughts
coming from twisted, distorted faces,
of shadowed figures.
Yet they seem
familiar.
Something about them just feels like I know these sources
of festering pain, exactly like when you get a cold sore
and can't stop tonguing it. You know its there,
but you make sure, because there is a small glimmer of hope,
that the next time you check, it'll be gone.
It never is. That sore clings like a parasite.

Finally, I am able to escape these creatures,
reaching a small, little town, shrouded in fog.
Sewage drains overflowing with blood,
mutilated corpses as commonplace as garden gnomes,
unnerving screams off in the distance.
Battered and broken, I will my body to overcome
following one of these shrieks into a dark alley.
I am unable to make out her face,
but this woman is cornered by three feral monsters,
without eyes, sharp, pointed claws, bodies stained red with blood
of their past victims.
Picking up a lead pipe,
I unleash primal brutality I never thought I was capable of,
obliterating the clawed creatures.
Finally letting down my guard, I turn to the woman
who shoots me, in the forehead, with a revolver.

My body is recovered, and a funeral is held.
Four people show up.
The preacher, my mom, dad, and sister.
After a very fire and brimstone sort of sermon
focusing on all the immoral deemed decisions
I have made throughout my life,
each member of my family gives their own "eulogy".
However, as opposed to high praise,
they each articulate how their quality of life
would significantly improve,
without me in it.
Sister saying how she can get all the attention,
mom saying how uplifting it will be to not have me
as a financial, emotional, and overall bothersome burden.
Dad says he can put all the belts, coat hangars, wrenches, bats away.
There is no one left for him to punish, to "put them in their place."
They light my casket on fire, cackling in euphoric laughter.

Then I wake up, if I'm lucky. I don't always make it to the end.