My Living Nightmare/Before I Wake -part two

The first part is pretty uh, long, to be frank. (he-he, that's my mc's name...) anyway, but I think it's a pretty unusual plot that I have, so if you're looking different, start here, and if you aren't, well, it's not outlandish or anything....

without further ado, I present 'My living Nightmare' PS: before you read this bit, go to my portfolio and read the thing called "a living nightmare", okay? I'd hate for you to read it out of order--for some reason it didn't come up on the related items.

Confusion and shame ran hot in my blood. I stared at the Wal-mart purchased khakis I wore.

“I don’t know. But there’s going to be Hell to pay.”

“That’s why you came.” He murmured, and I nodded, his words vibrating strangely through the dimly lit room.

…

“Touch your nose, touch my finger…”

I sat in a paper gown on the vinyl seat of an examination table.

“Sorry for all the hassle, but since you’re a new patient, well, you had to have a physical.”

When the preliminary examination was complete, Dough sat down on the stool across from me.

“Here’s the real stuff now. Tell me everything you can remember about these episodes..”

I started from the beginning, leaving out no detail that is compiled herein.

When I finished, a good awkward hour and a half later (it takes a long time to fish up all of those memories from scratch and voice them in an understandable way without being a complete sissy..)

I was back in my clothes, and glad for it, be them from wal-mart or not...

“Frank, what you’ve got…It’s hard to say. I don’t want to get into those Latin phrases yet..” he attempted a grin-

“But here’s the uh, course of action: we’re going to do a good number of MRIs. MRIs, that is, while you’re asleep in the machine.”

“Uh, yeah, how do you plan on orchestrating that one,” It was my turn to grin-I almost fell out my chair from the wracking sobs induced by the restrained laughter at his ludicrous idea.

“Well…It needs to be natural, regular sleep, so your brain activity will be an accurate representation of your normal sleep patterns. Be forewarned: if you’re a claustrophobe, it won’t be easy.”

“I don’t love tight spaces…but I’ll do it, I guess…”

“You’ll be sleeping in the scanner. Yes, it sounds crazy, but it’s the only way I know of to get to the bottom of this. That is, unless, of course, you’d trust another doctor with your, eh, secret.”

I nodded gravely, every trace of the giggles purged from my body.

“I’ll get a mattress to put in the machine, along with earplugs and a sleep mask so the noise and lights won’t disturb your sleep. We’ll come back here at eight tonight, after supper, to do what we need to.”

“Sounds good enough,” I murmured.

“Alright then. Let’s hit the road.”

In the parking lot, I got into my car, and called through the open door “I’ll follow you.”

We cruised through downtown Orlando, passing bars, palm lined sidewalks and stores. I focused my gaze on the burgundy mustang in front of me until I was parked in a garage under Dough’s two story suburban house.

“Have you met Casey yet?” he inquired, slamming the door to his hotrod, which I eyed enviously.

“Of course I have! I came to your wedding, remember that, brain surgeon?”

“Yeah. My hippocampus is just fine.”

“Your what?” I echoed laughingly.

“My hippocampus-it’s the brain’s memory storage center.”

“Oh. Look, not all of us are in on neurology.”

He grinned, a most sardonic expression.

“Look, uh, what are we going to tell her?” I muttered.

“That you came to visit while Helen went to see her mom.”

“Good enough. I guess. But will she buy it?”

“Sure, she’s pretty easygoing, a breezy kind of gal.”

“Unlike Helen,” I murmured.

“Having trouble?”

“Not really. But sometimes everything I do seems to piss her off. I really don’t know how I could tell her about-this…” My voice trailed off, and Dough clapped me on the shoulder.

“I’m with you, cuz,” he said softly.

I turned to face him, a questioning look of desperation crossing my face. And then the house door flew open.

“Hey! Dough, who’s this?” called his wife.

“Frank Conway,” I stuttered.

“My cousin, Frank. He’s here to visit-remember, he came to our wedding?” Dough’s voice was strangely jovial as we walked up the steps and into a spacious kitchen. Late afternoon sunlight glinted off of polished granite countertops.

“Oh, yes. I know, your wife’s Helen, right? A redhead?” Casey’s lean frame leaned against the wall as she fumbled in a drawer.

I nodded quietly, attempting a smile.

“Are you alright, Frank?” Casey, Dough’s wife, called.

“Uh, w-where’s the uh, restroom?” I mumbled. My smile must’ve been more of a grimace.

“Right down the hall, to your left,” Casey called, her dark pixie cut disappearing into the open refrigerator.

I quickly relieved myself, but not just of bodily waste. I sat on the white porcelain toilet, my heart reaching mach 5 as it crawled up my throat. Oh, when would this end? Closing my eyes, I tried to block out all thought. Good luck meditating, though, when all you can see on the backs of your eyelids are bloody tire irons.

I had to get out of this! In a frenzy, I snatched the newspaper from the sink counter, frantically scanning headlines. The first page held nothing of interest in its soggy, wet folds. The second, however, caught my eyes. In the middle of the page, it listed state-wide occurrences. My heart hit mach six as the words hit home in my retinas. “Orson County Woman Beating Victim” I read the rest, thinking I was going to die sitting there on the john. “Early this morning, Israael Braught was attacked in the front yard of her Orson County home. She was found by a passerby lying on the sidewalk with the leash of her pet dog in hand, as if she’d been taking him out. Whatever the circumstances, she was beaten with a blunt metal object, possibly a bar or pipe. She is currently in critical condition at St. Mathew’s Hospital Trauma Center. The police have asked anyone with information to come forwards. No suspects have been announced as of today. We will be following this case when more information is released.”

Critical condition. And the same county I’d woken up in. This was my victim; Israael Braught. Oh, my God. With a name, the reality of my actions grew yet deeper. And it sounded familiar-distantly so, in a chilling way like discovering black specks on my shirt before hearing about the fire. Or the glass in my arm and the broken bank window…I knew with no doubt what I had done.

It was all I could do to sit, staring at the plain bead-board wall, trying to forget. Anything in the world would’ve been better than to sit where I sat, hating myself for every molecule of my own existence, a cold sweat dispersing itself on my skin. My eyes scanned the towel on the rack, taking in every pick in the royal blue pile, observing the white walls that flickered with shadows from a moth that danced around the light fixture, the water that dripped on the clouded glass shower stall.

A photograph set in its frame on the counter, Casey and Dough smiling at me in wedding attire in sepia.

“Uhm,” I grunted, standing as stiffly as homo-erectus must have. How long had I been on the lou?

Quickly, I washed my hands and went out into the hallway, my legs shaking like it was the San Fran quake of 1914.

“Tonight, we’re having corn, Tofurkey, and cabbage,” Casey called as I entered the kitchen.

“Tofurkey?” I echoed.

“Tofu turkey. We’re vegan,” she explained, dropping a food wrapper in the trashcan.

“Oh, so it’s vegetarian turkey?” The whole statement left me clueless.

“Sure is.” Her vivid green eyes flickered with a strange, appraising glow for a nanosecond. Then it vanished.

“So, what do you do for a living?” she continued chattily.

“I’m an insurance agent with Red Guard Health.”

“Hey, that’s our insurer. Any chance of a discount?” Casey cracked a grin, and I managed to chuckle.

“Doubt it,” I said.

“I’m an attorney,” she continued.

“Really? Financial?”

“No. Criminal-specifically prosecution.”

Her words made my entire body go numb. Why hadn’t Dough told me this?

“Uh…” I stammered, my throat tightening.

“Frank, are you sure you’re okay? You look pretty pale,” she pressed.

“Iron-“ I began, almost exploding to confess, afraid I’d somehow been found out, afraid of the future-“I, blood--red blood-cells—I’m…anemic.”

“Oh, sorry, my mistake,” she apologized, her animated mouth twisting into an embarrassed grin.

Dough then poked his head into the kitchen.

“Food ready yet?” he shouted, every bit as chipper as Casey.

Looking at him closely, I saw the tension in his face.

“Almost,” she grinned, happy.

I tried to smile, but somehow my lips were stuck.

……

The mattress on the MRI machine was more accurately described as an extra-long foam pillow. The plastic surface was still every bit as hard. Earplugs and a sleep-mask were both rather necessary, given the flashes of lights and lasers, and the hum of the electronic components. Dough did a scan before I was asleep, saying “primarily to contrast between the activity of you waking brain and your sleeping brain. We may need to do this several nights over in order to pinpoint the areas of activity when you begin to, uh, sleepwalk.”

It was like sleeping on a rock in a thunderstorm, or being tossed around at sea in a typhoon with only a tin can as a boat. Things that I couldn’t see clanked above me in the darkness, and I felt the table slide, the tingle of inertia gripping my body. Again and again, it seemed, I was scanned, and I longed to toss and turn on the table, but stillness was required for scans. Any one ruined by motion of the subject--moi—would have to be re-done. I relished the prospect of falling asleep, for that would spell an end to the endless ages of darkness and noise that enveloped me in a strange, dreamlike world.

As the last fleeting thoughts of my misery crawled through the sleep-fogged synapses of my brain, I embraced the solace dark of slumber.

The next thing I sensed was the telltale jiggle of the table beneath me, and I rolled over, attempting to find a softer spot on whatever I was lying on. Mistake. Instead of more hard mattress underneath me, there was—nothing. Air whistled over my legs for less than a second until my backside contacted something that was much colder, and much harder. Ouch. My thighs sang with pain as I rolled over again, opening my eyes to get a view of black. What was going on! Realizing I had something soft tied over them, I lifted the sleep-mask to find myself on the tile floor of a radiology unit.

Whoo. Some way to wake up, I thought wryly. I stood, untangling my arms from cord of the earplugs that had come out of my ears sometime in the night.

“Morning, Frank,” called Dough from the next room, smiling as he scrubbed his teeth with a toothbrush.

“Ey, bud. Where’d you sleep?” I asked, realizing he must have been up most of the night.

“A gurney in the control room, between scans. Timers sure are little wonders,” he replied, tossing a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste to me.

“Alright. I’ll go get dressed,” I muttered.