Knockwurst on Dark Rye with Extra Mustard

I had a nightmare last night. They only occur on days that I have a knockwurst sandwich on dark rye with extra mustard and a dill pickle on the side. Since I love knockwurst on dark rye with extra mustard and a dill pickle on the side they happen often.

In last night’s nightmare, I was dressed in green Chuck Taylor All Stars (no socks) and a reversible brown leather jacket. That was it. The rest of me was au naturel. The city streets were bustling with activity, legitimate and not so legit--if you know what I mean. A three-story tan brick house interested me. From the outside, the house looked immaculate. It was the type of house you could airlift from the city and drop into an upper middle class suburb and it would fit right in.

All the windows blackened when I stared at the house. I floated up the concrete steps and through the front door like the specter that I was. In the living room was a couple, married, comfortable, non-communicative. He was watching a basketball game on television. She was leafing through a magazine. Neither person interested me.

I walked up the stairs to the second floor. Why I choose to walk the stairs rather than float was simple. I needed the exercise, I told myself. This thought amused me. The energy from a smile much broader than mine enjoyed it even more.

At the first door on my right, a little girl was beating her younger brother at a computer video game. Neither they-- nor the game--interested me.

Next door to the children was a bathroom. Further down the hall on my right was the room of Percy Wilson. I knew Percy--at least that’s how it felt. The same sort of feeling you have in the conscious realm when you first meet someone and you feel--not know or believe or suspect--but feel you have known them all your life.

Percy’s door was locked. I could see through it as if it were air. Percy prepped a vein. The substance had been cooked. The syringe was at the ready. Percy found a living vessel, and then tied back his thinning pale arm. He picked up the syringe and with delirious pleasure plunged it into his river of life.

A smile of pure ecstasy crossed his face. Being of spirit, I saw what he saw and saw what he was experiencing simultaneously. He fell back on the bed like a rock. To him everything was happening in slow motion. His room became surrealistic visions of remarkable images while morphing into mutations produced by his mind’s altered state. Percy believed that substance made him free. It imprisoned him instead. I wanted to tell him that but I couldn’t. It was not allowed. I knew that in the same way I knew Percy.

Percy collapsed into his conscious mind of altered state slipping deeper and deeper into a black hole abyss. First, there would be violent convulsions. Then spasms, vomiting, pissing and shitting, concluding with asphyxia and an eerie calm. Death would take him abandoning his soiled shell as physical evidence of his soul. I left before the scene unfolded. I’d seen it dozens of times. Since I love knockwurst on dark rye with extra mustard and a dill pickle on the side, I’ll probably see scenes like his a lot more.

Now this is when it really gets weird. Oftentimes, I hear or experience a connection in my conscious state that makes me doubt it was all a dream. The following morning of this particular dream, I overheard suits in the copy room gossiping about what caused the death of the son of one of their colleagues. One of the suits claimed he knew Stan Sutton’s son was a junkie and probably died of a drug overdose. Another said Maria Sutton was devastated at the loss of their teenage son, Percy. In summary, they all agreed it was another tragedy in a world froth with tragedies.

It had happened again. My dream manifested into reality.

It made me question the whole déjà vu, karmic, out-of-body, seer, shaman thing. Am I in some way a catalyst in these visions? Alternatively, am I an observer or a watcher? Do I control what I dream--or do, or reason? Is life or death within my power? What is real and what is imagined? Are conscious and subconscious, spirit and flesh, members of the same club as darkness and light? Are they visions instead of nightmares, or is my essence that of a grim reaper here to harvest souls?

Who knows? Those are not my questions to answer.

Whatever my purpose, whatever my native, I am fully committed to it. This I know as well as my own face. Just as I know, I will never give up my love for knockwurst on dark rye with extra mustard and a dill pickle on the side.