Dreaming God

by Rik Johnston

CHAPTER SEVEN

  I

  ANOTHER NIGHTMARE

  Tuesday made her way home, ducking and covering behind various obstacles when she thought that Principal McCauley was close to discovering her. She didn’t know if in fact he had been tailing her, but she didn’t want to take any chances of having another confrontation with him. Tuesday took her time and made a game of it. If he did find her, and wanted another round, she couldn’t wait to rub into his face what a liar he was.

  It had really steamed her to think that he could use Jason against her the way he did, and she was disappointed in herself for having fallen so easily for the ruse. She couldn’t believe she had given him the pleasure of that victory. He definitely wouldn’t get that chance again, as she and Jason were on the same page now.

  Jason. He said they were friends, but she felt like she wanted him to be so much more. How did this escalate so quickly? She’d only met him hours ago. How had he tapped into her emotions so easily? She was usually much more guarded than that. But he seemed so trustworthy, and trusting in her. Her thoughts raced with ideas, with dreams, and with doubts. It wasn’t Jason she doubted, it was herself. She had never been friends with a boy before; much less have feelings for one. She kept herself guarded for this reason, because she couldn’t bear to be close to anybody for fear of losing them. Either by reason of dismissal or due to natural causes, everybody except her mother and Winston had been taken from her life. She sincerely hoped that Jason would be the exception.

  Tuesday’s stomach gave her a stern growl, reminding her that all she had eaten all day was a few pieces of toast. She knew there was a burger shop nearby, so it was time to make use of some of the money her mother had given her.

  She snuck into the burger joint, and ordered herself a western bacon cheeseburger and a strawberry milkshake. She sat alone in a darkened booth in the back, out of sight of the street, waiting for her order. But her thoughts weren’t really on food; they were on that boy, Jason. If he had been here, she would have bought him a burger and spilled every single secret she had to him. She loved the sound in his voice, the intensity in his eyes, and the compassion he had for her.

  Her food was soon delivered, and she gobbled it down, paid her check and snuck on home, without incident.

  She spent part of the day thinking about homeschooling, and trying to figure out how to get signed up for it without Principal McCauley’s signature. She decided that her room needed some maintenance, so she put on a CD of her favorite band, Cerebral Eulogy, to listen to while she worked on it. Since her mother was working a double, she spent her evening playing Mike Tyson’s Punch Out on her old Nintendo, and of course poring over her thoughts on Jason Alkali, who she debated giving a call, but didn’t because her shyness got the better of her. She decided to go to bed early because she hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before because of her nightmares.

  Tuesday got herself changed and ready for bed, saying her prayers before going to sleep as she often did. She always prayed for the same thing, for pleasant dreams, for salvation for her mother, and for protection for Winston. For the first time in years, she added somebody to her prayers. She prayed for Jason to be safe and happy, and for him to feel her hugs wherever he went.

  Tuesday got up from the bed and went over to the wall to turn out the light. When she got herself into bed, she adjusted all of her pillows the way she liked them, pulled up her blanket, and snuggled up to Winston. Thoughts of the day’s events, particularly those of that boy Jason flashed through her mind as she drifted off to sleep.

  II

  THE INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT

  Tuesday was there once again, in glorious black and white, standing in a location she didn’t recognize, but knew what was coming. Instinctively, she rolled her eyes, knowing that tonight was going to be another nightmare. Where was she tonight?

  The sign on the wall read Webster Steel Construction. This had to be in the next town away, Webster. Webster was twenty-one miles from Cadence Falls, and was a minor port on the Columbia River. Tuesday could read it through the flashes of lightning illuminating the room through a dingy old window. It was the graveyard shift, and workers were carrying large pieces of steel, cutting and welding them to create solid structural pieces of metal used in building ships, erecting buildings, and for various other things.

  Tuesday stood in the middle of the workplace, cutting torches sparking up and arc welders crackling their electric songs. Amongst the electricity of the workplace, the lightning outside was competing with the storm inside. The rains began, happening softly at first, but moving toward becoming a torrential downpour. The workers, safe inside, paid no mind to the elements outside, and went about their work.

  Tuesday wondered why she would be dreaming this. She couldn’t understand how there could be some sort of tragedy here, unless there was some major malfunction of a power tool, or if something inside the building exploded. She didn’t want to think about it. The day had ended so well, that she couldn’t understand why her night had to end up like this.

  The theoretical danger manifested itself as the wind outside loosened the upper edge of the tin roof above and rain water had been collecting in a darkened area of the floor. Nobody noticed this happening and kept working as if nothing was going on, oblivious to the danger. Tuesday could see it though, she knew it was there and knew that had to be the cause of the tragedy. Near where the water collected on the floor, there was a generator that was being used to power a couple of the arc welders the workers were using. The rain water continued to rise, spreading over the surface of the floor, inching ever closer to the generator.

  The water reached the generator, and nothing happened. The insulated cord kept the water from electrocuting the workers. But the water kept flowing in, covering more and more of the floor, until at last it reached the two workers who were fusing large pieces of metal together. The two of them were standing in an ever-deepening puddle of water, and didn’t even realize it.

  A large, bright flash immediately followed by an extremely loud boom shook the entire building, flickering the power momentarily. Everybody was shaken, but the big surprise was the large tree that came crashing through the wall, sending tools and bits of metal flying and knocking the two workers flat to their bellies. At the same moment, one of the fallen circular saw blades severed the power cable to the generator.

  Unaware of the dissonance of the situation, the two men were electrocuted before Tuesday could take inventory of what had fully happened. She felt the pain of electricity coursing through the bodies of the two men, and felt that she would pass out from the levels of pain she was experiencing. But she didn’t pass out. The pain didn’t stop until somebody killed the breaker at the other end of the work floor. She was horrified at what she saw, two men on the floor, dead. They had no idea what hit them. She was still feeling the after effects of the pain of the electrocution, and didn’t have full control over her movements for a few moments. She just moaned from the pain, and kept screaming and shrieking until she found herself sitting back in her bead, awake for the world to hear.

  III

  A RARE SERENITY

  Tuesday was able to calm herself much more quickly and efficiently than she did the night before. As soon as she woke, she no longer felt the pain of electrocution, and could disconnect from the nightmare because she knew that there would be no way she would ever witness this one in person. She probably wouldn’t even know when it happened if she didn’t see the newspaper for it. She had many of these dreams, where they happened, but wouldn’t witness them. These were the ones she called “close encounters”, because she had dreams about them, but wouldn’t have to be in the real world, involved in them. And while she felt their pain and emotions during the dream, she wouldn’t have to relive it on a real-world stage. She almost always knew when she was going to see them in real life, because she could see herself as an onlooker in her own dream.

  The m
atter of the machine shop in Webster was reconciled as being over and done with in Tuesday’s mind, though she inexplicably felt sadness for the men who would perish in that accident that she would never even know. Tuesday felt a bit parched after her dream as she always felt as if her throat was dry after having experienced another nightmare. This probably was in large part, due to the actual screaming she was doing in the real world, while dreaming out these fatal tragedies. She placed her feet on her carpeted floor and squished her toes together in the fibers for a few seconds before getting up.

  Surely her mother had to be home by now. Tuesday hadn’t heard a peep from her, so she thought it wise to make a check to see if she had indeed made it home. She stepped out into the hallway, onto the cold hardwood floor, a reminder that the chill of autumn had begun to set in. She peered into her mother’s room and sure enough, there she was, passed out on the bed, probably impossible to wake at this point.

  It wasn’t unusual for her mother to disappear for a few days at a time now that Tuesday had gotten older. Megan once told Tuesday, if I’m gone more than four days, then go ahead and call the police. Tuesday kind of hoped that this would be one of those times she would be gone for a day or two, as it would give her time to rehearse her side of the story regarding her expulsion from school. It wouldn’t be a story she could tell her on the fly, as it sounded too unbelievable for even somebody as out there as Megan Moxley to believe. She decided to head downstairs for her water, her mind still a little foggy from the Webster ordeal. She took the stairs carefully, holding the handrail all the way down.

  Tuesday soon reached the bottom of the stairs, and cranked the squeaky faucet on, letting it run for a minute to let the water get nice and cold. She reached up to the cupboard and grabbed a glass for herself, pouring water into it for her to consume. She placed the cup to her lips and guzzled it down, feeling quenched. She carefully placed the glass into the sink and headed back upstairs to try and get some more sleep.

  After reaching the top of the stairs, Tuesday looked again into her Mom’s room and wished that she was a normal girl with a normal mother. “Why does she have to be so cracked out all the time?” Tuesday thought to herself in a moment of deep regret. The second most desire of her heart after being cured from her dream disorder was to have a healthy relationship with her mother. She closed her eyes and let out a soft sigh. “Maybe someday.” Tuesday had hoped that day would come before it was too late.

  She stealthily returned to her room and crawled back into bed, covering herself up, and putting her arm around Winston. It wasn’t long before she fell back asleep and was snoozing like a baby.

  It also wasn’t long before Tuesday found herself in black and white again, as it was becoming more and more common for her to have multiple dreams in one night, and some of the dreams were simple warnings with occurrences happening in places she didn’t know to people she didn’t know. This time she was on a passenger airliner on a bright and sunny morning. There seemed to be fear and confusion amongst the passengers. As she frantically looked around, she tried to shake herself out of the dream.

  Tuesday ran down the aisle to ascertain what was going on, and it seemed that the cause of the problem appeared to be a man of Middle-Eastern descent who was armed with a knife. He was angry and threatening passengers. Every passenger was too paralyzed with fear to do anything to contain the situation, so they sat in their seats sobbing, praying and trying to understand the situation going on around them. Strangely, Tuesday felt no fear from this; she felt a calm wash over her and a peace that she had never felt from one of her dreams before. Everything shifted into slow motion and she began to see the faces of the passengers, and to feel their fear and their confusion.

  Tuesday was suddenly completely unaffected the emotions of the passengers, and realized that her focus had now been centered entirely on one single passenger in the compartment. This may have been the reason she had been able to disregard the rest of the passenger’s feelings. She felt as if she needed to investigate the cause of this, as it could be a breakthrough toward her recovery. As she scanned the faces one by one, she felt the plane veer sharply in a downward direction, and the panic of the passengers increased to a new level of anxiety and fear.

  Tuesday continued to scan the cabin for the person who had anchored her emotionally. “Woman with screaming baby, nope.” She kept looking. “Man who was worried about his stock market transactions, not him either.” She kept looking and about three quarters of the way down the cabin she spied the anchor. People were screaming, moving around, and flailing their hands in the air as she desperately tried to get a good look at the person who was the calm center of the storm. She moved herself down the aisle closer to where the person was, she finally got a split-second look.

  “No, it couldn’t be.” Tuesday thought to herself. “It’s not possible.” She tried to take another look just to be sure, but her visual image of the person was lost in what appeared to be bright, hot flames coming to life, consuming everything around them.

  Tuesday woke and sat up slowly, feeling calm. “It was me!”