by Glen Johnson
Thinking about it I would move out, I couldn’t live in this house with all the tormented images I had seen.
I didn’t bother with a shower; I had showered enough to last a month. I stripped down to my birthday suit and had a quick wash over with a flannel, before crawling under the blankets of my welcoming bed. It was coming up to two in the morning. I always looked forward to sleep, escape into the dream world, one of the only places you could control what happens. If only life could be so simple. Some of my best work comes from of my twisted dreams.
I slept soundly.
Dreams – as some believe – represent the subconsciousness trying to sort out the events of the day, creating semantic memories. Only the first part, when we first climb into bed, is what we control, simply daydreaming, or NREM. Soon, once the body relaxes and starts shutting down, only then does the real dreaming start. REM, or rapid eye movement, is the first sign of deep sleep.
Sigmund Freud once called dreams the Royal road to the unconscious.
I don’t give much credit to dream analysis, with trying to explain why certain objects mean different things. To give you an absurd example, in one dream dictionary I once looked up online I picked a random word to see what it meant. Hamster: to see a hamster in your dream, may represent underdeveloped emotions, or it may also indicate that issues of sexuality are unimportant to you. What the fuck? Of course hamsters are renowned for being emotional despondent and sexually inadequate?
But the scientific study, or the technical term oneirology, into the activity of the brain while we sleep, does interest me. Interestingly enough, the brain is more active while we sleep than when we go throughout our waking day.
What all this means, I have no idea. But it goes someway in trying to explain what I dreamt that night.
I dreamt I was chasing officer Kemp around a large open field. He ran screaming, with blood oozing from wounds on his back. He had given up trying to hit me with his truncheon and was now concentrating on running as fast as he could. He was whimpering and giving unmanly screams in the process. He would have run faster if he wasn’t constantly looking over his shoulder to see how far away I was. I could have caught him at any moment; I was playing with him, teasing him. After all it was my dream, my rules and my fun.
I couldn’t quite picture where the dream was taking place. It was a large open field with a car park near by. Possibly one of the Hay-Tor rock car parks.
Kemp ran to his car, he stood beside it fumbling with the door handle. The fat bounced on his large frame from his panting breath which billowed in the cold night air. He now sat inside with his eyes constantly searching for where I could be. He wiped blood and sweat from his face, while trying to push the key into the ignition.
His hands were shaking badly, having dropped them once already. Tears of pain and fear rolling down his cuddy freckly cheeks. His normally perfect uniform now all torn and covered with his blood and sweat, and plastered in mud.
As he looked up again he was startled as he noticed my face pressed hard against the driver’s side door window. He let out a bellowing cry of anguish, fingers still fumbling trying to turn the key, trying to escape. He wasn’t looking so smug now, as my tongue began to lick over the window, leaving a mixed trail of saliva and his blood.
I tried his door. Locked. I ran around the car trying them all. All locked apart from the boot. The car roared to life and started to wheel-spin on the gravel. I lifted the boot and jumped in, the movement of the car slammed the boot shut, locking me in and shaking me around like dice in a cup.
The patrol car raced along, screeching around the corners, tossing me from side to side like a piece of luggage. I could hear his breathing, still heavy and panicky. I was also panting hard from running around chasing my quarry. I listened to his almost incoherent mumbling. I decided I wanted to play more. Rest over. I didn’t like the darkened trunk that had a strong mixed smell of oil and antifreeze. I leant on my back and with all my strength pushed the back seat with my powerful legs. It ripped free and collapsed onto itself.
I could hear Kemp screaming, trying to turn in his seat to see what was happening in the rear. He thought he had left me behind. I could just imagine the spittle dribbling from the corners of his mouth, the bottom fat lip quivering like a jelly in an earthquake, eyes blurred by tears and stretched wide with fear.
I climbed through slowly, enjoying the look of shear panic reflecting in his eyes in the rear view mirror.
Not so smug now are you, you ginger prick!
He pulled hard on the wheel, screeching around a sharp bend. The siren and lights blaring away loudly. But we were too far from anywhere to catch anyone’s attention.
Kemp was all mine.
Game almost over.
He slammed on the brakes, spinning the car to one side, hitting bushes and finally scrapping along a crumbling dry-rock wall, which was simply being held together by clinging moss.
The darkness outside was ominous. But in my dream the night sky seemed brighter than it ever could be, as if I was peering through the eyes of a nocturnal animal – the ultimate predator.
The car was now at a complete standstill. Its wheels were still turning, spinning hopelessly on the loose gravel besides the road. The engine screaming as the car was wedged up against the wall, which was unyielding even in its dilapidated state. Part of the bumper and grill wedged tight against the ungiving wall. A sheep had also been hit in the darkness, its body still twitching as it bleated loudly, even with its injuries it tried to crawl free from under the bumper.
I could hear rocks dropping down landing hard on to the bonnet. The siren and lights now dangling to one side, the wailing noise had stopped, leaving just the annoying flashing blue and red lights.
Officer Kemp raised himself from the twisted wheel, which his weight had folded over at the top. I noticed that the airbag hadn’t inflated. Blood dribbled from his mouth, his hands coming up to broken and bruised ribs.
I rested on all fours on the remains of the backseat, staring through the wire lattice that separated the criminals at the back from the driver. To tease I poked my fingers through, reaching for him, wiggling them like some demented witch. His blood and skin was already under my nails.
He fumbled with the door handle, pushing open the twisted car door, having to bang his heavy body against it several times before it would yield.
Now his foot had been removed from the gas pedal the engine spluttered and fell eerily silent. He stumbled out, landing hard on his back, knocking the wind out of his round barrel chest. But he quickly climbed to his unsteady feet, adrenaline washing away the pain of broken bones and weary limbs. I watched as he stumbled over the wall, which had been twisted by his ramming car. He started running across yet another field, this one covered in short thick ferns, which seemed to reach for his feet, making him continually stumble. He was fast for a fat man. Never covered this in your training did you tubs?
I looked around the back of the car, it all felt so strange in my dream. The inner lining blurring together, a small tennis ball sized hole in the middle where I could see clearly, like some kind of tunnel vision, and only being able to see in black and white. Unusual for me, my dreams were normally always in full colour.
I pulled at the door handle, but I was not able to open it from the inside, without being opened first by the driver. After all, it would be no good if the criminals could let themselves out, would it?
But being a dream I could do whatever I wanted. I concentrated my strength on pushing the door outwards, bending the panelling. Until finally something gave way and the door flung open, striking the wall with a metal scraping sound that stung my sensitive ears.
I climbed out, now finding it easier to crawl on both hands and feet. I didn’t feel hot or cold – but I never do while dreaming.
I lifted my head, sniffing the air. I noticed the injured sheep, which instantly fell silent when my stare fell upon it. The sheep’s eyes were wide and staring, mouth hanging open w
ide, tongue lulling to one side.
I slowly crawled to the wall, climbing easily over it with both hands and feet. The sheep’s wide frightened eyes never leaving me, as I made my way. Then in one bounding movement I raced after Kemp.
He was a good distance from me, but I soon closed the gap. After all I was using both hands and feet, which seemed more natural than running on just my legs.
Unlike most dreams, where you try and run and find it’s like a slow motion movie, not being able to move your legs as if running in treacle, I was moving like the very wind was at my back.
Kemp kept looking behind. Didn’t he know the first rule about running away: never look back. He was tiring fast. Being more exercise than he had ever had before. He constantly fell to the ground, being tripped by the entangling ferns. I could physically smell his blood mingling with his sweat, making my stomach yearn for his thick vital fluid.
I was now becoming bored with playing with my food. So in one long stretched-out bound I cleared the gap, landing directly on top Kemp’s wide back. He folded underneath my weight. I could hear one of his legs snap under the pressure. I rolled him over. His hands flew up to instinctively protect his already damaged face. I could see the main jugular vein, throbbing and protruding from his neck, begging to be bitten. But as I was going to sink my teeth into the warm fountain, my alarm clock started to beep loudly waking me from my slumber. I woke with a wide smile on my face.
If only, I thought.
Looking at the bedside clock I noticed it was only 9:30 A.M. I must have knocked the switch when I cleaned the sick off it the day before. I rolled over trying to catch the tail end of my dream. Just another hour. I didn’t have to be down town and ready to talk to Officer Kemp until about three o’clock. I had already decided to leave it to as late as possible, just to annoy him.
Sleep. Let’s see if I can find out what happens to the fat ginger-haired tosser.
16
Run Rabbit Run
Time is a funny thing. You just roll over for five minutes and before you know it hours have flown past. Sleep is ignorant of time. If the body needs rest then nothing else matters.
I was pissed at myself for sleeping in so late. It was now almost 12 o’clock, and even though I had three hours to spare before seeing Kemp, it would take me almost three quarters of an hour just to get there. Because even though Kemp was stationed at Bovey Tracy, he sometimes had to drive to the main offices at Newton Abbot. And I was to meet him in his office at the Newton Police Station branch, which sat just back from a busy roundabout and large car park.
Even though I had slept soundly all night I still felt tired, fatigued even. I even wondered if I was coming down with something. Should I phone Kemp to postpone the statement? No. I needed to go; I didn’t want to give him another reason to come out to see me, for him to nose around. I was lucky it was dark when he came, I had been dragging dead bodies around, there was bound to be proof of this on the ground somewhere.
Besides, I was considering going to a security shop located on Queen’s Street, Newton Abbot’s main high street, and seeing how much a large iron gate would set me back. One I could control from the house, to either let someone in, or I could ignore them and pretend I’m not home, leaving them locked out on the other side. Even a camera to watch them with. I could at least get some quotes. I had considered it several times, but like most things I had simply put it off. I’m the sort of person that always says tomorrow, but in most cases tomorrow never comes. I know, it sounds like a James Bond movie.
I stood rubbing sleepiness from my red bloodshot eyes, looking at my pale complexion in the mirror. Once again noticing mud under my fingernails? The palms of my hands were also dirty and grazed. I then realized my knees and even my feet were raw and aching, as if I had fallen over.
I stood under the powerful shower, I couldn’t remember if I had washed last night. Shit, was I reaching the point in my life where a nervous breakdown was waiting in my wardrobe ready to pounce on me one morning, very soon?
Nervous breakdowns. I had seen many close friends and even family members fall pray to a breakdown. Sometimes you can see it coming, other times it’s as much a surprise as winning the lottery. Everyone goes differently. Some screaming, others just close themselves in, crying silently in a curled up ball, locked away inside the prison of their own mind.
It’s similar to video games, are you a screamer or the silent type? When you die and see, Game Over, do you scream and shout, throwing the control pad across the room, and attempting to take your frustration out on whoever is closest to you? Or do you just stare at the screen, acknowledging defeat, keeping it all locked inside? Because this is how your breakdown will be, either silent or a screaming frenzy.
Like everything else over the last eight days I just ignored the questions my mind was screaming at me and just relaxed under the powerful spray of the shower, locking everything inside. My own private world of pain and silence. One day it will probably all come out. I didn’t realize at that time, while I was stood under the warm water, that that time was much closer than I thought.
Cleaned up and ready to leave. I dressed in simple stonewashed jeans and a dark blue polo-neck jumper, with old tatty Nike trainers, and long rugby socks on underneath, to keep the biting cold away from my sometimes aching legs. Arthritis runs in my family. So far I have been lucky, only experiencing a little pain in my knees and elbows, and then only when the weather was really biting cold, as it was today – the mercury was really down near zero.
I walked past the kitchen, but I didn’t feel like breakfast, brunch or dinner, whatever you would call it, I felt fine. I couldn’t even remember the last time I sat down at the old table and had a proper cooked meal. Another sign of my unsteady state.
But like everything, the fire, the dirty clothes and my soiled body, being full was just something I never questioned. If only I questioned things it could have turned out very different. As I already said, I could have saved millions of lives.
But everything in its proper place. It would be no good to give the end of the story away so soon. That would almost be as annoying as borrowing a book from the library, getting engrossed in the story, then finding out that someone had ripped out the last couple pages.
I walked around outside. The day seemed much more pleasant. No clouds, just a bright sunny day, even though it did have a chill to it. It was a light but relentless biting wind. One of my favourite authors, Terry Pratchett, once wrote: “It’s a lazy wind; it goes through you rather than around you.” I always liked that expression; it seemed to perfectly describe the English winter wind.
Looking up into the clear blue sky, I could see a bird of prey circling some falconid target, ready to fold in its wings and dive for lunch.
I kept away from the back of the house. I didn’t want the mounds to ruin a good day. Out of sight, out of mind. I wandered around the front of the property, admiring the vegetation that seemed to have taken over everything.
I use to have a gardener. He was one of these young lads that ripped off the government, pretending to work less than sixteen hours a week so he could still claim benefits.
That was one of the other strange things about my adopted country of England. The government seemed to hand money out as if it grew on trees. Unlike America, where if you didn’t work then you didn’t eat, unless it was a unique situation. But a large majority of youngsters and middle-aged men and woman were content with staying at home, doing nothing productive with their lives, and simply living off the government’s hand-outs, with the government constantly having to raise taxes to cope with all the layabouts. There was even a joke about it. What’s green and gets you drunk every weeks? A Giro. A Giro being the unemployed person’s weekly check.
Mind you, my gardener worked hard. Coming twice a week, being that the grounds around my home were extensive. They stretched from my driveway, around the farmhouse and out into the open fields that lay around the back of my home, leading right up to a
nd through the wooded area across the way. In all, nineteen acres of land under my name. Not including many dilapidated outbuildings and one large old barn. Even an old partially collapsed well, eerily similar to the one out of the film, The Ring. I haven’t inspected it too closely, just in case I find a demented child’s corpse at the bottom.
Phil he was called, I never did know his last name. I often found him smoking or asleep when he should’ve been working. But he was just part and parcel of the property. Having inherited him from the old couple I brought the property from. But one day he never came to work. Days passed, leading into weeks then months. I never asked him where he lived, knowing he turned up twice a week. Never knowing his phone number so I could call to see if he was okay. He just stopped coming, why? I have no idea.
