Last Night I Sang to the Monster

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.

  I think I know why there are so many addicts in the world.

  Running, that’s what I’m doing in the dream. I’m running through the streets and I’m barefoot. My feet are bleeding but I can’t stop and I’m trembling and scared, the storm inside me, strong as a tornado, twisting and twisting. All the pieces of paper I have on the floor of my brain are flying around like birds gone crazy and I’m torn up as hell and I’m running and running and it seems as though I’ll be running forever. It’s night and it’s cold and everything is dead and quiet and hollow and I can hear the echoes of my own breathing in the dark and empty streets. I can’t see where I’m going because the darkness stretches forever and the sweat is stinging my eyes. But that doesn’t stop my feet from running. It’s like my feet can tell my brain what to do. My feet, they’re always taking me places I don’t want to go—especially in my dreams. I’m scared. I hate that I’m so scared. It feels as if my heart if going to be torn out of my body. I don’t even know what I’m scared of.

  The monster. I’m scared of the monster.

  And all of a sudden I’m home. The lawn is soft as cotton and cool on my bloody feet and I think of my father who is the god of the lawn and I want to cry. I want the lawn to hold me but that’s a crazy thought because a lawn doesn’t have arms and hands and a heart and what good is it to have arms and a heart anyway because, hell, they’ve never done me any good.

  When I go inside the house, it’s as empty as the streets. I start to realize that I’m dying of thirst so I try to get a glass of water from the faucet but nothing comes out. No water. I’m going to die, I’m going to die. I know that if I don’t drink I really am going to die, so finally I remember that the only thing left to drink in the house is my father’s bourbon. So I go looking in hiding places for his bottles and I find a pint and I drink it down. The whole bottle. And I feel a fire inside but that fire only makes me thirstier.

  So now I’m even thirstier than before and I keep trying to get the faucets in the house to work but they just won’t give up any water and, god, I’m thirsty, thirsty, thirsty, and I know I have to drink something so I keep looking for bottles of bourbon and finding them all over the place and I keep drinking them down and as I drink there are explosions in my throat and in my stomach and I’m half on fire and I’m thinking I’m going to die because I keep getting thirstier and thirstier until I just can’t stand it and my feet are really bleeding.

  I want to die. I begin to think that maybe the monster will come and I’ll let him take me.

  And then my brother appears and he looks really mad and he’s coming at me. He’s screaming at me and calling me all kinds of names. I want to yell for help but nothing comes out and I know it wouldn’t do any good anyway because everyone in the whole world has gone away. I know they’ve gone away because of something I’ve done. My heart is beating so fast that I know it’s going to burst and I can’t stand the panic in my brain.

  It would be so peaceful just to die.

  That’s when I wake up.

  This is not the only dream I have. There are more. How can there be so many dreams living inside me? How do they all fit? Since I’ve been here, it seems like I dream all the time. I almost don’t want to go to sleep—except that I’m so tired by the end of the day that I can’t keep my eyes open.

  So I sleep. And I dream.

  Sleep and dream.

  Sleep and dream. Over and over. This is what my days are made of.

  So this is where I live now, in the country of dreams.

  Some nights, I wake up in the middle of the night. And I’m scared. Sometimes it’s as though I’ve been crying. The dreams make me tired and I hate myself. There’s blood in my dreams—in all of them. And there’s always something that wants to hurt me. I know it’s the monster. I never see the monster but I know he’s there.

  I think the monster comes to me at night.

  One of my roommates, Rafael, he’s an expert on monsters. Not that he talks about them. I can just tell. People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.

  One night, Rafael was sitting on my bed and shaking me. “It’s okay,” he was whispering. “It’s only a dream, Zach. It’s only a dream.” I must have been screaming or something. I could feel the beating of my heart. My heart that had the words anxious and sad and scared and messed up written on it.

  “It’s okay,” Rafael said. “It was only a bad dream.”

  I didn’t say anything. I waited until my heart stopped running. Sometimes, my heart ran faster than my bloody feet. When my heart relaxed and got quiet, I told Rafael I needed a cigarette.

  “Just go back to sleep,” he said.

  “Will you stay? Until I fall asleep again?”

  He didn’t say anything. But he stayed.

  I felt like a little boy. Shit. But I couldn’t stop shaking. And I didn’t want Rafael to leave. I fell asleep listening to the sound of his breathing. In the morning, Rafael asked me about my dream. “I don’t remember,” I said.

  “Try.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you won’t get better if you don’t.”

  “Are you teaming up with Adam?”

  Rafael shook his head and then just grinned. “Okay,” he said. “But, listen, Zach, I care about you. I care what happens to you.”

  I mean the guy hardly knew me. But the thing was that, you know, I believed the guy. And he wasn’t scary or anything like that. And to tell you the truth I liked that he liked me. I guess I thought he would change his mind about me once he got to know me. Not that I planned on letting him get to know me.

  “Did you hear me, Zach? I care about you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s okay with me that you care about me. But can we please not talk about it? Would that be okay with you?”

  “Yeah, that would be okay,” he said.

  -2-

  The thing I like about Rafael is that he’s a nice guy. For-real nice. Mr. Garcia-nice. On the first night he was in Cabin 9, I heard him crying. His crying was real soft and quiet and it made me sad. The thing is that Rafael and I, well, we have this dream thing going on and we’re both sad as hell. That makes us the same. Even though he’s fifty-something and I just turned eighteen, we’re both in the same boat. We’re in the middle of a flood, floating down a wild, untamable river. The real difference between me and Rafael is not our ages, but that he’s working hard to remember and I’m working hard to forget.

  Another thing Rafael and I have in common—he hates himself. I hate myself too. But there’s another part of Rafael, I think, a part of him that just doesn’t want to hate himself anymore. He wants to be done with all that I-hate-myself shit.

  Look, this dream thing, I just don’t talk about my dreams to anyone. I don’t talk about them with Rafael. I don’t talk about them with any members of the group. And I don’t talk about them with Adam. Yeah, okay, I know my dreams are intrusive. That’s what they call them here. The psych doc, he asked me, “Do you have intrusive dreams?”

  I looked at him and said, “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

  “Are your dreams so real that they intrude into your waking hours?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Do you want to tell me about them?”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “It’s not good to keep all those things inside you.”

  “Maybe not,” I said.

  “It would be good if you talked about them with someone.”

  “Who would it be good for?”

  He was trying to ignore the fact that I was being non-compliant. Non-compliant is a therapy word they toss around this place. Non-compliant is a very nice way of saying I was being a jerk. He was a jerk too so it all evened out. Do not get me started on the psych doc. I did not like the psych doc. No, I did not.

  There are some things that I just don’t like talking about and that’s the w
ay it is. I’ll give the psych doc credit. He knew enough to change the subject. But he wrote something down on his pad. I knew the score. Everything he wrote down on that pad was going to make its way to Adam. I knew that Adam would bring up the issue of my “intrusive dreams” sooner or later. Adam, he was pretty good at getting down to my issues when we talked. Or things he thought were my issues. He has theories about me. I’m more or less hoping he’ll keep those theories to himself.

  Sometimes I think everything and everyone here is intrusive. My dreams don’t leave me alone, Adam doesn’t leave me alone, the other therapists don’t leave me alone. Not even my two roommates, Sharkey and Rafael—they don’t even leave me alone.

  I’ve been here for three weeks. I know that I was at another place before coming here. That other place was a hospital. I don’t remember anything about it except that I was really sick. Sometimes I have dreams about that other place. Everyone’s dressed in white and all the walls are white and the bed sheets are white and I’m wearing white pajamas which is really weird because I don’t wear pajamas. Everything’s white and blinding and things seem like they’re always moving. I just want to shut my eyes. I’m really tired and everything is blurry and I hear voices calling my name.

  And then one day, well, I woke up and I was lying in Bed 3. Bed 3, Cabin 9. I remember being interviewed by the psych doc. I remember talking to Adam. He was really nice to me and his voice was kind and I almost wanted to cry. I mean, Adam is not a bad person. But the guy just won’t lay off. Always showing up, that guy. And what is it about remembering that really gets him going? What is that?

  When I first got here, the staff showed me around the grounds. There were like fifteen cabins scattered around and a main building where we ate and sat around if we wanted to sit around. A lot of people hung out at the main building. I wasn’t one of those people. You know some people just didn’t know how to be alone. Me, I was all about being alone.

  Adam says I isolate.

  I have no comment about some of Adam’s observations. I did want to ask him if the word “isolate” was intended to be used as a verb. I wondered what Mr. Garcia would think about that.

  If I want to hang out in Cabin 9, what is so fucking bad about that? It’s a perfectly good cabin.

  -3-

  They let us smoke. Not that the counselors encouraged that kind of addict behavior. But the thing is that most of us have bigger problems. Yeah, smoking is not healthy. Yeah. They offered a “Quit Smoking Class.” I was not interested in that subject.

  There was a rule that we could only smoke in this one designated spot. Everyone called it the smoking pit even though it wasn’t a pit. I bought a couple of packs of cigarettes off Sharkey when he arrived. He got here ten days after me. I was fucking dying for a cigarette. Sharkey, he’s twenty-seven. He likes to talk a lot. Talk, talk, talk. Makes me fucking crazy.

  The first few days I was in Cabin 9 alone. I liked that. I’d go to all the group sessions I was supposed to attend. You know, it was like school only you didn’t get grades. I didn’t mind listening to all the stuff the therapists had to say and what the screwed-up people had to say. I mean, the thing about screwed-up people is that they’re very interesting. Interesting in a very stun-the-hell-out-of-me kind of way. I mean people get upset and angry and emotional and all of that. That’s not really a big deal. Okay, so I don’t join in on all the emoting. It’s bad enough that my dreams make me cry sometimes. I don’t mind listening. And if someone wants to put all his emotional stuff out in front of everyone, well, that doesn’t bother me. Well, it does bother me, but as long as there’s a therapist around, it doesn’t make me too anxious.

  The thing about being at this place is that I am supposed to engage in healthy behaviors. Going to meals is a healthy behavior. Not that I was ever hungry. And not that I talked to anyone. I sort of just listened. Look, I’m consistent. This is not a bad thing. I mean, they do tell us that we need to be consistent. And the thing about meals is that there’s a lot of drama. I do not like drama. Someone is crying or someone is saying something snarky or someone is complaining that this place sucks or someone is offering an opinion about one of the therapists or someone is telling their life story or someone is getting into it with someone else about shit that just doesn’t matter—and it all makes me fucking crazy. Adam says that I need to engage in behaviors that are good for my sobriety. In my opinion, the meals here are extremely bad for my sobriety. Not the food, the people. And, another thing, I am not exactly nuts about being sober.

  After meals, if I wasn’t on clean-up duty, I’d just go to my cabin and read. Not such a bad life really, when you think about it. I was supposed to be doing homework, but I didn’t feel like doing it. You know, the therapists were always trying to get you to talk about yourself. Like I really wanted to do that. And I’d always get an assignment. What does your addiction look like? Draw a picture of your home life. Write a letter to your mother. My addiction looks sad. My home life was sad. My mother was sad. Next assignment please. Let’s keep moving. Shit.

  I was pretty much doing okay living in Cabin 9 all by myself. It was okay. I was fine. Fine. Every time I said that word, Adam repeated it. Like, yeah, sure, fine.

  Then Rafael came along. He’d been in another cabin and I knew him because he was in my group and I liked him okay. Not that I was all that present in group. Look, the guy didn’t bother me. But that didn’t mean I wanted to have him as a roommate. I don’t know whose bright idea it was to have him move in with me, but I was not happy. I got this idea into my head that Adam was behind the whole thing and I told Adam I didn’t think it was a good idea that Rafael roomed with me.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s old,” I said.

  “We don’t put people together based on age.”

  “His hair is turning gray.”

  Adam was giving me this look. “And?”

  “He needs a haircut.”

  “So do you.”

  “I’m growing my hair long.”

  “So is he.”

  “Can’t he stay where he was?”

  “What?” he said. “Does this interfere with all that isolation?” I wanted to pop the guy. I knew it wasn’t going to do any good if I told Adam that Rafael seemed too sad and kinda broken and maybe it wasn’t good for me to have a sad and kinda broken older gentleman as a roommate. I wanted to say, “Maybe he’ll be bad for my sobriety.”

  Look, I was stuck with the guy. When he moved in, he shook my hand, and I don’t know, I guess I thought the guy wasn’t going to be so bad. His smile was kind of sad but it was real and I liked that. And the best thing was that he didn’t take up a lot of space and he was friendly and respectful and all of that. The guy had manners and so maybe I thought it was a good thing that he was my roommate because I knew other guys would be arriving because people arrived all the time and I figured it was better to have Rafael for a roommate than some ill-mannered, screwed-up jerk.

  After Rafael moved in, we talked a little bit, but I could tell right away he didn’t want to get inside my head, which was really cool, because I really wigged out when people tried to get inside my head. And Rafael, well, he seemed, well, I hate to say this, kinda normal. A lot more normal than me, anyway. He knew how to talk to people. And I felt bad for having gone to Adam to complain about the guy when really I didn’t know shit about him.

  The thing that really tore me up about Rafael was that when he smiled he almost looked like a boy. But, you know, well, there was that sadness thing about him. I could see it in his dark eyes. I mean, the guy was seriously sad. He was almost as sad as my mom, but somehow he seemed to be more connected to the world. Not that being connected to the world was all that great a thing. Not the way I saw it. What did being connected to the world get you? It got you sadder. Look, the world is not sane. If you stay connected to an insane world, well, you just go crazy. This is not a complicated theory. It’s just simple logic.

  -4-

  And then
Sharkey came along.

  He was all smiles and talk and bullshit. But I liked him. See Rafael didn’t take up a lot of space, but Sharkey, the guy took up space. I mean, he just about took over Cabin 9. And the guy had stuff. Three suitcases. Not small suitcases either. I’m serious. He had different kinds of sneakers and all kinds of pairs of shoes and clothes and clothes and more clothes. How long was the guy planning on staying? And sunglasses. Man, the guy was all about sunglasses. I got a big kick out of watching Steve go through Sharkey’s things. Steve, he’s on staff. They do that here, they go through your things. You know, make sure you don’t have any sharpies to hurt yourself with and most especially they want to make sure you’re not sneaking in any drugs. They don’t trust you here. Not that any of us are worth trusting.

  But man, did I get a kick out of seeing the look on Steve’s face—especially when he got to Sharkey’s underwear. I mean Sharkey had a stack of designer underwear still in the boxes. Designer underwear, it comes in a box. The dude had money. Maybe he was a dealer. That’s what I was thinking.

  When Sharkey walked into the cabin, Rafael was reading a book. And me, that’s exactly what I was doing. He looked at both of us and said, “Well, you guys are gonna be a barrel of fucking laughs.”

  Rafael and I looked at each other and smiled. The good thing was that Sharkey made Rafael laugh. I mean, Rafael had a sense of humor. In some ways, he seemed younger than a guy in his fifties. It wasn’t so much the way he looked, it was the way he existed in the world. See, I have this theory: some people exist in the world in an old way and some people exist in the world in a young way. My dad, he existed in an old way. Rafael, he existed in a young way. Adam, he existed in a young way too. See, some guys, they’ll always be like boys in some ways. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I haven’t decided yet.

  But see, I liked the young thing about Rafael.

  And Rafael, he put up with Sharkey’s bullshit. I mean, Sharkey was the kind of guy who always told you what he thought. Like we wanted to know. But see, guys like that, they don’t always believe that everything is a two-way street. They tell you what they think. That’s cool. But when you look guys like Sharkey straight in the eye and tell them what you think, well, that’s not always so cool.