What Is The Opposite Of A Nightmare?

Who were those two idiots that I allowed myself to associate with last night? It’s as if they had never existed (which is probably true since we’re talking now of an oxycodone-induced nightmare). Were they your standard wraiths or, more likely, amalgams of dirt bags I knew briefly in a different life? Whoever they were or represented, somehow we, the three of us now a group, involved ourselves with two even worse characters, worse in a criminal way, in some vague drama of rank underbelly life. There was the general sense that these two, grown-up Beavis and Butthead sorts, were managing to demoralize us in some way, deriding our inexperience, perhaps, with all things Black Market. I recall getting angry and, in an attempt to maintain our self respect as a bad ass group, whipping out some sort of firearm which shot not only bullets, but knives. I shot and shot, sometimes missing our enemies, sometimes wounding them; in one case, fatally.
So later in the nightmare I began to experience this ominous dread that I would soon be found out as a murderer. This was as real a feeling as one could experience in an errant dream. I had nothing better to do but wait in some limbo-like environment for the authorities, or some all-knowing colossus of a Colombo, to pin me down and haul me in; fated to live out my remaining days as a convicted killer.
I woke briefly, drenched in sweat, to the joyous realization that it was all an odious surreal figment. Of course this made perfect sense: I was no thug, I had a family, and I was devoid of any links to insipid lowlifes (and I had taken two Percocets for pain, only hours earlier). Then my body relaxed, and I drifted again, uncommonly, into the same nightmare. This time I told myself that all perception of reality was surrealistic and real, they existed together and were in fact the same. I truly was a wanted murderer, my life was reduced to that of a fugitive until I was either captured thrown in a pit and forgotten, or killed in some pseudo-cinematic pursuit, where I met my end at the crushing jaws of the rabid sesquatch hybrid that the local police were covertly breeding just for evildoers of my extreme ilk.
In time, I woke once again, this time for real and chastised myself for believing such a cheaply constructed fantasy, even though my mind insisted that I do so. A slight pain in my left side and back muscles began to harass me at once. I sat up, opened my eyes, and tasted the thin film which had coated my teeth overnight.

So now the question still bounces around in my thoughts, who were those two idiots? I couldn’t place them as any one or a pair of old buddies, acquaintances, co-workers; instead I realize how insignificant that question is. The relevant point is that I had, at some stretch of my life, associated with those types or people that I felt could sink to sub par levels of social behavior. Those two idiots are not any specific cohorts; they're rather representations of my self worth, of when, in some faraway life, my self worth had wandered off on its own to some bleak continent noir, lodged itself in quicksand, and, becoming so enchanted with the exotic surroundings, forgot to grab onto a branch to haul itself out. I had loathed myself then. But this is the now, another reality that, through a lot of hard toil, I’ve managed to define for myself. The real questions are: why is that pair showing their monstrous faces again and what are they trying to tell me?
The answer, in part, may lie in the fact that recently I underwent surgery to determine the nature of an certain infiltrate in the upper lobe of my left lung, therefore the Percocet, therefore the vivid and disturbing dream. Can that be it, something as obvious as that? But that doesn't explain the meaning behind the nightmare, only its day-glo quality.

The odor of pancakes floats in the morning ether. So I tell myself it’s too early for such heavy cogitation, and file the matter neatly away. Now free to pursue more primal urges, clad in only bathrobe and boxers, I ease down the groaning stairs to the sound of blah-blah radio and sausages blistering in the pan.
“Morning, you’re up too early,” says Jo. “How’s my wounded soldier?”
“Still hurting, but still better everyday,” I whine. “Smells good in here!”
“Want some cakes of Pan? “ is the obligatory question to which I reply, “Absolutement”
In the living room sits my son, Brixton, plucking the strings of his acoustic Martin. He has been taking lessons for a year now and can actually play the guitar pretty well for a 12 year old with a limited attention span. I recognize an old Grateful Dead tune.
“Franklin’s Tower?”
“Yep.”
“Pretty good, Brix. You all ready to go?”
Brixton caught the bus every weekday morning at 7:30 right up at the end of our street. Now he sets down his git, grabs his backpack and starts heading for the door.
“Don’t forget, Gordon’s mom will drive you home after Drama today, OK Brix?” calls Jo.
He yells OK back and is out the door and up the street before I can haul my sore torso off the couch.
I move to the kitchen where a heaping plate of pancakes and sausage await me.
“Been having some weird dreams, lately.” While slathering margarine and pouring syrup.
“Like What?”
“Oh, just the old shady-character-types-behaving-badly-and-I'm-in-the-middle-of-it-all sort of nightmare thing”
At that moment a knock comes at the door. I start, but Jo is already down the hall puzzling as to who could be calling at this time. The door opens and I hear:
“Hi, does Kevin Dobyns live here?” a high raspy voice.
“Who wants to know?” Jo, but not nastily.
“Well, I’m an old friend of his, you see, and I decided to take a shot at locating him. We go waaaay back." His face rattles with a staccato laugh that I imagine startles Jo. "Is this his house, I’m sorry, are you’re his wife?” Suddenly serious.
“Yes, as a matter of fact... Let me see if he’s busy” and she swings the door most of the way shut.
I’m a little off put by so early an intrusion, yet curious; Jo shows me her puzzled and concerned face.
“Some weird looking guy at the door, says he’s an old friend."
“Shit, always when I’m eating” I take a quick bite of sausage, and slowly make my way to the door thinking, Beavis or Butthead?
I open the door with a sudden manufactured smile, before me stands Ichabod Crane in T shirt and overalls, hair combed back and graying at the temples.
The figure steps back, makes an O with his rubbery lips, surprised to see the object of his search now before him.
“Dobro, man what’s up?” He offers his skeletal hand, ducks his head in oriental-like respect.
“Huck?” is all I can say. My mind, like the maple syrup I just poured, only begins to grasp the reality here. Is this truly Huck? Am I still dreaming? I blink dramatically in an attempt to attach flesh and blood to what I can only perceive as a ghost.
George Callieri - who we always called Huck because of his unfortunate resemblance to, and mannerisms of, your stereotypical hayseed, Huckleberry Finn - was standing in my threshold. Yet the last time I saw him he was laying at the bottom of a swimming pool with a belly full of lead from a .38 revolver wielded by a bad ass Afghan dealer everyone called Krush.

(to be continued)