I should have known that I was dreaming when my day started at around five in the afternoon with me playing video games in my dining room. I haven't had a dining room, least not with tiles and a television since I was twelve and still living in LA. That wasn't enough to tip me off, part of me is sure I'd still be stuck in that nightmare if Karen hadn't decided to rescue me.
I was playing video games with my little brother, I'm not really sure what I was playing the only part that was important was that my mother slammed the door as she walked into room. "What the fuck!" She screamed yanking the controller from my hand and glaring at me from between myself and the television. "Didn't I fucking tell you to get this shit cleaned up?" There was a mop sitting in a steal bucket in the corner of the room. Maybe I was supposed to be mopping. I don't think so. I really hate mopping floors and usually people just respect that and let me handle the rest of the cleaning. "Didn't I just fucking say that?" She slapped me so hard my back cracked as I spun part of the way around.
"What the fuck, you don't need to fucking slap me?" It hurt. It wasn't the kind of slap that stung or shocked more than it hurt, it hurt and had it been anybody other than my own mother they'd already be spitting up their own teeth but I wasn't going to hit my own mother.
"You're a lazy piece of shit. I told you to get this shit do-"
"I'll get on it right now."
I didn't even have a chance to get up before she shoved me back down into my seat. "You know what it doesn't fucking matter. Just sit the fuck down and stay here. I'll fucking do it you piece of shit." She snarled and stalked out of the room slamming the door when she left. I'm not really sure how long I sat there completely stunned. The next thing that I can remember is that I put the game on pause and started to pick up some of the things from the floor. That's when my mother walked back into the room and saw me holding. . .actually I can't remember what I was holding but I know she knocked it out of me hand. "I told you I'd fucking take care of this. You sit the fuck down and keep playing your goddamn video games." She shouted in face. She was so close that she got spittle on my face as she roared.
That as more than I could deal with right then. "You know what? Fuck you, I'm out." Dreams are funny, I didn't realize I was playing video games in just a tee shirt and boxers but I know I had to go upstairs to get dressed. Upstairs didn't really make sense, it was built like a barracks room with two rows of bunk beds, each with a pair of wooden crates at the end to store our belongings. Must have been a boot camp memory that dredged that up. In hindsight I'm pretty sure that the second story was at least twice as big as the first story was but who cares about little things like physics when you're dreaming right? I pulled out a pair of my camouflage utility trousers, the new kind. They kinda look like something that was spit out of an old space invaders game, a lot of people call them digi-camies.
I was about halfway into pulling them on when my mother appeared at the end of the room, there wasn't even a door at that end. She had an M204 grenade launcher in one hand and an M16 in the other, which was actually kind of redundant since an M204 is a modification of the M16. I ducked down behind my bed and pulled the mattress down just in time to avoid a hail of bullets that would definitely have taken me straight to hell. Before I could get up though I felt the hot steel searing at my flesh. The large barrel of the grenade launcher was pressed against my skull and the smaller opening to the M16 was at my throat. "Which one do you want?" I closed my eyes as tight as I could manage. This was how I was going to die, not of old age or cancer or in a drunk driving incident. I wasn't going to die in Iraq on a mission, I was going to be killed by my own mother, because I forgot to mop or dust or something.
It was around that point that I started realizing I was probably dreaming. There were things that didn't make sense like why wasn't I in my room, and why wasn't I in my house. I could just open my eyes and the gun would disappear. That's when my mother chambered the rounds on both weapons and my mind focused on something else, useless trivia that wouldn't be useless in a few seconds.
The M204 grenade launcher is designed with a fail safe, the grenades won't (or wouldn't in my dream) go off if they hadn't traveled a certain distance. I think its fifty yards, but it was definitely farther than the distance from the chamber to my skull. The problem with that was of course that there was always the possibility that something that close pressed directly against my temple would kill me anyway. Actually it was kind of likely.
The M16 really isn't designed to kill. Don't get me wrong it can kill you just like any gun, but ideally it wounds you so that one of the healthy soldiers from your side has to leave the field to get you to safety. Two guys, one bullet. This one was against my throat though and it would tear through my flesh like a hot knife through butter. Actually the visual in my head was a high school football team and a paper banner. If I was lucky though I could use the sheets to slow the bleeding long enough for someone to come save me.
None of this would make any difference though if she really wanted me dead. She had me cold and there was nothing I could do but keep my eyes shut. You know it's true what they say about there being no such thing as atheists in a foxhole, or in this case when there is a gun to your head. I prayed to every single deity I've ever heard of. It was like that Ricky Bobby movie. Save me white baby Jesus, black baby Jesus, Allah, Jehovah, Zeus, Ra, Buddha, Flying Spagetti monster and Invisible Pink Unicorn! Everything you could imagine promising I did during those few seconds that she was poised to kill me. I was completely sure that she was going to kill me too. This was it and I was going to die. You want to believe when you're about to die, you just don't want to die. Of course that's because you know there is nothing after you die. If you really believed those fairy tales you wouldn't fear death at all, you'd welcome it.
Five minutes, maybe more, passed by as I lay there with two guns pressed to my flesh. It was long enough that the metal cooled and was just a dull pressure against me. I could have opened my eyes at any time but I didn't because opening my eyes would do one of two things. It would wake me up and the whole thing would be over, or it would lock everything into reality and I'd be dead. It was Karen who saved me.
"How does it feel to kill your own son? To damn him to hell and yourself as well?" I couldn't see you, my eyes were still shut when you started to speak.
