aaron_the fall of america_chapter_34

Chapter 34

A man and woman, both dressed in white, stood at the end of my bed. I suspected that they had arranged for me to wake while they stood there bleached in white light in a white room.

I looked around the room to see that there was no other furniture than the bed I appeared to be strapped to. The floor was white. I wanted to see my skin to see what colour it was. I wanted to see something not white. I wanted the two faces that were nearly lost in the white light to go away.

I tried to remember if I was alive. It was difficult for me to believe I could be anything other than alive if I still could conceive such a ridiculous question.

A night had gone by me and I had dreamed. The dream seemed to be a familiar world. It was a world where I lived near a major airport. I had memories of being in and out of the airport many times as a passenger of major airlines as well as being a pilot in training for the American airforce. I was chosen once to test a new fighter plane.

Depending on which time or dimension I'm in in this dream world, the airport is either surrounded by parched and poisoned landscape, cut through with roads of sun bleached and cracked pavement or a typical lower end bourgeois concrete dwelling suburban neighbourhood where the houses are alike and few people are home.

Last night, in my dream, I went to the airport to shake off the boredom and loneliness that was killing me at home. I needed to see about something that struck me as important. I walked along the roadways through the quiet neighbourhood. When I came to the airport, no one took notice of me. There was high security but they didn't seem to be concerned about the back entrance. It was an airport more advanced than any other on Earth; with two levels of taxing runways leading to many runways. But there was no security in the back.

I walked by a fighter plane, noticing instructions or rules on a plaque beside the stairs to the cockpit. As I continued to walk through the indoor, empty parking area, I saw that a security guard had noticed me. She was about to approach me, likely for questioning, when some important papers fell out of her hand. She stopped to pick them up and forgot about me.

I stood and watched people hurrying one way and another. They, unlike me, had important somethings to do and important places to go. I didn't know what to do, was all I could think of until a woman wearing a fur coat grabbed me and asked if she could walk outside with me. She wanted to use me to look less conspicuous: that was my suspicion. As we walked toward the outside, so did many others. The woman kept changing directions and became increasingly urgent in her pace. I looked around to see if she was being followed. My suspicion was apparently accurate. There were several official-looking, mindless men pursuing her.

She ran. I couldn't follow her to help because someone had stopped me. I watched her run out a far door with two men close behind her. I asked the man who had stopped me why he couldn't leave her alone. He meanly agreed with a foolish, pointed grin.

I decided to head for home. There was no reason to be caught up in the madness of someone else's follies. But the man wouldn't leave me. He would grin and laugh hysterically at my questions as if I was telling jokes and he was drunk. Occasionally he would hit me or try to kick me in the groin. He annoyed me. I was losing my patience. His insane laughing and relentless pestering was trying. I grabbed his arm and, spinning around to gain momentum, hurled him through the air into the back window of a parked car.

Though injured seriously, he continued to laugh. He watched from the back seat as I ran down the suburban road.

I ran straight into another dream and had to stop to urinate. I thought I was in an old building but it felt like I was in my parent’s back yard. When I had finally finished urinating, a teenage girl came in and grabbed my penis. She wouldn’t let it go. Her obsession terrified me. I feared she was too young for such boldness. I couldn’t stop her. She talked to her friends as she showed them what she had found, then she led me into another room. She was surprised that I was becoming physically aroused.

I managed to forget what happened with her and found myself trying to explain the airport dream to my parents and sister. They were more interested in the inscription on a toaster that they had just bought or found. The inscription was about as meaningful as a television game show.

I ended up watching a drain or something like a river or a canal. Whatever I was doing had insulted my sister. I had to get away. I tried climbing a fence.

But I ended up somewhere with my sister. Our hatred seemed to be a public mask for a mutual lust. We touched. We were naked when I woke.

She had gone. I was alone. I never had a sister. It was someone else in my dream, someone else's dream.

Still, a man and a woman, both dressed in white, stood at the end of my bed.



read on. book_03 chapter_35



by Joanne B. Washington

© 2001 | the jose wombat project