Live The Dream

I've tried several times to write this; each time deleting it with growing panic. I'm running out of time. I've got to warn you all, you see, and I don't know the best way. I've only got 48 minutes left, now, and the clock's ticking, ticking away invisble but there inside my head taking time from me and pushing me harder to find a way to say it; to find a way to warn you so you don't end up like

Me.

I was a happy, contented person; a lively child, a bright teenager and then an ambitious and fulfilled adult. I had a job and a girlfriend and a role in life and a place to be and a bed to sleep in. the world was easy to negotiate; people liked me, I loved being

Myself.

Then the dreams started. Dark dreams, such dark dreams. Nightmares. I tried to stop them; I took herbal pills and went to the doctor and took what he gave me and yet they came. I didn't know what had started them and staying in my happy, contented self was getting harder because

I

started wanting odd things - to start arguments, pick fights with my girlfriend, skive off work, hide from the world, hit things. My girlfriend, Bea, got worried and sought help on the internet about me. I found searches she'd done about mental illness and stuff. I wasn't mentally ill, I was just having bad dreams. But to appease her and stop being so afraid I decided to try and get some help so I went to see this guy who was a hypnotherapist. He had a whole damn alphabet after his name so I reckoned maybe he was clever enough to get to the bottom of it. After a couple of sessions he told me I

Am

hiding something in my past and that he needed to tell me something terrible. I asked him what he meant because I'd had a happy childhood and was content (until the dreams started) but he shook his head and said my childhood wasn't that happy, at all. Not at all. He then told me all these lies about my parents and said things like repression and fabrication and self-protection. He used words like abuse and trauma and neglect and violence and witnessing murder and all sorts of other crap. He told me I was a Master at hiding things, especially truth, from myself, as if there was another me inside me, taking charge and keeping myself safe. He said if I didn't believe him I could take some more medication that would sedate me but that

The

truth would come out eventually and there was no use hiding from it. He asked me about my dreams and I told him a little bit about the darkness inside them and I think he was worried when i described what was in the dreams because he said I needed to talk to some other people about this and go to the local hospital and see what they said. I think that's what he said. I was angry by this time becasue he was sullying my parents; my life. I wasn't going to have that. When I got home, Bea was on the phone and I knew it was Mr Hypnotherapist with his stupid bloody ideas. Things went odd then, dream-like and weird and the next thing I knew, I was on my bed, waking from the most hideous, awful nightmare. It was the darkest one yet and in it, I lived out one of the dark fantasies that had played over and over in my mind; that of killing beautiful Bea. The whole damn thing had been a dream, thank the Lord for that. All of it - the weird Hypno guy, the things he'd told me. But strange - one minute I was in my bed and

one

minute I was downstairs, screaming because Bea was...

You

see Bea was lying there and there was blood and there was fear in her face but her eyes were dead and blank and I knew I was still asleep so I begged myself to wake up. WAKE UP is what I sceamed over and over. But the dream wouldn't lift, it was the worst one yet. I rang the police, in the dream and told them someone was fucking with my mind and they needed to come and help me. I thought that if I called them, the dream would get scared and go away and I'd be left only with a normal morning to wake up into, make coffee and love, have a nice, normal day. The police came and I knew one of them and he told me I

should

go with them to the police station. I wasn't allowed to call anyone. They put handcuffs on me. I needed to tell them this was just a dream but they wouldn't listen. Not at all, not to a single word. Then I remembered the Hypno doctor. He would be able to help me. It might be like that film Jacob's Ladder, when I dreamed in a dream of a doctor who could help me get out of the dream. I begged the policewoman to give me a phone but her face said hate and fear and disgust. I rememberd then she'd been a friend of Bea from running club. This dream was getting weirder and I was afraid if I left it too long I'd not

be

able to wake up. I thought of what the hypno guy had said in a different dream - or was it real - was he real? It was getting really confusing. Then I remembered I'd not slept much recently so how the hell could I be dreaming? Bea had told me I needed to sleep because I was getting crazy with insomnia but she didn't understand that if I didn't sleep, I didn't dream. I began to be

afraid

then. I wanted so badly to wake up and go home and tell Bea about all this madness. Just be with Bea. I'm a poet and I don't knowwit... I am in a cell and I don't know anymore - is this happening or is it past? I asked them for a pen. And paper. They gave me a blue crayon and some pieces of torn A4. I told them I have to warn you all. I know what it is now, really. The Hypno man said I was good at hiding things from myself. Well, if that's so then I know how to stop it happening. It began with dreams. It began with dreams

of

darkness and blood and fear and so this is the easy way to stop this happening. DO NOT SLEEP. Do not go to sleep, and you will not dream. If you don't dream, you know you're always in reality. Not like me; I'm stuck now, in this place that keeps changing. They said I had an hour, an hour to write but like I said I just kept deleting it but in the end the crayon was getting small and nobody answered when I yelled so I've just gone ahead and written, to maybe make some sense of all of this. Maybe, IF that doctor is right and I'm good at hiding things, then perhaps I've hidden something in here, in these words. I don't know.

I want to wake up.