The Dream

He awakes with a start, the dream having been so vivid that he could have sworn it was a memory. Sweat pouring down his face, dripping from his nose and making a small pool in the crotch of his silk boxers, he tries to catch his breath which is trying to escape in gulping gasps.

"You Ok Ben?" She asks. Her normally rich voice is hoarse from sleep. She doesn't stir; she probably hasn't even actually woken up, he thinks. It's like an automated response, somewhere the subconscious of her sleep state. She can sense there's something wrong and, without having to even think about it, respond.

"Just a bad dream," he rasps, in his dream he’d tried to scream and couldn't, now that's he's awake, his voice is still failing him.

"Tell me all about it, Hun," She reaches out for him, without lifting her head or opening her eyes and touches his shoulder. Her hand rests there for a moment before slipping down and landing in the bunched up blanket on her hip.

He can't tell her though, because she’d be scared. At least, she'd be terrified if he gave her the level of detail he saw in his mind. He knows this, because he’s scared.

"No," he says, "no, it's fine."

"Mmmhmm," she replies, still asleep. The evenness of her breathe stays.

"There was a 3 foot midget wearing sandals who kept trying to touch my cock," he says.

"Mmm, that's terrible..." her voice trails off. The sentence is punctuated by a loud, grating, snore as she rolls over toward him. Her eyes are still closed, she looks serene.

He sighs heavily and lies back down, having to reposition himself so as not to crush Lily's hand, which is now lying across his pillow. She snores softly in a constant, steady, breathing that normally calms him. Usually it's more calming than counting sheep, but not tonight. Tonight his heart continues to pound as though trying to escape his chest.

He closes his eyes and can see the scene again, though he doesn't want to. It's not the events that lead up to it, just the final moments before he forced himself awake. His wife, the love of his life, lays splayed on the same bed, her mouth agape, her eyes open, but unseeing. From her neck down, she looks like something out of an episode of CSI, without the neat Y-incision. Most of the contents of her torso lay in small heaps all over the bed and floor leaving an empty cavity from her chest to her pelvis. He looks down on himself, and finds himself covered in her blood. The thing that truly frightens him, though, is looking in the mirror behind the bed and seeing his own face look back, and no matter what he's feeling, or should be feeling, the look on his face is one of unrequited pleasure. The laughter that echoes around the room is his voice, but he doesn't understand it.

"What are you laughing about sweetie?" her voice startles him. Was he laughing?

"What?"

"You were laughing baby, right now... loud... are you alright?" She seems to be awake now, looking at him.

"Yeah, I'm fine," and he gets up, "I'm gonna get something to drink, you want something?

"Mmmmm," snore. How she does that he’s never understood. Sleep for him has always been a more arduous task.

All he can think as he makes his way down the stairs toward the kitchen is, "Oh shit."

It isn't just the dream, it isn't the laughing, it's that this isn't the first time this has happened. He's had dreams like this, dreams that felt like this, and they're the sorts of dreams that lead to déjà vu, that feeling like you've been there before. Over the last few weeks, he's felt like he's been unraveling. Stress at work, he thinks. Stress from the financial problems. There’s also the problems with his marriage.

Everything seemed so great. Lily was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him. After seeing her for a few weeks, he thought he was sure she was the one, but it took him a full year before he was willing to ask her. She said yes, and he made her a lot of promises. He didn't think she was unhappy, but the fact that he was not fulfilling his end of the bargain, not living up to those promises, it was tearing him apart. He was having trouble making ends meet, having trouble keeping up with production in his job, even as the goals and targets were raised almost daily.

The kitchen was silent except for the clock over the doorway has he stepped through. The clock wasn't exactly loud, but this early in the morning, you would hear it, the seconds coming slower than you'd expect. There was something about that sound that soothed him, the way that you could almost hear the tick before it happened, like the sound wave was actually travelling backwards from him.

He made his way over to the aging fridge, the kind that had the freezer on top rather than side by side, which was the kind that Lily wanted. He opened the door and stared for a while, contemplating what to pull out while knowing that all that’s there is milk and water. He opted for the milk, and as he reached inside to grab the jug, the compressor kicked on with a click and whir. The sound startled him for a moment, the hairs on his neck standing up. He felt sticky with sweat.

From the cupboard next to the fridge he pulled down a tumbler, and reflected on the argument he had with Lily about whether it was better to put the glasses there or on the other side of the kitchen. He lost, but thought her way certainly made more sense, and wondered why they'd even fought her on it in the first place.

He loved her. With all his heart he loved her.

So vivid was his dream. He took a breath and drank some milk. It tasted a little strange, familiar somehow, but he couldn't figure out why. It tasted like milk, but there was something else, the hint of something he remembered tasting before. He took a few more swallows and set down the glass, held his head in his hands, sitting at the little table in the middle of the room.

Suddenly there was a pounding on the front door, and he jumped at the sound, rushing to the door. The way that cops knock, it must be in the training, because you always know it’s them.

"Sir, is everything alright?" Two uniformed police officers stood at the door, their squad car sat on the street in front of the house, lights flashing. It was a male and a female, the female, who said she was Officer Winston was pretty, probably a few years out of the academy, a little older than he was. The male, however, looked like he'd just graduated that day and was doing on-the-job training, he had a solid jaw and a fixed stance, but he had a baby face and seemed jumpy. She looked at him, a peculiar expression on her visage.

"Sure, why it wouldn’t be, “Ben replies, smiling slightly,”can I ask to what I owe the pleasure, it's rather late, or early. My wife is trying to sleep."

"We got a call-" she started talking while the other one turned around and stepped off the stairs, talking with almost a whisper into the radio on his shoulder, "sir, do you mind if we talked to your wife?"

"What?" he felt startled by the question, he was like many people where cops were concerned, he was fine as long as he wasn't confronted. "Why... is everything alright?"

Officer Winston looked at him, unabashed, considering him for a moment, then replied, "sir, there was a report of some kind of argument coming from this residence."

He was confused, and it played across his face, "That can't be right; she and I've been sleeping. I might have been yelling in my sleep, I had a really bad dream, but we haven't had an argument."

He thought about it though and knew that the neighbors were not fond of them. They always seemed to find new ways to aggravate the two of them since the day they’d moved in next to them. It made sense that they might take it to this level.

At this point, he became aware of the sound of sirens coming from a short distance, getting closer. The male cop, the one whose name he hadn't caught, was back now. He had his hand resting on the handle of his gun and looked rather jumpy.

"Sir, I'd feel better if we could come in and have a quick word with your wife," she paused for a moment, as another squad pulled up, two more police officers getting out and moving up the drive way, "or perhaps I can just go up and check on her?"

He felt so bewildered, but it seemed as though letting them see her would be the best way of getting rid of them, then he could head back to bed.

He stepped aside and said, "Sure, upstairs, first door on the right. Please don’t wake her up, though."

She walked up the steps cautiously, the new guy looked possibly more nervous still, even though there were now two other officers standing a few paces behind him, both seeming very cautious.

A few moments later there was a crackle on their radios, and the only thing he caught was: "...custody... Now!" The next thing he knew, he was face down on his floor, and the rookie cop was fumbling with handcuffs while the two new arrivals trained their guns on him, knees pressing into his back and shoulder blades. No one seemed interested in telling him why he was being arrested, which he was sure was a violation of his rights.

Hours went by as he sat in the tiny room. He’d seen enough crime dramas to know that he was in an interrogation room. He knew the mirror in the wall to his right was one-way. He knew that it was stifling hot and dimly lit to keep him uncomfortable, as well as the foul smell. He knew his hands were handcuffed to the lowest rung on the back of his chair to keep him in just enough pain that when they came in to talk to them, he’d feel something more than relief on a deeper, emotional level. It might seem odd that he was able to think about all this, but, he’d been sitting in the exact same position for at least 3 hours, he had a lot of time to think.

It wasn’t just these things though, he’d also used the time to try and figure out why he was even here. He couldn’t imagine what would make them do this. His wife had been sleeping just fine when he walked down the stairs. He hadn’t committed any crimes that he knew of, unless you counted a few speeding tickets.

There was a quiet buzz and the door opened, it was clear that the station outside was well air-conditioned, because he could feel the suction as the denser air tried to escape the room. In a moment, it became as stifling as it had been as the door closed with a thick, heavy, thud, followed by the sound of an electric click as the automatic bolt slid into place.

A man he hadn’t seen before had stepped into the room. He was of average height and build, he wore a tweed sport coat over a plain white dress shirt and a black tie. He stepped into the room without looking at his suspect and stepped directly to the chair that sat across him. He pulled it out with a loud scrape of metal on concrete, and dropped a thick file jacket onto the metal table which landed with another thud. The sound seemed to echo around the tiny room briefly.

“Benjamin Hollings, I’m Detective Crosby,” he said simply as he sat down, adjusting his tie and sleeves quickly before opening the plain manila folder in front of him. He kept his eyes down on the papers in front of him, although they didn’t seem to be reading anything, they were unfocused and didn’t move about.

Several minutes went by, and the Detective said nothing. He simply stared at the top page, his eyes boring holes through the thick stack of documents. Finally, when Ben though he could stand it no more, and would have to say something, Detective Crosby finally spoke, his voice carefully measured.

“Mr. Hollings, I’m sure you know how this works, so rather than explain that we already know everything, why don’t you just tell me what happened tonight.” His face was stony, his words were simple, but behind them was something Ben couldn’t quite figure out.

Ben Hollings took a deep breath, and having no idea what this man was looking for, began recounting the night, “My wife, Lily, and I had dinner together around 7 o’clock. We watched The Idol and then put in a movie- Night at the Museum, though we’d argued about whether we should watch that or something good, something without Ben Stiller. After we watched that, around 10:30, we went up to bed. I had some trouble sleeping and went down to the kitchen to get some milk. At that point two of your officers knocked on my door, telling me someone had called and said they’d heard some arguing. They went upstairs and suddenly I was in handcuffs and since then I’ve been sitting in this room, trying as hard as possible to get comfortable. Is there any chance you plan on telling me what the hell is going on?”

“Well, that sounds like a typical quiet evening at home,” his words bite, thick with the irony of sarcasm, and something else, like a cold, hidden rage. The Detective stands up and takes off his sport coat. He turns back and opens the folder and shifts some pages around. He pulls out a few photos and tosses them across the table so that they lay right in front of Ben.

“You see, we have a slightly different idea of what happened tonight.”

Ben stares at the man for a moment, the Detective indicates the photos with a nod, and Ben looks down.

The sound of his own voice frightens him. He’s yelling, but this gives way into a sort of laughter. What he sees in the photos are the images from his dream, it’s his bedroom, splashed with blood, his wife split wide open, and the gruesome scene is displayed in several shots from different angles.

The detective doesn’t change tones, his face stays fixed, he says, “Can you tell me what we’re looking at?”

Ben looks up at him, tears streaming from the edges of his eyes, “This can’t be real, this is what I dreamt tonight! But it didn’t happen!”

The detective finally changes gears; he lifts Ben’s t-shirt up in a ball of a fist and shoves it into his face, “YEAH?!? Then this is your blood then?!”

Ben looks in the mirror, and now, without knowing exactly what changed, he realizes that he’s soaked, head to toe, in dried blood.

The whisper escapes his lips like a butterfly from a net, “No…”