And Then I Woke Up

Page Created: 11/19/11. Last Updated: 11/21/11.

And then I woke up.

It's a cliche'. It's the logical ending to any story about dreams. Not for me. Not this time.

For the past three weeks, this was the situation:

I was driving down Gillis Avenue, a street I'm on practically every day. The road was icy, so I was taking it slow, but not slow enough. A kid shot out in front of my car. I slammed on the breaks. The car skidded toward him. The kid froze. There was enough time for me to see the terror on my victim's face. There was a scream, a thud, a jarring impact ...

And then I woke up.

I was running as hard as I could. They kept up with me easiily. Three teenagers in patched dungarees and ratty-looking jackets. Just them, the streetlights, and me. Don't ask what I was doing in a tough neighborhood late at night. I went over on my ankle. The pain made me scream out. Then they were on me, three human faces with grim, set faces. I collapsed under a flood of blows ...

And then I woke up.

I was on my way home, from where I don't remember. I was feeling pretty good, until I smelled the smoke. Somehow I immediately knew its source. Then I saw it, great clouds of smoke billowing out of the house. Orange flames were already licking out some of the windows. The house I'd spent so much time and money fixing, repairing, turning into a home, was going up like a piece of dry pine in a fireplace.

Then I saw Elaine's car in the driveway. Desperately I looked about for her. She wasn't anywhere, anywhere outside, that is. Like I knew it was our house on fire, I instantly knew Elaine as still in there. I ran like a maniac toward the building ...

And then I woke up.

Night after night, it kept happening. It was as if I was acting out everything I'd ever dreaded or even worried about. They were frighteningly realisstic dreams. I felt pain and fear in them, sharp, real sensations, not the blurred reflections of the emotions a dreamer so often feels. The settings were everyday background, solid as concrete, not the hazy unreality of the usual nightmare. There was no fantasy, no monsters or demons, things that the sleeper could at least laugh off as unreal after he woke up. Any one of the nightmares I had could really have happened in life. That was the terrible thing about them.

I experienced several bad accidents, little variations on the teme. A doctor told me I had a weak heart. The neighbor's dog jumped the fence and ripped my arm open. A burglar got into the house and smashed whatever he couldn't carry off. I experienced my wife's death again and again, my parents' deaths, even the death of the child we'd only hoped to have someday ...

They were all dreams I would wake up from. But I couldn't escape them. They were too disturbing, too close to the bone. They stayed with me as if they had happened, like bitter memories of true events.

Elaine saw theat they were getting me down. Not that she gave me much sympathy.

"Doddammit, why don't you lie down and take a nap?" she snapped at me while I was drowsily moping through a Saturday afternoon. "You're completely useless, the way you are now.

"You know why," I snapped back, "those nightmares!"

"How do you think I feel about them?" I almost shouted. "Do you think I lilke living through experiences like those? Dying? Or losing you?"

"You don't like it? Let me tell you something, mister, ever since you started on this dream kick, my life's been one big nightmare. You stay up 'til midnight every friggin' night! Then, when you get to sleep, it's no better for me. Do you know that you groan in your sleep? And talk? Crying out things like 'Oh, no!' and 'help.' How am I supposed to sleep through that?"

"Then you finish up by jumping up in the bed and spending the rest of the night thrashing around. You think I sleep good? And then all day I've got to deal with you, dead on your feet and good for nothing, or irascible from staying up all night. And I've had to put up with this for three goddamned weeks!"

"Im sorry. If I'm that big a disturbance, I'll sleep downstairs tonight. That bed we have for guests ..."

"Don't do me any favors," Elaine rasped. "What do you think's going to happen to you if you keep this business up? You can't sleep, you can't wake up .. if this keeps up they're going to fire you. You can't do a decent job in this condition."

"Look, I'm not making myself dream," I complained. I want to stop it even more than you do. I'll do something about it Monday. I'll call a doctor, or maybe a psychologist. Get it straightened out once and for all."

"Oh, yeah, just like that. Spend two, three hundred bucks on a doctor because you can't sleep at night and are having nightmares. We aren't deeply enough in debt. Payments on the house, on the cars, on the insurance, and you're gonna spend money to sit on a couch and tell your troubles some doctor. Why don't you go to a bar and cry on the bartender's shoulder? It'll be cheaper, and you 'll get what you want ... somebody to whine and moan at!"

"Look, I don't have to put up with this! I'm getting out of here--"

"Good!"

"--for some peace and quiet!"

For emphasis I was tucking in my shirt and grabbing a jacket. Then I realized I had a pair of slippers on. Kicking them off, I went into the bedroom for a decent pair of walking shoes. They were well hidden under the bed, of course. I had to probe around several minutes to find them.

It's amazing the kind of junk which accumulates under a bed. I found several odd socks, an old pair of sandals Elaine hadn't worn in a year, a truly incredible number of shoes, and something else. I didn't quite see what it was, pawing around blind under there. All I knew was it was squarish, and had knobs, and felt like smooth hard plastic. An old transistor radio? What was it doing under the bed?

"What are you doing up there?" Elaine broke in, irritably.

"Just getting my shoes," I grumbled.

"Do you have to make such a friggin' mess under there every time you get something? Mixing up all the shoes and dragging dust onto the run. From now on, don't mess around under that bed. I'll get your stinkin' shoes for you! I'm sick of the business!"

I didn't know why she was so upset right then, but I had reached my limit, too. I'd had enough.

"And I'm sick of having you on my back all the live-long day." I shouted back. "You're after me about everything. You don't talk to me anymore, you only yell, crab and bitch! Elaine, I'm sick of it. I'm no prize I've gotta admit, but you've no right to chase me every single minute about it. The money, the way I act, my shoes, my dreams, my--"

She'd already turned on her heel and walked away.

I felt guilty almost immediately, despite the fact I'd acted with provocation. Despite all the fights we'd had the past few months, I thought I loved Elaine. I kept hoping we would get over this rough period. And I didn't want to hurt her. I swear I didn't want to hurt her.

I forgot about the radio, or whatever, under the bed. I pulled on my shoes and headed downstairs.

I spotted her in the kitchen running some canned food through the analyzer.

"Elaine," I said softly.

Se didn't look up.

"Elaine, I'm sorry I acted that way. Believe me, Elaine, I still love you ... "

All it took was a glare to show how stupid I was talking. I got out of the house.

* * * * *

I spent the afternoon mooching around one of those big shopping malls. You know the sort of place I'm talking about. two or three dozen stores, a few restauarants, and a movie theater all inside on big sprawling building. If you're bored, a mall is a good place to visit. You're sure to find something that interests you if you look hard enough.

I looked, alright, but I couldn't find much to interest me. I wasn't bored, I was worried. That business with Elaine, I didn't want to admit it, but I was worried whether the marriage was going to make it at all. And the Nightmares. God, they were wrecking me. I needed real sleep, without dreams. A few more and I would really need a doctor. The old story that dreams were a kind of release seemed like hogwash. Each tragedy, each disaster weighed on me, like a forboding of what would truly happen some day.

I ended up in an electrical appliance store--gadfet store would be a better word for it. It had the usual cheap electrical junk: stereo cassette planers, video disks of movies a hundred years old, rebuilt video-computer games, that sort of stuff. Not what you'd buy unless you had lots of extra money, but fun to look at. I was giving a do-it-yourself holography kit the once over when I spotted the things.

There were a half-dozen of them in a glass case. Four of them looked like those small-small transistor raidos, only without the station-selector knobs. The two larger models were more like portable tape-players. They were all made of a dull black plastic.

The little sign on the front of the case read:

DREAM STIMULATORS

Pocket Models . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 59.95

Select-a-Dreams . . . . . . . . . . . $ 169.95

"Dream stimulators?" I murmurred aloud.

Naturally showing interest in any of the store's merchandise brought out the salesman like a shot. A clerk adjusted his Hollywood smile and popped out from behind his counter.

"Interested in a dream stimulator?" he asked in the unctiously friendly manner of all seft-sell salesmen.

"Err ... kind of. I never heard of them before. They new?"

"Not really. They've been on the market tow, three years now. The manufacturers haven't made too much noise about them. 'Fraid the government might make them illegal or regulate them if they attracted too much attention."

"That good, huh? Well, what do they do? I mean, I know what the sign up there says, but how do they work?"

"They're really pretty simple little devices. What they do is, when you turn on the stimulator, it gives off a subsonic vibration. It's like a hum or buzz, only you can't really hear it."

He took one of the smaller stimulators out of the box and turned it on. I heard, or thought I heard, a faint, incredibly deep humming sound. It was as if it was just outside my hearing range, but I was still somehow aware of it.

"Oh, kind of like an electronic dog-whistle," I remarked casually. "But how does it make me dream?"

"Not like a dog-whistle. That's ultra - or supersonic, a sound too high for the human ear. This is subsonic, very low pitched.

"As to how it works," he continued, "well, they say a person dreams every time he goes to sleep. If he sleeps lightly he's more liklely to remember the dream afterwards."

"Yeah, I heard that in school Like indigestion. The guy has nightmares because his upset stomach won't let him sleep heavy.

"Well, that little vibration you heard causes the disturbance, the way a stomach ache would. It's not enough to wake you up, but it's enough to make you sleep lightly."

"So If I use it, I'd remember the dreams I had. But wouldn't the buzz keep me from going to sleep in the first place?"

"The stimulator has a timer on it. You can set it to activate itself up to forty minutes after you turn it on. By then you'll probably already be asleep."

"Sounds good, only I'm not interested in having dreams. I've been having nightmares recently, and I want to stop them. How does the big model work? The one that's called Select-a-Dream?"

The clerk grimaced slightly.

"Well, I know how it works, but I can't vouch for it like I can the little model here."

So he used a dream stimulator himself. I guess that was a good advertisement for the gimmicks. The salesman was really sure they worked.

"Besides the subsonic buzzer," he explained, not so confidently this time, "The Select-a-Dream includes a miniature tapedeck, which uses special cassettes. The deck records the human voice and plays it back at the same subsonic frequency as the humm. Each deck has only fifteen minutes playing time, but supposedly if you repeat a few key sentances over and over again, you can psyche yourself into any particular type of dream."

"So supposedly if I recorded the phrase 'visit the beach' a dozen times or so and set it to play while I was sleeping, I'd dream about visiting the beach."

"That's what's supposed to happen. I don't know how well it works."

"These little gimmicks are safe? I mean, they don't give off microwaves, or damage the ear, or anything like that, do they?"

"No, they're safer than a color T.V. set on those counts."

"I think I'll buy one of those selects. It ain't cheap, but it'd be cheaper than seeing some head doctor and safer than knocking myself out with booze or barbs.'"

"I suppose so. I've never thought of it that way."

Well, use it in your sales pitch from now on, dope, I thought. It's a selling point.

Aloud I said, "How do I use it?"

"Easy. Record what you want, set the stimulator by the bed, or under it, set the timer and ... "

Alright, I'm stupid. I didn't think of the device I'd found under my bed until he mentioned that. My face must suddenly have registered my thoughts.

The clerk suddenly stared at me, worried.

"What's the matter, sir? You look sick."

"I feel sick. I'll ... I'll see you in a coulple of days about buyin' that thing. I don't feel up to it right now.

* * * * *

The mall was in waking distance from my house. I ran all the way back. Once I almost got hit by a car crossing a street, I was in such a rush. I was panting and gulping like a stranded fish by the time I reached the house. I banged open the door, brushed by Elaine, charged up the stairs, and frantically pawed around under the bed.

It was there, just like I was afraid of. A stimulator. The selective model. I switched it on. I just barely heard it, a ghostly whisher coming out of the damned machine. "Choking ... drowning," it repeated again and again. It was just recognizable as Elaine's voice.

I looked up to see Elaine standing in the doorway. The look on her face was a walking nightmare.

"So now you know," she said flatly.

"Yes, I know." It was an idiotic thing to say, but what do you say when you find out your wife's been purposely doing something like that to you?

I statted screaming: "Elaine! For God's sake, why did you do this? What did you do that you had to make my nights a living hell? What did I do?"

"You're a fool," she snapped. "A childish, worthless fool. You're always arguing, always complaining. You're like a spoiled baby. I can't criticize you without you jumping on me. I can't say a single thing, do a single thing without you having your say in the matter."

"But why did you do this to me?"

"You're tiresome. I knew after all these years I couldn't make you change. And I couldn't even discipline you like the overgrown spoiled brat you are. You were too big, too able to defend yourself. You'd have struck back at me somehow."

"I needed a punishment llike this? Do you realize what I went through these past three weeks? How real those dreams were? I really suffered from them."

"More the fool you for letting stupid dreams effect you that way. I heard you scream my name out the night you dreampt you lost me to a fire. It was worth having to stay up so the device wouldn't work on me. Do you think I'd worry over some stupid dream?"

I felt the anger building up.

"Do you think I'd even care if something happened to you for real?"

That was the last straw. I was really like a hurt kid then, and like a hurt kid, I had to hurt back. I had the stimulator in my hand. I threw it at her as hard as I could.

It caught her in the face. Screaming, she turned and rand out of the room.

No, I didn't push her down the stairs. I might as well have. Hurt and frightened, Elaine wasn't concentrating on them. She tripped and went crashing down.

* * * * *

There's not much more to say. I'm waiting by the Emergency Ward. The doctor tells me she's got a fractured skull.

I stepped hard on the stimulator before I called the ambulance. I won't cause anymore nightmares for anybody.

But my wife hates me. And I may have killed her. And this time I can't wake up.

- - - - - - - - - -

This story originally appeared in Young Dullard Presents: Awsome Asteroid Adventures -- Pulse Pounding Pulp Pennings Copyright 1985 Philip J. De Parto. Volume 5, Number 15. It is reprinted with permission.