Wow. That was a creepy dream. I was going to write about a book I just read, Kill Me, by Stephen White, but in another way. Now, I guess I’ll write about it in the context of this creepy dream.
The book was weird, that’s for sure. The concept was pretty simple. This rich guy was used to taking risks, having fun, living life pretty fullly. How did they put it, living with a capital l? Anyway, at the beginning of the book, he finds out his friend who likes to live the same way had a problem while scuba diving, has suffered massive brain damage, and is now a vegetable, hooked up to a million machines going beep beep beep. He offhandedly says, “God, if that ever happens to me, just kill me.” So his friend tells him about a company who you can pay to do just that, before you get too seriously ill to make life worth living, and they’ll even make it look like an accident so your family doesn’t think you chose to die. He signs up, and then life deals him a hand that puts him within the parameters he set for life to be no longer wirth living, and he no longer wishes to die. And so, the story unfolds, with a few ridiculous twists that make me go huh? But That’s the basic concept. So I’ll go on to my dream.
I dreamed that I knew a guy, a rich guy, just like the character in the story. Come to think of it, I think it was the guy in the story. Anyway, he had confessed to me that he had hired this company. Then I found out that he had an aneurysm, just like in the book. He told me he didn’t want to die anymore, he had changed his mind, and he told me about all the different attempts that had been made on his life. Then I got a call from his family saying that they had terrible news. He had had a bookcase mysteriously fall on him, had staggered out from under the books, and then had fallen several storeys, and he was presumed dead. Everybody was grieving, grieving his loss. But I was grieving, and scared, and knew this was no accident, but was powerless to tell anyone, because he made me promise that I wouldn’t reveal to his family that he had paid someone to kill him, and I was afraid they’d come after me, to silence me.
Then, *flash!* I’ve changed characters, and I am him. I’m not dead, just seriously injured. I heal up, I’m back home, thanking my lucky stars. That was a nasty fall, I think, but I must be meant to live. I figure the death angels, that’s what this guy called them in the book, would figure I’m dead and leave me alone. I’m at peace. Then someone buzzes me, saying they have a message for me. Like the dumb little book character I am, I go down to meet them, and am shocked to see the woman who has served as the intermediary for the death angels standing in my lobby. All she says is “You paid to be provided with end-of-life services, so that is what you will receive.” Somehow, she and two other guys muscle me into a car while making it look like some kind of innocent game. And off we go.
I’m sitting in the back of the car. She’s sitting beside me. She insists I sit in the passenger’s seat of the car. We drive through a place with a lot of rocks and bricks falling, there seems to be some kind of construction ahead, and warning signs that you shouldn’t drive through here. The driver drives carefully so the debris should fall on my side of the car. It does, and I try to stay low. A lot of glass breaks, and suddenly police are all around us. Somehow, they convince the police that we’re fine, we didn’t see the signs, yada yada yada. We get out of there, because they tell us it’s not safe. Why they let us drive with a pretty broken up back window I don’t understand, except we’re in dreamland.
So we drive off, and one of the guys who was there before is mysteriously gone, and the woman is up in the front seat. I’m told that it’s better if I squiggle over to the driver’s side of the back, and I do! I don’t know why, but I do!
Then I hear some kind of muttering between the two in the front. She asks him if he has a plan, or is he just driving around. He says he always has a plan. I’m scared. It’s not a good feeling when you know that this is the end of your life. They have decided that it’s going to end now, it’s just a matter of how.
Then, kleenexes filled with some kind of powder start falling on me. I shake them off, but more keep falling. There’s powder in my mouth, in my nose, it seems to be finding its own way into me in every way it can. I hear the driver saying, “That’s it, that should work.” I’m madly exhaling, spitting, doing everything to get rid of the gobs of powder that have filled my nose and mouth. He very quietly says, “Even if you spit it out, it’s fast-acting. It will have already absorbed through your salivary glands and the mucous in your nose. And…surprise!” As he says this, he presses a button, and liquid squirts from jets near my hands and covers them in something that feels like liquid soap. He then says, “It’s on your skin now. It’s absorbing through your pores. You’ve fought us long enough. You can’t win this battle.”
I feel numb. A cloud of black gathers around my head, it’s dense and begins to narrow the world. Then he starts talking to me sweetly. “Relax. Just relax. You wanted this, remember? We aim for painless, remember? Is there anything you would like your son to have? Your wife? Your daughters?” I try to make final wishes through slurred speech. Then, like magic, the dream disappears, and I wake up in my bed.
Wow! Never has my bed felt better. I thought I had put that book out of my mind. I guess my mind just buried it, only to unearth it now. The worst part is that I kept drifting off, and every time I did, I would dream again that the death angels were after me, or I’d be back in that car, dying, becoming paralyzed , thinking this must be how a dog feels when it is put down, waiting to find out what’s on the other side.
Um, I’m not supposed to be having those sorts of dreams. That one was sort of like that one where my head got hacked open. But at least this one was provoked by a book. Hopefully that’s the end of that.
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