Dreaming

Last night, someone came into my yard and stole my roommate's bike. My bike wasn't locked, but they left it alone. Last night too, my friend crazy Pieter called me drunk and panicking at 3:30 am. I had just woken from a bad dream, and even though I was half asleep, half crazed, I answered the phone. He was surprised, he hadn't expected me to answer.

In my dream, I felt a piece of tooth come loose in my mouth, and as I spit it into my hand, a handful of teeth and blood came out with it. One entire tooth, perfect and whole, and too many fragments of others to keep in my hand. I tried desperately to hold onto each piece, to not lose any of it. I held them under a stream of water, to rinse away the blood, and the teeth kept falling from my hand, floating away in the faucet's stream, red and thick with mucus. I kept grasping for the pieces, trying to rescue them from the dark of the drain. Frustrated, desperate.

When I answered the phone, Pieter told me he was starving, had been for months. He said he was in trouble. I know, because he keeps telling me. He told me more, but I already know. I've been having this conversation with him, over and over, for months. Come over. I can't...

The man who wants to hurt me, the man who wants me to hurt, was in my dream. I don't remember. I need to remember. Pieter had called him, earlier that night, before he drove drunk to the casino and lost the last of his money. After I had talked to Pieter and given him the man's phone number. You can call him, I said, it's all right. He's sad. And angry. And hurting. It's okay.

He never said goodbye to me, the phone just went dead. And as I laid in bed, the phone in my hand, waiting for him to call back, I fell back into dreaming.

When my roommate woke up, she told me her night had been filled with bad dreams. In her dream, the man who wants to hurt me, the man who wants me to hurt, was in our house. In her dream, I had told her he was there because I had let him back in. She woke in terror at the fear, the waste of it all.