Doctored Chance #NaNoWriMo2019

20 | Powerful and Powerless

If you are like me, in that you are a human being, you will likely have experienced a bad dream. A winning terror in the great history of bad dreams is a dream that every person experiences at least once in their life and attempts to repress afterwards. That dream is the dream of being naked in a place where you are not supposed to be.

Most people experience it at school, nude in front of all their peers. In the real world, if you find yourself truly naked at your place of education, you can usually take a dip in the Lost and Found to cover up; but in the dream, you would never get there.

Many experience the dream at a store, shoe-and-sockless feet slapping against cold tiles in the search for something, anything, to cover you up, but you can't reach the shelves. Maybe you are too small, or maybe the further you run, the further the shelves get from you. In reality, you could steal clothing off a rack at an ordinary outlet store. At a grocery store, you could strip a head of lettuce and clothe yourself in the leaves. But, never in a dream.

I often experience my rendition of this dreadful while running from intimidating adversaries. On the kinder nights of these nightmares, I am sometimes allowed my trusty hat, which I may choose to hold against my humiliating receding hairline, or lower to an area I am even more squeamish about.

In whatever locale that you experience this dream, however, there will always be features of it that remain the same; vulnerability, fear, cold sweats, and futility—no matter how hard you try to fix your birthday suit situation, you will never make progress.

Tobias, despite being clothed, experienced all the same emotions and side effects of the Naked Dream™ as he backed against the rusting fence. Alone and clumsy on his prosthetic leg, unarmed, he recognized that if he were attacked, he would not be able to fight for long. There by the fence, in the open, in the light, he was vulnerable, like a sitting duck.

Viola Mae was gone, and he feared for her, and for if he was next. The cry that he had heard had not been her voice, which was the only comfort he could conjure. Perhaps she was invisible somewhere in the bushes opposite the fence. Perhaps the rustling of the leaves was not just from the dry breeze, but from her careful slinking. Or, someone else's.

"I am not armed," he offered to the nothing that surrounded him. He dropped his bag to the pavement and raised his hands. The cold sweat iced his brow and soaked through his sleeves.

His vision came in and out of focus, like the Lost and Found bin or the lettuce leaves that would always remain frustratingly out of reach. No matter how hard he focused, the possible futures would not cooperate. The futility was overwhelming, the migraine strengthening.

The one thing that he could make out was that he would not go unconscious anytime soon. Very few small screens at the edge of his vision depicted solid black. A handful flashed white, then continued in a blur of poorly lit cement and hazy movement. Then more began to flash white as the gears in his head began to turn, and in the pits of his situation, he envisioned a way out. He took a deep breath as the white crowded over his eyes and he thrust himself into it, backwards, until it was his present. He cried out and staggered forward, dropping to his knees. The wounds and burns of his back pulsed relentlessly, enraged by the rough contact with the unforgiving fence.

Tobias woozily swayed there, palms against the cement. He exhaled, inhaled; blood burbled from his shrapnel wounds. Exhaled, inhaled; the raw flesh along his spine pulsed. With each heavy pant, the fog in his mind cleared a little more, a little more. The clouds in his vision receded, clearing like a spring day after a morning shower. He stood with a last steadying breath, his knees nearly buckling before he could catch himself. He dragged the peg into place and straightened out, suddenly pulsing with energy.