Thursday, June 27, 2013

Dream 19: Keys

7/7/13

We are waiting in the cockpit of a tractor-trailer, cruising down a highway late at night, somewhere between the coasts. We consist of I, Sam, and two others---at least one more female is present, perhaps KC. Who is driving right now, is unknown.

We pull over along the shoulder of the road and pick up a stranger, a man. Quickly he is in the trailer with us, and we have pinned him up up against a stack of logs, actually tree trunks, with hands and legs spread and face down, as if we were going to frisk him. I walk up behind him resolutely, and in one fluid motion I insert my house keys through the finger-gaps in my closed fist and punch the man in the back, hard. I grit my teeth as I see the keys disappear into his back and feel his spine jerk. He probably screams---I don't hear anything---but his shoulders flare up in recoil to the blow, and it looks like he's instantly grown a foot taller.

As the others (my friends? team? accomplices?) look on, I pummel this guy a few more times from behind, into his back, and I become conscious that my keys are really tearing into him---blood is soaking his shirt through a dozen small, scattered holes. I pull myself away, at which point the others join in beating this man, and I become consumed by the sight of my hand, smeared in his blood. Bright red streaks flash across my knuckles and wet the soft flesh in the crook of my thumb, and I am horrified, transfixed at this evidence of murder. As I stare at my hands in bewilderment, an acute sense of regret overtakes me. In my periphery I see my crew continue to kick this man with such speed that he remains standing through it all.

Later on, we are sitting in the cabin of the truck, again cruising through the night, staring out into the blackness before us. No one is speaking. For a few moments I watch the slice of road illuminated by the headlights spin beneath us. I receive a keen premonition that this crew will abduct and murder three more people, hitchhikers, throughout the course of the night. I retire to the back of trailer, to figure things out by myself.

This area of the trailer, the back right corner of the storage unit, has been partitioned off and converted into a liquid waste facility. A metal-grate walkway encircles a pool of greenish water, and I am standing along the back, slumped over the railing, ruminating, staring blankly at the floating waster barrels as they bob along the surface to the shifting inertia of the truck. Sam finds me back here and eagerly informs me that they picked up their next hitchhiker; somehow I know he is a tall, bald man.

I tell Sam that I have to leave, that I can't kill another person with them. She is hurt but not discouraged, and tries to lift my spirits and persuade me to follow her to the other area, where they are holding this man. At this point, KC also walks in and tries to console me, putting her hand around my shoulder in a maternal gesture. Whatever she says doesn't reach me, however, and I calmly step back and walk out of  the water area, open a side door to the trailer, and jump out onto the road, where it is so cold that I can see a trace of my own breath.