Before I Wake

I am driving a car, I can not see the road, and I am scared. I hear a train signaling its approach. My tires hit the railroad tracks, a thump proceeded by a thud, then the car spins out of control coming to rest alongside the tracks bordering woods. I recognize these surroundings.

The scene changes and I am in a school corridor with a tiled floor, cement -block walls and tall narrow lockers. There are a grandmother and child, a woman wearing a doctor’s coat and a teenaged boy. The doctor looks stern with her black hair drawn tightly back. The boy, her son, has long dark hair hanging loosely to his shoulders. It is not safe here, but I am just a witness and not in danger.

The doctor has an apparatus looking like a vaccine gun. She injects the grandmother with a drug which causes her to act drunk. The teenage boy grabs the device and injects the boy. The doctor observes his actions with an expression of satisfaction. I feel a great deal of concern for the grandmother and child. A voice coming from someone else, somewhere behind me, asks me to help administer an antidote.

For the past two nights, these are my dreams.

Jeff Bailey © 2018