Dreamin' My Life Away

So I dreamed that my friends from the ol’ gun mag and I were trying to kill each other. Specifically, Jim the Bastard and I were engaged in some sort of road-rally deathmatch down I-95. And somewhere in Maryland, I had to pull over to get more gas, and I made the mistake of sitting down where I thought I was safe.

Now, the Bastard and I were both wounded… it had been a hell of a fight up to that point. And at the time I thought I was safe, I knew Jim was a few miles behind me. So I sat down in the rest stop, and out of nowhere, Chicago Jerkface (another mag friend) sits down right behind me and bap. bap. bap. Shoots me in the back of the head, three times with a .22.

Which, under normal circumstances, would kill me. But it being a dream, all I could feel were these three bb-like bullets in the back of my head, right around where my skull meets my spine. I knew I didn’t have long... and I knew I couldn’t trust myself to drive, because I could black out and endanger people. (Yes… I didn’t want to hurt anyone during my Interstate Murder Race.)

I spotted a cab, and asked him where the nearest hospital was. He said “3.2 miles,” and I said, “Good, because I’ve been shot in the back of the head.”

So I got in the cab, and we got back onto I-95. And there were horrific, horrific accidents wherever I looked. And yet my cabbie was able to skirt them or run over them, and at one point actually plowed through the flaming wreckage of a school bus. At some point, the cab changed from a normal taxi to a three-wheeled ATV towing a yellow motorcycle-like thing with wings, which I rode. The ATV couldn’t fly, but the passenger area could get a few feet in the air to hop over bodies and such.

At this point, the cabbie says, “Where to?” and I say, “The hospital in 3.2 miles, remember? I’ve been shot in the head?”

Turns out we’ve been going the wrong direction. But he knows another hospital nearby. We take some back roads to get there, and I start to think going to this other hospital is probably a good idea, because the Bastard and Jerkface won’t look for me there – they’ll be going to the closer hospital to finish me off. By the time the cabbie pulls up to this new hospital, however, I notice my family and some of my friends clustered outside the emergency room. I stumble off the back of the cab and onto a gurney. My old buddy Jeff opens his wallet and pulls out enough money to pay the cabbie… at least a fifty, and some other bills. I look up at him as I’m being wheeled into the ER and say, “Thanks, man. I had no idea how I was gonna pay him. You saved my life.”

And then I woke up for a couple minutes, and then I went back to sleep and dreamed that my grandfather was finally being released from prison. So a big night for dreaming, all around.

Rob