A Dream Come True
Malignant Self Love Narcissism Revisited
After the Rain How the West Lost the East
A World in Conflict and Transition
"They call it: 'sleep deprivation'. I
call it: hell. I can't remember the last time I have slept well, dreamlessly.
You may say that it is to be expected when one is cooped up in a 4-by-4 cell,
awaiting one's execution. But, I found myself engulfed by insomnia long before
that. Indeed, as I kept telling my incompetent lawyer, one thing led to
another. I hacked my wife to tiny pieces because of my phantasmagoric visions,
not the other way around.
But, I am jumping the queue. Allow me to
retrace.
Ever since I was apprehended and detained,
fourteen months ago, I have embarked on this prolonged nocturnal time travel.
The minute I started to doze off, I was catapulted into the past: I relived the
first encounter with my wife to be, the courtship, the trip to Europe, our
marriage, the house we bought, the birth of our son - all seemingly in real
time, as protracted episodes.
Those were no ordinary hallucinations
either. They were so vivid, so tangible, catering to my every sense, that, when
I woke up, startled by the proximity of the damp walls, the rigidity of my
bunk, and the coarseness of my uniform, I would lay awake for hours on end,
disoriented and depleted by the experience.
Gradually, I came to dread the night. It
was as though my past rushed forth, aiming to converge with my hideous and
hopeless present. The dreams that hounded me viciously were excruciatingly
detailed, self-consistent, and their narrative - my autobiography - was
congruent and continuous: I could smell Mary, feel the humid warmth of her
breath, play with her hair, listen to her halting sentences. These specters
progressed in an inevitable chronology: her adulterous affair, my consuming
jealousy, our confrontations. I could predict the content of each and every
ephemeral chapter in this hypnopompic saga simply because I had experienced
them all beforehand as my very life.
I found the dreams' meticulous omniscience
unnerving. I could not accept the perfection and impeccability thus imputed to
my recollections. It all felt so real: when I wiped Mary's tears, my hand went
wet; when I attended to our oft-neglected newborn, his smile was captivating,
not a microsecond longer than it would have been in vivo; I bumped into
furniture and bled as a result. Come morning, I was bruised.
Sometimes, when I woke up from such a
trance, my heart expanded with insane anticipation: the cell, the moldy
paraphernalia of the penitentiary, the solid bars, the vulgar images etched
into the walls by countless predecessors - all these looked so ethereal
compared to my nightly visitations! I would touch them disbelievingly until
reality sank in and, heavyhearted, I would recline and stare at the murk that
marked the ceiling, waiting for the sun to referee between my two existences.
Inexorably, my autolytic nightmares
proceeded. When I confronted Mary with her infidelity, her dream-state wraith
reacted exactly as its corporeal inspiration did in truth: contemning me,
disparaging, mocking. I woke up perspiring and short of breath, cognizant of
what would undoubtedly unfold next time I succumb to my overwhelming fatigue. I
did not want to go through it again. I tortured my flesh into a full state of
awakening, to no avail. Soon, I was aslumber and in the throes of yet another
heinous segment.
This time, I found myself contemplating a
kitchen knife embedded in a pool of darkening blood on the linoleum-covered
floor. Mary was sprawled across the dining table in precarious acclivity, about
to slip onto the abattoir. Her hair was matted, her eyes glazed, her skin a
waxy tautness, and her finger pointed at me accusingly. I felt surprisingly
composed, dimly aware that this is but a dream, that it had already happened.
Still, there was a sense of urgency and an
inner dialog that prompted me to act. I picked up the gory implement and
plunged it into Mary's neck. Dismemberment in the service of disposal occupied
my mind in the next few hours as I separated limb from limb, sometimes sliding
as I stepped onto the viscous muck. Finally, the work was done. Mary was no
more.
I then stirred, glaring with lachrymose
eyes at the glimmerings of incipient sunshine across the hall. The wardens in
their first rounds bellowed our names ominously during the morning call. I
examined myself guiltily and apprehensively, but fourteen months of scrubbing
had left no trace of Mary. My hands were clean.
I realized that the only way to put an end
to this tormenting playback of my crime was to sleep at once and to
intentionally traverse the time between my display of butchery and my current
incarceration. Having barely digested the meager and rancid breakfast, I
alternately cajoled and coerced myself into embracing the horror that awaited
me. Throughout the next few days, I nodded off fitfully, recreating in my
visions my blood-splattered effort to hack Mary's lifeless corpse to pieces; my
ill-conceived attempt to flee; my capture; my trial and the verdict.
Finally, the night came that I feared most.
I meditated, drawing deep breaths as I sought the arms of Morpheus. As I
drifted away, I became vaguely aware of an odd convergence between my dream and
my surroundings. In my fantasy, I was leg-fettered and manacled. Two beefy
policemen unloaded me from the ramp of a truck and handed me over to the prison
guards who led me, in turn, to my cell.
My dreams and reality having thus merged, I
strove to wake up. In my nightmare, everything was in its place: the rusty
bucket, the stone bunk, the fetid mattress, the infested blanket, the overhead
naked bulb, way out of reach. I watched myself lying on the frigid slab.
Startled and profoundly perturbed I asked myself: how could I occupy the same
spot twice over? Wasn't I already recumbent there, dreaming this, dreaming that
I am posing these questions? But, if this were a dream, where is the real me?
Why haven't I woken up, as I have done countless times before?
As the answers eluded me, I panicked. I
shook the bars violently, banging my head against them. I was trapped in a
delusion, but everyone around me seemed to think me real. The wardens rushed o
restrain me, their faces contorted with disdain and rage. A block-mate yelled:
"Hold on, buddy! It ain't so bad after a while!". A medic was
summoned to look at my wounds.
The dream dragged on with none of the signs
that hitherto heralded the transition to wakefulness. I tried every trick I
knew to emerge from this interminable nether-state: I shut and opened my eyes
in rapid succession; I pinched my forearm blue; I splashed water from the
crumbling sink on my face; I iterated the names of all the states of the Union
... In vain. I was unable to extricate myself!
In my overpowering anxiety, I came with
this idea: ensnared as I was in my nightmare, if I were to go to sleep and
dream again, surely I would find my way back to reality! For what a dream is to
reality, surely reality is to the dream? Reality, in other words, is merely a
dreamer's reverie!
And so I did. Enmeshed in my nightmare, I
went to sleep and dreamed of waking up to face this court. I want to believe
with all my heart that you and I are real. But, it isn't easy. You see, your
Honor, I have been here before and I know the outcome. Had I dreamt it? I shall
soon find out, I daresay. Here I am, Your Honour, unable to tell one from the
other. Do with me as you please."
My lawyer rose and called to the stand the
medical doctor that attended to my lacerations after my latest bout of raging
incoherence. As he creaked his way across the wooden floor, the good
practitioner glanced at me and nodded. I ignored him, unsure whether he is
factual, or just a figment of my overwrought and febrile constitution.
At the bailiff's prompt, he raised his
hand, swore on a hefty Bible and took his seat. Having responded to some
perfunctory enquiries about his qualifications and position, he settled down to
reply to my questions, put to him via my lawyer:
"I wouldn't go as far as saying that
your client is medically, or even legally insane. He suffers from a severe case
of pseudoinsomnia, though, that much is true."
Prompted as expected, the doctor
elaborated:
"Your client sleeps well and regularly.
All the physiological indicators are as they ought to be during a satisfactory
and healthy somnolence. Moreover, your client has dreams, exactly like the rest
of us. The only difference is that he dreams that he is awake."
Judge and jury jerked their heads in
astounded incomprehension. The witness continued to enlighten the bench:
"Your honor, in his dreams, this
patient fully believes that he is awake. People afflicted with this disorder
complain of recurrent insomnia, even though our tests consistently fail to turn
up a sleep disorder. In extremis, the very boundaries between wakefulness and
napping get blurred. They find it difficult to tell if they are merely dreaming
that they are awake, or are truly not asleep."
He rummaged among his papers until he found
the transcripts of his interviews with me:
"In this patient's case, he developed
pseudoinsomnia after he discovered his wife's liaison with another man." -
The young doctor blushed - "He then began to dream that he is awake and
that he is planning and executing the gruesome assassination of his spouse. Of
course, throughout this time, he was sound asleep. The dreams he was having
were so vivid and have processed such traumatic material that the patient
remembered them in detail. Moreover, fully believing himself to be awake, he
did not realize these were only dreams. He convinced himself that the events he
had dreamt of had actually transpired."
The judge bent forward:
"Doctor," - he droned, evidently
annoyed - "I don't understand: if the patient believes that he had already
murdered his wife, why is he a danger either to himself or to her, let alone to
society at large? Surely, he is not going to murder her a second time?"
The court erupted in laughter and the
judge, smug on the podium, was particularly slow to use his gable to quell the
hooting.
The doctor removed his eyeglasses and
rubbed the lenses carefully:
"The patient's sense of reality is
impaired, Your Honor. For instance, he believes that he is in prison, like in
his dreams, although he has been told numerous times that he has been committed
to a mental health facility for evaluation. As far as he is concerned, his
existence has become one big blur. Every time his dreams are contradicted, he
may turn unsettled and agitated. He may even lose control and become violent.
Next time he comes across his estranged wife, he may truly kill her, as a
re-enactment and affirmation of his nightmares and he is bound to consider such
a deed a harmless dream."
"So," - the judge interrupted
him, impatiently - "it is your view that he should be committed?"
"I would definitely recommend
it." - Concluded the doctor.
When all the formalities were over, the
judge rose from his chair and we all stood up. As he reached the entrance door
to his chambers, he turned around, puzzled:
"By the way, where is his wife? I
haven't seen her even once during these proceedings. Anyone has communicated
with her? Technically, she is his guardian, you know."
There was a long silence as everyone
avoided everyone else's gaze, shuffled feet, and ruffled papers.
That was my last chance:
"I murdered her, Your Honor. I have
been telling you for months now!" - I shouted.
The judge eyed me pityingly, sighed,
shrugged his shoulders and flung the door open, crossing into the penumbral
recesses beyond.