It's Halloween. As far as Halloweens go, it wasn't terribly spooky(commercialized, yadda yadda)but despite the ridiculous nature it's acquired, (what with peeling cartoonish ghosts and goblins and blow up spiders in yards)I still managed to feel pure fear that night. I was busying myself, as usual, with my costume, applying my red lipstick and nosebleed from my overdose. My costume: mia wallace of the pulp fiction fame, post overdose, but before the adrenaline shot. No needles sticking out of my chest; i threw the costume together too quickly to figure out how to attach a needle to my breast for the night without actually stabbing myself.
Like I was saying: no full moon, no black cats...Just an excellent party thrown in my apartment. Everything fell into place exactly. I even controlled my drinking to the point that I did NOT black out. Overall, a success.
And then, she creaked up my steps. Slinked, really.She was wearing a home-made cat woman suit constructed of black electrical tape and a bra. The she? My exboyfriend's exgirlfriend. She was the girl he left me for. The guy, I was in love with. The girl, he fucked for a few weeks in October one year ago. He then broke up with her for me, completely the cycle. She's a nice girl, a great girl, actually. And I don't blame or hate her for her actions, as he was the scumbag in the situation. That being said, the sight of her makes me vomit in my mouth; the slew of memories that accompanies her presence is sometimes too much to bear. Especially considering the events that followed in the months after their...fling.
Her nightmare inspiring visit to my apartment, in fact, did inspire nightmares. That morning I awoke in a cold sweat and violent tears when I dreamt, or nightmared, that Andy came back. He showed up in my apartment (the place we'd spent the night when he came home from the military) and begged my forgiveness for leaving, for causing me to worry...yet acted completely nonchalant about the fact that he was a wanted criminal.
"What's the big deal?" dream-Andy asked, wearing nothing but boxer shorts, bottom of his barefeet sticking to my kitchen floor. His hand was deep in a box of fruit loops, a remarkable detail, as that is the only cereal I allow in my house, which made the dream seem completely real. I'm sure my body responded in real life as it did in the dream: I panicked, my heartbeat exploded into hyperspeed and I realized two things
1. that I would finally have the answers to questions I'd been asking for months and
2. that I was now an accomplice to his crimes by not immediately calling the cops.
As I rushed around in a frantic attempt to solve the problems, my family (including such obscure relatives as Aunt Susie, Uncle Mike and Uncle Charlie...not immediate members) stopped by (three hours from home) for a visit, gestapo-like and unaware of the wanted person above them. "Hey!" they said, "why don't we take Steph to the family reunion down the road?!" Dream-me was smart enough to shove Andy into the annex that was my attic in the knick of time, but I whimpered, knowing that my questions would have to wait.
We drove to our destination, but the scene laid did not suggest that this reunion would be full of family love and reuniting. No, the seemingly innocent Halloween that had past hours before set the stage for a frightening and dark dream. Uncle Mike drove a fictional red van down a dirt road that I've never seen before, in no place in my mind or otherwise. Over every bump of the road, we could see that it was lined with dozens of beaten tin trailers. In front of each stood a family, and someone in the back of my mind whispered to me that they were all starving.
"Give them some food!" I screamed, but it was not truly for concern of the starving children, their bellies bulging with starvation and flies circling their heads. I only cared about returning home to Andy. What if he left before I got back? I projected my anxiety at the suffering individuals before me, but inside cared for nothing but to quench my curiosity about him.
The farmhouse finally presented itself, the location for our reunion, and I was led to a basement where food that looked like it had been salvaged from a dumpster lined a poker table. I picked up a ravioli with my fingers and popped into my mouth, only to find that it tasted like dirt. I spit it out and turned around to ask where the good stuff was, when I realized that I was alone in the basement with a single, swinging lightbulb behind a backdrop of crusty cinder blocks.
Lost, confused, alone, I began to run but the house transformed into a maze, designed to trip me up at every turn.
When I finally emerged, I ended up at a random friend's parent's house. She was random because I had met her long after Andy and only knew her from a trip we took together to Amsterdam. It was odd, then to find him in their kitchen; the scene was the same, fruitloops, boxers. Nonchalant attitude. It was early morning, around 7am and as the sun rose, I knew I had to get him out of there and somewhere safe so we could talk. We opened the sliding glass doors and their curly white, fictional dog ran outside. My friend's faceless dream-mother came out screaming that we had lost her dog, but then, the unthinkable happened. She recognized Andy's face. "You're that kid that ran away from the military!" As she made this connection, she grabbed a cell phone from her robe pocket and began to call the cops.
I frantically grabbed his hand, could feel the roughness of it vividly, and began to run barefoot through the wet grass that I hoped would bring us safely to somewhere together.
When I woke up, I cried for a very long time.
Because of this, our real lives can never be spent together...Only in dreams.
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