Nightmare Journal #2

The earliest recallable moments of this dream were spent in some sort of fancy hotel. I was meandering through the labyrinthine hallways with my backpack in tow, carrying it to some unknown destination for some unknown purpose. I got the sense that the hotel was closed, as there were no guests in the halls or lobby, and I think some of the workers were putting sheets over the tables in the dining hall in preparation of a long hiatus in service.

I was innately aware that on the other side of a large, wooden double-door at the back of the dining hall was some sort of zoo. Specifically, I believed it to be a big cat enclosure. As is common in my dreams, I was not welcome in this enclosure. It is likely that I was not supposed to be in the hotel at all, but I maintained a low enough profile to never have to find out.

After sneaking into the enclosure, I was hopping between large rocks that decorated the sand-floored pen. I think I was looking for something within, but I got distracted by the wire fencing at the top of the enclosure. I needed to climb over it, but I sensed that it was electrified. Sure enough, bringing my arm near it caused the hair to stand on end, and I felt an ethereal pressure on my skin. It wasn’t just electrified; it was cranked-up to put a lion on his fuzzy ass if he got any big ideas about reaching the walkway on the other side.

It was clear that I wouldn’t be scaling the fence like I needed to. For whatever I was trying to do, I would need to reach the other side of the pen. The details are fuzzy during the transition, but I don’t recall seeing any sort of animal before reaching the other side and coming through another set of wooden double-doors. What I found on the other side was snow blanketed over a rocky patch of terrain with some sort of scaffolding and railways overhead. The best way to describe it would be like an abandoned mine in the winter.

I followed a small worn path up a hill, and a plank was leaned from the hillside path onto the corner of the scaffolding. I stepped onto it, careful not to stand on the rails themselves or to fall through the spaces between, and I noticed a large white truck sitting some short distance away with its tires on the rails. On the other side, a smaller, black SUV was slowly pulling up the inclined rails from the direction I had just come from. 

Turning back to the truck and confirming that the SUV was on a slow collision-course with it, I noticed that there was a woman inside. A young, thin blonde woman was in the cab of the truck. Her hair was neatly drawn up, and she peered coldly through black-rimmed glasses at a clipboard resting on the steering wheel. Clearly, she was some sort of scientist, and she was evaluating the driver of the SUV. 

The nature of the test became clearer to me without words, as though some script was being provided for my inner monologue. The man had endured an exhausting battery of tests to push him to his physical and mental limits, and he was nearing the end of his trials. Strength, agility, courage, will, and mental acuity had brought him this far, but some narration in my own head assured me that it would be exhaustion that brings his journey to an end.

The unseen driver of the SUV had fallen asleep at the wheel, and the precarious design of the railway sent him slightly off-course. Slowly, he weaved about the scaffolding, eventually brushing against the side of the white truck, then tumbling off of the scaffold into a snow bank. The truck, in kind, rolled backward and tumbled a greater height into the snow on the other side. That is when the initial shock set in: I think I knew who the driver of the truck was.

I assure you that this person is fully a figment of my imagination, but in that moment, I feared for Anna’s life. I rushed back to the plank and across to the hillside path, careful not to slip on the snow-covered wood and leave my own frozen corpse for the cleanup team. I rushed across the glimmering powder toward the wreck of the white truck, assessing the damage at a distance and assuring myself that the snow must have cushioned the impact. When I flung open the door, Anna was sprawled across the snow-filled cabin, motionless. I cradled her in my arms and tried to help her sit up, frantically calling her name in futile hope for a response. Her head rolled limply in the crook of my arm to face me as her glassy eyes opened slightly without focus, and her blue lips parted to release some remnant of her final breath; a croaking, whispered sound that the living don’t make. Panic, grief, and mortal terror washed over me simultaneously with the shocking force of a tidal wave, and I put my hand to the still-soft skin of her cool, bloodless cheek. I was hyperventilating through my nose as I struggled not to cry before everything slowly faded to the now comforting black of the inside of my eyelids.

I rolled over and opened my eyes to welcome any sight of a more comforting world. Estimated time of death: 4:34 AM.

My Car

If I haven’t yet bragged about it enough, I was recently made the owner of a brand-new 2013 Kia Optima. There were only 7 miles put on it that weren’t my fault, and I am already feeling like this is going to be a long-lasting partnership between man and machine. The quintessential new car smell hasn’t even worn off yet, and I’ve already found some peculiarities. Nothing wrong with it, just things I’ve found to be a little… odd.

The first being that I get a violent shock every time I exit the vehicle. Not that annoying little snap of static you sometimes get when you touch a doorknob in Winter, but a loud, cracking bolt that I feel through my entire hand. Even when I attempt to discharge on the plastic trim at the edge of the door, it issues the kind of electric crackling that normally signals to people “Hey, stay the hell out of there. Something dangerous going on.” So far, it seems that I am the only person who has experienced this, and I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. Obviously it’s not an electrical malfunction. Am I cursed? Do I possess an electrical affinity? Are parts of the car made from the scraps at the forge after the creation of Mjölnir, and it demands to be rammed into an ice giant?

Part of the deal was that satellite radio comes free for the first 90 days of ownership. Local radio stations don’t seem to come in all that clearly around here due to the hills and shadow beasts interfering. I took the time to scan through a couple thousand channels, and I have settled on some that I find to be most pleasing, but again, shadow beasts. Comedy Central has its own channel, which comes in handy when I’ve heard the same goddamn songs too many times, but there is a slight hissing sound that tends to carry on in the background. I like to imagine that, despite the fact that it’s a digital radio station, the original audio provided is through an old gramophone sitting with a microphone leaning into the horn.

I have already managed to close the door with a bee trapped inside. The offender had nearly flown into my arm, and I retracted my hand to let it pass on by, but the door was already shutting. The bee took a little break on the door handle, and the established bad reputation of yellow jackets damned us both. It was a good ten seconds of furious buzzing and swearing before I could get to the door handle and ease the tension. Bottom line: bees need to calm their shit down. This didn’t need to happen.

I had a second non-human passenger in the form of the tiniest spider I have ever seen. I was waiting at the drive-thru when I noticed a barely perceptible arachnid trying his damnedest to get across the hairy expanse of my arm. I watched for a minute or two as he fumbled over one hair, fell onto his back, and then righted himself to attempt to scale another with no goal or end in sight. Before I rolled up to the window, I took a moment to say goodbye, then blew him out the window to the ground below.

I’m sure the spider was fine, but think about the whole experience from its perspective. Pretend for a moment that you are alone in the thick of the jungle. Maybe it’s during an earthquake, because the world itself seems to be tilting and shifting below you as you climb from one oddly-angled, leafless tree to another. You think you’ve finally got your bearing on this weird world, when suddenly you sense a rapid change in altitude, and a roaring, hurricane-force wind blows you right out of the trees. You somehow manage to survive a fall that is easily hundreds of times your height, because wind resistance and your exoskeleton favor you in situations just like this. Before you can even drink in that exhilarating “I survived unscathed” feeling that so often leads people right to Jesus, the space you just inhabited, a mass the size of some tremendous mountain range, begins to move. Some foul wind blows, and it lurches forward faster than you could ever imagine something that size moving. It stops momentarily around a day’s travel away, then it speeds away again. Before you can blink twice, something the size of the Alps has ejected you and sped out of sight. No human language has a word to accurately express your bewilderment.

These are the things I think about.

Beating Boredom With Crazy

The weekend has come and gone, and on the way out the door, it absconded with my excuse not to be writing. It’s not that I mind dedicating a little of my worthless time toward improving my craft, but I find that so very little happens to inspire me on a day-to-day basis. I think of my talent for storytelling as the spice that complements the entrées of life. You wouldn’t eat a whole canister of black pepper for dinner (unless you just really love pepper), but it sure goes great on a steak and mashed potatoes. I need something to happen in order to work my magic. Huntington rates somewhere just above “midnight at the retirement home” on the excitement scale, and people with the power to inspire me seem to be in exceedingly short supply around here.

There is something good coming up over the horizon, though! I’m in the process of outlining a story that is (loosely) based on my time as a stock boy in a grocery store, but considerably more… spiced-up for entertainment value. I whipped myself up into such an excited frenzy while brainstorming that I want to actually take my time and not slap this together as hastily as I have pretty much everything else I work on. Expect to see some tasty bits tossed up here in the near future!

I worry a little bit about my possible future in film. Focus has never been one of my strengths, and the frequency with which my inspiration comes and goes is alarming. Maybe it’s just being back home (a place which I thoroughly hate), but I am finding it increasingly difficult to produce anything creative, let alone anything of value. I understand that I might not always be on the creative side of the entertainment industry, but it would be a little disappointing to spend a couple years in film school just to end up holding the boom mic and moving lights around, wouldn’t it?

I’ve been trying a few things here and there to set myself right again. I figured that it might be worth a shot to turn my focus to more physical efforts for a while. A little yin and yang, yeah? I tried running, but in addition to being a terrible runner, I found that the miserably muggy heat is a strong deterrent from doing anything outside, and persevering has no rewards outside of dehydration and the view of a muddy, toxic river and an ivy-choked hillbilly village.

My secondary attempt at clearing my mind is proving to be slightly more fruitful: archery. As it turns out, I might have a bit of a knack for launching arrows at old shoe boxes. Trying to focus on aim and technique is proving to be good for the occasional bout of distraction, but as with any game of skill, it’s easy to lose your mojo when crushed under a heavy mental burden. Failing to let go of everything that’s on your mind leads to poor shooting, which in turn grows more aggravating, which is quite counterproductive when used as a means of relaxation. Plus, I get these weird calluses on my fingers, and a raw spot on my forearm from the string. Chicks dig scars, right? What about those unique afflictions?

Even as my mental anguish is pressing the assault, boring psychotic ulcers into my soul, I’m trying to keep my chin up. At least two generations of Ruggles men have proven themselves to be nigh-immortal supermen, so I am confident that all the trouble in the world won’t kill me, and I’m too much of a mean, stubborn bastard to let it drive me into becoming a slavering mad hermit who inspires Moth Man/Sasquatch stories. I may have my base camp set up on one of the top layers of Hell, but in two weeks or so, I’ll be on my way to Florida. My time in California taught me that everything is easier to deal with when everyone and everything around you is beautiful.

Plus, I’m way too cool to be freaking out like this, anyway.

Nightmare Journal #1

As promised, my previous night’s rest was assailed by countless imagined tales of the strange; images and events wholly invented by my brain to twist itself for reasons unknowable. For your enjoyment, I will relay the ones that I can remember.

The first of these forays into the weird began (as is recently common) with me walking on an endless, dusty stretch of road. I was shuffling down this unoccupied highway, looking out toward the horizon at on both sides and admiring the alien scenery of some wind-carved oddities that stood out among the mountain ranges of the unknown desert. The sun was growing unbearably hot on my face and shoulders as I was beginning to consider ways to ease my predicament (i.e. – being stranded in the desert) when a lone car approached from behind me. The window rolled down, and some sun-obscured figure invited me in. The back passenger-side door popped open of its own accord, and I obliged.

Inside, I was greeted by the face of a person I cannot be said to know in the waking world, though I inexplicably knew her to be a teacher of mine, either current or from the recent past. The passenger up front was a young man wholly unfamiliar to me, but my fellow back seat passenger was an old friend which I have known since middle school: Jeff. 

I assume that in this dream I had not been gone from “home” for long, because Jeff and I found no portion of the past worth catching up on. The entire car was engaged in a general session of shooting the breeze, like we were all winding down from some mutual long day. One glance out the window at a time, I was starting to notice a tremendous change in scenery. We were making a gradual transition from blazing desert to the heart of some great and untamed jungle.

As we approached our apparent destination, the driver asked where I needed to be dropped off. This is something I hadn’t considered, as I had no idea where I was going in the first place. She made it clear that I was not going to stay at her home, and I wondered if I had somehow implied such an intention. I had inadvertently invited myself in, and embarrassment washed over me. I was thinking of some way out, or even how I was going to get home (wherever that was), when the car slowed and pulled over to the side of some verdant hill. Her quaint, white home sat on the other side of the road. Its siding was coated in an oddly familiar cracking, ancient paint, and the windows were without curtains and showed no sign of light from inside.

Before the car came to a complete stop, I noticed a small black figure darting across the road. At a distance, it looked to be some enormous fruit bat, like something you wouldn’t expect to find outside of some dense South American jungle. Another one soared over the hood of the car, and then another. They were coming down from the sky and seemingly landing in front of the car, crawling around in the grass. I got out to take a closer look at the roughly cat-sized leatherwings, and immediately made a second discovery: they weren’t bats. The wings fit the description of some great flying fox, but they were attached to the backs of something akin to a capuchin monkey. Their fur was black as coal, and they were skittering bipedally around all sides of the vehicle.

The woman I had assumed to be some manner of teacher was more annoyed than surprised by their presence. She warned us to be careful when exiting the car to make sure that they didn’t get in. Apparently, they were unafraid of humans, and had a habit of getting in anywhere they could to try scavenging for food. As we disembarked the car, one or two had managed to get just inside and were standing on the seats. The remaining winged monkeys were crowding around like pigeons around an old woman with bread, but they seemed almost more nervous than eager. They trembled and twitched, all emitting an occasional screech. I had nervously reached out to touch one on the back, and found its fur to be short and coarse, almost like long bristles. Their wings flapped asynchronously to complement their nervous energy, and I was reminded of the time I was in Thailand. When monkeys climbed onto the boat in Thailand, we were told not to try to pet them, as the monkeys were known to bite if frightened.

I was hesitant to attempt any further contact with the shivering abominations, lest I suffer some fierce monkey bite and die of a rare blood infection, like Alexander the Great. We were doing our best to keep any further monkeys from getting into the car, which they seemed to halt at the door, but the three of us were unsure as to how we would remove the ones that had already gone in. I tried clapping loudly, and yelling at them to get out. Some in the crowd fled nervously at the loud noise, but the ones inside stepped around on the seats with mild trepidation. 

Jeff managed to brush one from the back seat out with his hand, but another winged monkey took its place before he could block it out. The other passenger did the same with the monkey in the front seat, but it was replaced by two monkeys. They were standing side-by-side with their tails intertwined. The mystery passenger grabbed one, untwisted their tails, and simply tossed the monkey into the back seat, which seemed counterproductive. The monkey up front began screeching and howling uncontrollably, and its cries were piercing, and truly horrible to hear. The rest of the crowd followed suit, and their bellowing became unbearable. I covered my ears and started to backpedal, but Jeff seemed more severely affected. He started coughing and choking, like the incessant baying of these flapping devils had somehow irritated his throat, or released some envenomed miasma. The screeching and coughing grew to thunderous levels as I attempted retreat toward the house, but I awoke before ever reaching the door.

My blurred vision cleared up just enough to read the clock on the night stand. It seemed my day would begin at 4:53 AM.

Restless

Morning. It’s a sight that is growing more and more alien every day as I am seemingly becoming fully nocturnal. I catch a few glimpses of it as I fade in and out of consciousness; that pseudo-sleep that I often attempt where the real and unreal comingle on the virgin plain of the waking mind. I sit up to see that the sheets have been strewn wildly about the bed, as if they were the site of some great struggle that I somehow managed to sleep through. This, unfortunately, is something I’ve grown quite accustomed to seeing. It suggests that I might have slept, but I hardly rested.

Despite my nightly thrashing, I have failed to work up an appetite. I roll out of bed and attempt to shake off the drowsiness with a few pushups. I have lost the illusion that the physical benefits of exercise will have any real effect on my life as I see it. It’s purely a part of the routine now. As I draw closer to the carpet, I let my eyes lose focus and set my mind adrift. Eventually, my arms start to burn, and I am called back from the fragmented visions of my troubled brain. I’ll save the shower for the evening. Any effect from one gained right now would be terribly short-lived.

I get dressed and gather my things from the night stand. Some of them will be of no use, but the comfort of having them on hand gives me much-needed peace of mind. My first step out the door is directly into a wall of heat. I find the air uncomfortable to breathe, and the world outside to be unbearably bright, but I can only attempt to sit inside in comfort for so long. Without some manner of fresh stimulus, my mind will assault itself with torturous thoughts until the body is compelled to afford it something new to ponder. I take a moment to gather my resolve before finally setting foot into the sun. The vitamin D might do me some good.

There are no other people on the sidewalk, as there is nothing for them to see. I would not be so quick to rule out that the cars on the scarred and ancient road are not piloted by humans, either. This town is like a prison staffed by ghosts. You can go anywhere you want, but it’s pretty much solitary confinement the whole way. Every familiar site calls up some phantasm of the past to remind me of the life that I left behind. Some of them are of happier times. Most of them are waking nightmares.

I am a man who enjoys adventure, but I can assure you that there is none to be had here. If there was, I had exhausted it years ago. The path that I walk is the same every day. As my body wanders, so too does my mind. Without any sort of fresh insight, or interaction at all, really, my thoughts direct themselves back to the same old dangerous paths; the unknowable future, the troubles of the present, the sorts of things deemed unhealthy for one to dwell on. The things that I desire most in this life seem to be held at insurmountable distance from me, whether measured in distance or time. I put miles on my shoes as an attempt to cope with these thoughts, and the aching in my knee serves as a physical reminder that for all the walking I do, it will never be far enough.

I eventually make my way onto the bridge toward something more akin to civilization. Chesapeake is a town dead on its feet, as evidenced by Mother Nature’s increasingly successful attempts to repossess the grounds. The river below is opaque with mud churned from the murky bed, and its surely toxic waters are host to all manner of fish of monstrous qualities and baffling anatomy. I often equate it with some local branch of the river Styx, and make my own associations with the locals wading in it.

My daily destination is Pullman Square. It’s a recently developed little corner which provides the illusion of decency in the land that God forgot. I sit at a small round table outside Starbucks and spend some time watching the clouds go by. People pass by on the sidewalk, usually decently well-dressed with nothing to do. They pass under the shade of the trees and admire the verdant lawn at the center of the square, carrying on to some little shop or restaurant with the impression that they’ve found some higher class of society here. If you weren’t facing the crumbling edifices of the buildings across the street, you could imagine that the whole town was like this. Some parts of this town, though, are left the way they’ve always been to convince you that Silent Hill is a very real place.

I sit, and I write, and I drink my coffee. Cold, bitter and black, it chemically motivates me to type in an effort to exorcise some of the darkness from my brain. I imagine the viscous, obfuscating sludge oozing from the wrinkled gray mass, down my arms, and being slapped maliciously onto the keys in the hopes that it won’t come back. I know better, but sometimes it’s good to pretend.

With my day’s dark work complete, I consign myself to filling up at whatever nearby food joint is appealing in the moment. It doesn’t really matter what it is, because my choices are not going to be healthy ones. Still, they don’t call it comfort food for nothing. I briefly consider striking up conversation with the cashier for the chance to speak more words to a human, but I understand the futility. I need to hold a meaningful conversation with a person that I care about in some way. This man’s importance to me is that of a vending machine. If asked, I couldn’t even tell you what he looked like. My phone tries to initiate a chat over what apps are available to update. I appreciate it, phone, but it’s just not the same.

I begin the long walk home, my obligation to nutritional needs fulfilled. Dark clouds are creeping slowly over the hilltops, and while the shade is nice, I don’t want to be caught in the imminent deluge. From the middle of the bridge, I have a better understanding of where I’m going. On the Huntington side, lights illuminate the riverfront, and the gold-capped city hall building shines above the bars and store fronts that glow under street lights. Opposite that, Chesapeake is swallowed by darkness. The occasional bug zapper or porch light shows that somebody might live on the ivy-choked hillside, but it is otherwise painted black beneath the impending storm clouds.

At home, I scrub away the visible layer of dirt and grime from my day under the sun. When lying in bed proves to be a futile practice, I sit at the edge and watch the inky clouds crawl past the sickly yellow moon. Purplish veins of plasma race across their surface without a sound, casting an eerie glow on sky and earth alike. Shortly before the cloudburst, I lie back again, caressing a loose bolt of cloth with my thumb and thinking of better nights in better places, far away. The ominously thunder-less light show casts unfamiliar shadows on the ceiling as I settle in for the long haul. It is already clear to me that sleep will not come for some time.

There was a time when the dreamscape was a world where I was happily welcomed. Everything felt vivid and real. It was like living a second life as I slept. A better one! I visited beautiful, sprawling worlds beyond description, constantly shifting and changing, as dreams do. I had power, and was filled with joyous energy, and flight wasn’t the textbook expression of my desire for freedom, but just a fulfillment of my wish to fly!

Lately, though, my dreams are filled with strife, and worry. Laying my head upon the pillow seems to be a declaration of war against the land of Nod itself. In my dreams, I often find myself in trouble from some unknown source. Escape seems to be a common theme, and while I may be granted the ability to fly, or at least jump very high, it is usually clumsy, or a means to be led toward greater danger.

Perhaps my aversion to sleep is a subconscious response to the stress that waits on the other side; the state of my bed from all the tossing and turning, a symptom. There was once a time when my sleeping hours were peaceful ones. Now I lay here awake, alone with my thoughts. I am a prisoner of Earth; the deposed Prince of Dreams.