Nightmares

He awoke with a sudden rush, the same nightmare as always. He was suffocating, almost lying on the verge of drowning; he was walking through the world dazed. His family friends and co-workers where there but he could not talk to them. Their world was sunny and bright and moving at full speed, he was mired in darkness and inching along at a snails pace. It was unbearable he tried to talk but no one heard him. In fact no one could even see him.  It was maddening but it was also, also…. he could not remember. The thought escaped because suddenly he was sitting upright in bed, the nightmare fading from his thoughts. The room was barely visible the light crept in through the blinds illuminating the room in an eerie early morning blue light. Not quite night and not quite day. More light then usual was breaking through due to the fact that the blinds were splashing here in and there whipped by the Santa Ana winds.  The room was hot and sticky. A bad kind of hot where the wind whipped freezing the extremities but the body sweated incessantly. The covers were laying half on him and half off just barely covering his body around the chest but exposing his legs. Perfect his feet were freezing and his chest was sweating and the covers were reversed perfectly from where they were needed. Figured life was like that after all, when you needed something it was never there and when you didn’t need it you had it in plenty. Irony, he hated irony it was so cruel and callous. How long had he been asleep he turned and glanced at the Timex indiglo alarm clock Martha had given him for his birthday. 5:25 am wow! He had been asleep for 15 minutes a record. Sleep was getting harder and harder to come by. He had been awake again almost the whole night just as he had night after night for close to two years. It had gotten so bad it had become a routine, the worst part having to lye in bed and fake like he had fallen off to sleep sometimes not stirring for an hour or two. It was excruciating to say the least. But it was the only time he could really think.

He lay awake for an hour looking at Martha they had been together since high school. She told him he was her first but he found that hard to believe he was so lost that first time. She was soft and understanding and helped him trough but he could not help feeling that she had shared this experience with someone else. They dated for two years in high school and then another two after. Martha went to Fullerton Junior College and earned her AA degree. The plain was for her to transfer to Cal State Fullerton and earn her B.A. but the arrival of their first child Karen had changed all that. Martha would stay home and after two years she would go back to school and finish up. After all he did not have the best job but it was stable. The county of Orange had accepted him out of high school, all the years with his father, a plumber and all around handyman had taught him a thing or two. He could fix practically anything and that came in handy. For a minute there he thought he would be out on the street when the county declared bankruptcy but he had lived past that. And now he and Martha had managed to buy this house and have little Mathew. Which naturally held Martha from returning to school for another two years. At least that was the thought but Mathew was now four and Karen was seven and Martha had settled into domestic bliss.

Even worse then laying there at night wanting to bounce off the walls was when he finally heard Martha’s breathing grow into that steady rhythm that built in to earth shaking snoring. Once she reached that point the world could be coming to and end and she would never know. The term sleeping like a rock fit her perfectly several times he had set off the alarm smoking in the back patio late at night with the sliding glass door open and Martha never blinked. When he crept in she was still in the same position snoring loud as ever. Content that she was home, safe asleep in her bed. Safe that was funny, he imagined several times just walking up and placing the barrel of his .38 at her temple. She would die without ever even waking. Or a kitchen knife one of the big ones from the J.A. Henckel collection she had made him buy. It would do the trick perfectly likely better then a gun. With a gun the kids would wake and likely the neighbor’s and he would not be able to finish the job or would be caught soon after. Yes the knife was perfect and seemed right. A little more personal. But that was all out of the question for now he was okay. The rage in him had not grown to that level and would not for quite sometime, besides that sounded crazy regardless. Damn this sleep condition was driving him crazy. Lying awake at night was given him too much to think about. Wipe all that away and back to the real world better get up and start breakfast.  A ritual he did every morning. Just one of the things that had Martha proclaiming at every pinochle party “He is just the greatest husband, even though I am at home with the kids all day and he has to go to work he still gets up at the crack of dawn and fixes breakfast for the family!” It was embarrassing and flattering at the same time but not his reason for doing it. You could become pretty adept at breakfast if you had every morning to practice with out pause. He felt spry this morning and figured it was time for a nice omelet with fresh squeezed Orange juice and French toast. The garden in the back yard had yielded some nice tomatoes and perfect mushrooms so he had the two most important ingredients in his estimation. Besides the vegetables from his garden tasted ten times better then those from the store.

The garden also bought him some time in solitude and if he was restless he could creep out at night and hoe to his content. Weeds were practically non-existent in his garden as well as unwanted pests. Watering at night was also more beneficial because the California weather was extremely dry and unrelenting during the day.  He slipped put the sliding glass door and into the cool morning air, The Santa Ana winds were picking up but the garden was almost pristine. He quickly grabbed two ripe tomatoes a green onion and a bell pepper and slid back in to the house. This would go fairly quickly he grabbed one of the precision knives from its cutting block and deftly cut the Tomatoes, onion and bell pepper in to small pieces. Within 15 minutes he had the omelet near finished and the strong smell of coffee wafting throughout the house. He could hear Martha stirring in the bedroom and the kids would soon be awake, everything was just as it should be today was going to be a good day. Martha walked from the bedroom in her bathrobe her hair up in rollers looking unattractive as could be’

“Good morning babe” he sighed finding the warmth in his voice comical.

“Morning sweetie, how is the best husband in the world this morning”

The comment made him want to puke most of there friends looked up to them and this putrid displays of affection they had feel into but he realized a long time ago he had a big disdain for this whole life. The quiet little house, the frumpy little wife. The two kids and the two car garage on there cute little suburban street. It all made him sick. He wanted to run down the street screaming at the top of his lungs but instead..

“Great babe just finished breakfast for the best wife in the whole world”