For as long as I can remember I have rarely been able to recall my dreams. Not the next day, not the morning of, and only occasionally during the first few moments after waking from a dream. I mean, if the dream is profound enough, my recollection of what I just finished dreaming usually remains in place very briefly and even that fleeting memory is disjointed at best. I'm convinced that I need to dream - I can't sleep without them. When I anticipate that I'll have trouble falling asleep (knowing full well that worrying about it will make it worse) I am always relieved to know that I've just woken from a dream, but quickly proceed to forget the content. The exception to this, of course, is the rare occurrence of only the most intimidating nightmares. One or two of those I remember from childhood. Some of them I've had as an adult I will recall when I least expect to. There is at least one recurring dream that is part nightmare and part adventure - this one I look forward to and I have held some of it's colorful scenes in memory for several years. But by and large, I will only remember isolated fragments of a story. But the dreams I had during my second night back in Vermont, four nights after leaving the hospital were most profound!

I had read about the likelihood of nightmares following OHS. I thought nothing of this possibility ... after all I would most probably forget them as soon as they ended. This turned out to be quite contrary to my typical experience. Though it still holds true that my only remaining recollection of this one bizarre evening is in the form of disconnected scenes with partial stories attached, I do remember how the content of each scene flowed smoothly from one to the next as I woke up and fell back asleep between each one. In fact, all of the transitions I recall involved leaving from and returning to the blackness of the room where I slept during recovery. I would drift directly from my reclining chair to wherever the next phase would take place. Exiting each phase was just as effortless as the scene would disintegrate all around me and I'd drift back to my chair. Though parts of the dream were frightening, I remember being just as anxious to return to the next phase hoping to find out where the journey would ultimately end. As I am incapable of telling the entire story I will try here to describe those scenes that I can remember.

My Workplace

Most of the circumstances in this dream were foreign to me. I dealt with lots of characters in several different places that I do not know from real life. And yet all the way through the situation they knew me well and I believed that I must have known them. I continuously had to hide my surprised reactions to my initial encounters with these people, I was so convinced that they truly knew me and my situation for many years. I didn't want to give the slightest hint that I had no knowledge of their backgrounds or mine, for that matter. I had no recollection of the places I arrived at nor the purpose for me being there. I simply went along, secretly learning who I was, what I did, who I knew and how we were involved. It was all very puzzling, but for some reason I accepted it as the way it was. This dream was believeable.

For reasons I can't imagine, I was a merchant in a modern and rather large city. At first arriving there the various streets I travelled and the buildings I passed reminded me of places I had been in Kansas City during the 1980's. Then some of the sidewalk scenes appeared to be from the late 1970's near Copley Square in Boston where scaffolding had been erected overhead to protect pedestrians from the huge window panes that kept popping out from the new Hancock Tower when the wind was just right. It was along such a stretch of sidewalk that I owned space for my shop. It was immediately apparent that my income was at poverty level. There was nothing but the scaffolding to enclose the many open and tattered boxes containing my stock. All the shops on this block were similar - no walls, no security and total exposure with the exception of out temporary roof. I supposedly knew the other shopkeepers well and we all looked out for each others things. I manufactured and sold a variety of clips, hangers and threaded fasteners. Over the past couple of days I was testing a new combination to display my shop sign. I had devised a complex arrangement of cords and clips and small pulleys, stringing the banner outward like a sail from the corner post of the scaffold. An older women in her eighties would greet me each morning I arrived to my corner. She was very polite and soft-spoken , though often long winded. She wore old fashioned spectacles with lenses so thick it was impossible to see her eyes. The woman was my nearest neighbor in the market place and apparently spent most of her day in the area of these makeshift shops. She may have spent her nights under the shelter of the scaffolds for all I knew. I'm not certain where it was I went home to each night, for that matter. It wasn't clear, but I always travelled into the city each morning and left by late afternoon.

Commuting

I drove a small pickup truck to and from work. Sometimes it was exactly like the 4WD Toyota I own in real life. Other times I seemed to be driving an older run down version that I had borrowed for the day. In the dream I travelled often and it was a long way wherever I went. Most of the journeys were through the country, the majority of my route composed of dirt roads that paralleled small stone laden rivers like the ones in Vermont where I live. On one occasion while driving home, I came upon an intersection taking me through a rural town common. Across the way I saw an eighteenth century two story house whose siding was weathered dark brown. I was immediately compelled to visit the house - again it was something I had evidently done in the past, but only vaguely remembering these routines as I went along. I drove over and parked in front. There was a stairway climbing up to a balcony on the second floor where a front door stood open. I climbed the stairs and before I could make it halfway a woman appeared in the doorway as if she was expecting me. She seemed to be in her late forties, her dark hair tied back and streaked with grey. She wore a dress made of a naturally coarse material with the look and color of rich black earth. The dress fit her too tightly, though it was likely a size she once wore. Nevertheless, I couldn't help noticing her voluptuous figure as she offered me a tentative greeting. We met outside the doorway and chatted for several minutes. Without recalling her exact words it became obvious to me that she was once my lover and that we hadn't spoken in some time, but she had come to expect my visits once in a while long after we parted. Still I continued to pretend that I knew the routine though in reality I was learning it all on the spot. While I sensed she was still very possessive of me, I also noticed that she was entertaining several guests in her house. Each one made a pass by the entrance where we stood, curiously and even jealously spying us as they did. It turned out that all of her guests were male. Overhearing bits of conversation from inside the house, I eventually realized that they were all former lovers of this woman. After a while she felt obliged to go back inside and we said goodbye.

I pulled away and passing through the intersection I discovered that the road had become thick with mud. I headed toward a turn in the road where the surface changed to pavement. That's when I was stopped by a flagman only a short distance away. It was a typical road construction scene where only a single lane was open for traffic in both directions. I waited a long time ... the man stared into my vehicle the whole time, but gave no indication that I could pass any time soon. He seemed frozen. It seemed like he was daring me to pass. I refused to acknowledge his stare. Many more minutes passed and I remained the only vehicle waiting to go ahead. Finally, after a ridiculous amount of time I decided to turn back and continue the muddy journey along the back roads to my destination.

Another time I needed to turn onto a narrow bridge that crossed the river. It was nighttime and difficult to see the road, but it was obvious that there had been some construction done earlier. I slowed down, observing the piles of concrete and rubble on either side of me. Momentarily I came to a gate standing to the side as if it had once blocked the way but was moved. No sooner did I contemplate this, that the surface of the road began to sink in front of me. I pressed down the clutch and halted the truck with the parking brake. In a second the bridge crumbled away beneath my front wheels and a terrible shiver passed through my stomach as my truck now seemed to teeter on it's chassis. The passage was too narrow to open my door. My only way to safety was to shift into reverse and pray that I'd have enough traction to move backward. It was at this moment that I was most frightened because as hard as I tried I could not remember which position was reverse! I fumbled with the shift for several more seconds while I tried and tried to remember, but to no avail. All I could do now was to guess. Pulling the stick over to the right and back seemed like the logical position. Nudging the accelerator, I eased the clutch up ever so gently - knowing that if I was wrong I stood a good chance of going over the edge. Slowly, as the gears engaged, I felt the pull of the rear wheels inching me backward. I backed away for a short distance and then stopped to breathe once again. I sat there in the dark for a minute while the engine idled. In another minute I was drifting back to the blackness of my room and into my chair again.

Marketplace Scene

On one particularly busy day I strolled into the heart of the marketplace. The crowd was as large as I'd ever seen and extremely dense. It was so thick with people that only the tops of a few showcases were visible. I was swept along as I looked for items that interested me. Gradually I found myself quite a distance away from the small block where my own shop was located. And I now recognized the large space where I stood as the wide elevated off ramp the turnpike in downtown Boston. Obviously closed to traffic, the ramp made a "U" shape from which the theatre district and parts of Chinatown were easily visible. I had always thought that it's span and shape appeared like a small stadium. And now in my dream it was precisely that.

At some point a rack full of running shoes had caught my attention. I squeezed by many layers of buyers and merchants alike to make my way to the display. Once I finally reached it I discovered they were all discontinued models from years past. They were not all together in matched pairs. I grew obsessed with finding a pair that was my size. This ultimately became my only purpose for the day as I was intent on finding replacements for the shoes I had known from years of running. I eventually found myself climbing up on the wooden rack which had taken on the size of a large embankment now. I searched hard to find a mate to one shoe I had been carrying under my arm for a long while. Finally I spotted a potential match from about eight feet away. That's when all the shoes on the rack seemed to be covered with a slimey substance. It was a clear kind of gel - no odor, just thick and slippery. Suddenly my position up on the rack was becoming treacherous. Needing both hands free, I dropped the shoe I had been holding over the side at this point. I hussled to get down, but now they were other people below me on the rack as well. They made it impossible to get down. The only way off was to climb higher until I could reach another level of the pavement. As I crawled up to and over a metal guard rail, I realized this was where vehicles would have entered the turnpike after going through a toll booth. But there were no cars to be found - only more people. The crowd had grown so huge that people were lined up all along this entranceway, right up through the toll booth! I could barely move in any direction at times, but the general flow was headed toward the booth area. I feared the difficulty I might have getting back to the marketplace once I passed through the gate, but it was impossible to fight the flow. Gradually I wound up underneath the canopy and saw that there was actually a toll collector standing inside the booth. When I reached the window he smiled and said nothing. I pleaded with him to show me how to get turned around, but he only returned nods and smiles. At that same moment I looked beyond the booth to the empty turnpike ... no one else had passed through. I turned to the man to ask him why this was and before the words came out of my mouth he suddenly spoke, saying there was no way to reverse direction now and that I must go through! Impatient with his unwillingness to help me, I stepped closer to the ledge beyond the booth to get a look at what was below. With the discovery that I was less than twelve feet above the level of the marketplace, I impulsively hurdled the railing and slid down the steep concrete pier. After a harsh landing on the pavement below, I walked briskly through the crowd zig-zagging along the many isles of displays and back out into the streets. Overcome with relief having escaped the raucousness and confusion, I headed toward the familiarity of the little corner where my own neighborhood of temporary storefronts stood underneath the scaffolding.

Final Departure

Upon arriving there I noticed that the clever assembly of lines and clips I devised to display my shop sign had become grossly tangled by the wind. While I stood tediously unravelling the lines, I was spotted by my neighbor, the old woman with the thick spectacles. She appeared more troubled than usual and was approaching rapidly. She walked up to me carrying an assortment of small metal clasps, which she cupped with both hands. Then she began to speak in that polite and barely audible voice of hers. Often times when she spoke I would miss significant portions of the dialog and I was forced to piece together relevant concepts of her mostly unilateral conversations with me. It was very easy to not listen a lot of the time. But this time was slightly different in that she seemed to want an answer from me. I stopped what I was doing and paid close attention to her words. She insisted that she had brought me the items I had ordered from her a long time ago. She said I never came to pick them up and that she very much needed for me to pay for them now as she had no money. I felt immediate concern for her at the same time I knew I hadn't ordered anything. I always made my own parts and these clasps she held were of no use to me. To make matters worse they cost a large sum of money - much more than I could pull together that week, let alone that day! I tried to believe she was desperate or just honestly confused. Though I began to suspect she was trying to cheat me, I attempted to return the same politeness she had always given me. We went around and around on slight possibility that I could use the clasps for something, though I couldn't imagine what.

After quite a while it appeared she was not going to let up. The time was already later than the time I normally left there. In my frustration I promised the woman I would look at purchasing the parts from her when I returned the next day. But she persisted. I continued to tell her how I needed to get home. She refused to let me leave. Finally, I repeated my promise to take it up in the morning and started to walk away while I spoke. I hated to turn my back on the woman, but having finished the conversation, I turned about and quickly headed down the street. Odd as it seemed, I could still hear her pathetic pleading even as I moved further away. With each step I took the daylight grew suddenly dimmer. Half way down the block I was moving through a hallway of darkness. I could see my room in front of me, the reclining chair empty and waiting. Then a burst of light from behind me caused me to stop and turn around to look. I saw only a glowing image of the woman who had suddenly transformed into a demon before my eyes. My muscles were locked tight while a horrible chill flowed through me. At that same instant her voice registered in a shrill, raspy whisper, "How dare you turn away from me?!!!". I was overcome with fear. Then her arms stretched rapidly toward me from all that distance away and the touch of her fingertip was cold against my hand. Her glowing wrinkled skin clung tightly around a mere skeletal frame. Sparse strands of hair covered her withered head. No longer hidden by spectacles, her eyes projected a blinding stream of flame toward me like the bright exhaust from a rocket. Latching on to my hand now she pulled herself toward me, slowly gliding as would a snake. Her breathing was laboriously loud. I was full of panic now, my heart pounding hard as she moved closer and closer. When she eventually got close enough to touch me, I was so frightened that I lost all control and fell to the ground. Powerless as I lay on the ground at her feet, I caught my last glimpse of this demon before gently fading back to the dark comfort of my chair again.

I woke from the dream for the last time. Leaning forward to bring the chair upright, I felt the cold of my sweat drenched night shirt. The pillows I used for support were soaked as well. I changed my shirt, tossed the pillows aside and sat up awake for a long while before finally feeling assured I would not return to that dream.