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Tuesday, June 29, 2004 The time I woke up screaming: Binghamton, New York. My fourth year of college. Me, spending the night with P., the woman I was then involved with, at her apartment. Those years: a strange, turbulent period of this little life of mine. Drama abounded (appropriate, I suppose, for a theater major), me with little real idea what I was doing. I had recently met, at the apartment of two women friends, a guy slightly older than me who worked with a traveling carnival. Irwin. A hard-edged individual with a hostile, slightly threatening air, using carney slang when talking about people, referring to most as 'marks.' Not very congenial, not a guy I was interested in getting familiar with. Never saw him again after that evening, forgot all about him. Or thought I had. So. Me asleep in bed with P., I begin having a dream. I found myself walking along a tree-lined nighttime street, the sidewalk awash in shadows, the darkness relieved now and then by the light of a streetlamp. I walked for a while, the dream unreeling in the manner of stylized, arty animation, the lines of the image moving as if the scene were being drawn around me as I strode along. I finally found myself strolling down the sidewalk of a street toward a house, the dream abruptly becoming vivid, clear, real, dropping the style of animation. In front of the house lurked a figure, something dangerous and savage, wearing the form of a human male. The Irwin. (Didn't look like the Irwin I'd met, but bore his name.) I knew that the only way I could get into the house was by distracting The Irwin -- I found myself holding a doll, tossed it well away from the house. The Irwin immediately ran after it, ripping the doll to shreds on reaching it, making sounds that raised the hair on the back of my neck. I ran for the front door, The Irwin saw me, raced toward the house, trying to cut me off. I made the stoop, threw myself inside, shutting and locking the door just as The Irwin mounted the stoop, scrabbling at the door, face distorted with rage. Through a small square window in the door, I could see it toss its head back, letting loose a howl. It disappeared then, I heard it move down the stoop and away. I walked through the living room and along a hallway, glancing at the windows in various rooms as I passed, making sure all were closed and secured, the blinds down. At the end of the hallway, I entered a room that had three tall, narrow windows at the far end, the kind you might see in an old Victorian house forming a small alcove, a built-in window seat. The blinds in the left-hand window were halfway up, allowing a possible point of entry from the outside. I quickly went to it, began lowering the blinds. Before I could finish an arm came through the window, punching me hard enough that I flew across the room, landing against a wall and sliding to the floor, the windowblinds now partially broken, hanging at an angle. Sprawled there, my head and upper back against the wall, I saw The Irwin enter, slithering smoothly in through the window like a large serpent, coming toward me. I knew I was about to die, and I felt a scream rise from somewhere deep within. Not just a scream -- a primal sound originating somewhere down below my stomach, clawing its way up through my chest and throat. That was my dream, strange enough on its own. But there's more: At that moment, in P.'s dream, someone said to her, "Wake up, r. needs you." Her eyes opened, she turned over and looked at me just as I came to, screaming -- my head jerking up off the pillow, my body clenched, shaking. Scared the bejesus out of her. Out of me too, for that matter. The one and only time I've ever come back to consciousness screaming. Madrid, te echo de menos. rws 1:08 PM [+]
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