WL's Prompts- Short Stories - 6. Prompt# 80 The Beauty of the Dream

The Beauty of the Dream

I don’t know how to keep going anymore, my life has been a mess for a long time. I got drunk at the end of my junior year in high school and had sex with a girl that I didn’t love. She gave birth to my son, Mikey, so out of obligation, I had to stay and marry her. I had several big shoes to fill, so I gave up my dream of attending college with a full-ride scholarship. I took online courses in data entry, then when I gained my certificate, I found out the technical certificate provider was not accredited. It was a waste of time and money, which my parents could ill afford to keep giving me. So, I started working as a salesperson at a department store, barely being able to afford a one-bedroom studio apartment for my family.

In 2020, all of that changed with COVID, I was put on leave with the lockdown and my parent both died due to the disease. I sold our old mortgage-indebted house to cover the funeral expenses and provide for my family during this crisis. Yet, things just kept getting worse. My wife caught the illness and with my minimal insurance coverage, she couldn’t get quality healthcare. She died six months into the pandemic, leaving me with our eight-year-old son with a drained bank account and a hopeless situation.

I couldn’t sleep at night contemplating horrible options in my despair that grew ever darker as our resources dwindled: Should I send my son into foster care? Should I get myself killed for insurance money? Would a murder-suicide be better for us both? I searched for answers, but my dark thoughts persisted, so the quest for answers continued.

At some point during my darkest moment, I began having dreams of another life with a gorgeous man. It was the morning and we were having an amazing breakfast of sausage, eggs, toast, and pastries. It was a far cry from the 50% discounted cast-off Dunkin Donuts from prior nights before closing that I had for breakfast for Mikey and me. We were in a spacious home somewhere in the suburbs having breakfast with an older Mikey, who was smiling and warmer in my dreams than I had ever seen him after his mother passed.

Mikey spoke in my dream “Daddy Adam and Papa Steve, can I borrow the car? There’s this new virtual 3D arcade that just opened.”

The well-dressed man, Steve answered the boy, “You’re falling behind in your reading assignments, Mikey. Your daddy and I are worried about you. How about this, if you can get an “A” on your next English test, then you can borrow the car.”

It was an ideal dream that I never wanted to wake from. I knew I wasn’t perfectly heterosexual when I was in high school. I don’t know if that made me gay or bisexual, but I just liked being around guys. I never got a chance to explore more than mutual jack-offs with other boys before I got drunk and made got a girl pregnant.

When I awoke, I found myself standing near the ledge of the roof of my apartment building, staring down at the street below. I recoiled back and realized I had sleepwalked in my dreams. While suicide was at the forefront of my thoughts, I had not planned for this, so I lurched backward out of instinct. I went back downstairs and prepared the meager breakfast.

Mikey wasn’t interested in the donuts or the small glass of milk that I poured him.

“Daddy, I want to visit mommy again.”

Mikey’s mother was buried in a funeral plot several hours away by bus, but since I had no job and he had no school, we went to visit her as we had every day.

During this trip, we cross paths with the man from my dreams attending to a nearby plot. How was it possible that I had seen him in my dreams before meeting this man in reality? He looked as amazing in reality as he did in my dreams. I noticed he was putting fresh flowers on a grave, so decided not to approach him.

The next night I had another dream of me and Steve again. We were snuggling on a leather couch with our arms wrapped in each other’s bodies. We were watching a streaming movie on a rather high-quality 70” television set, which was a far cry from my second-hand Ikea couch and old 720P LCD 16” TV.

Steve made commentaries about a body horror movie we were watching, “…Babe, I’m a doctor, but in my non-medical expertise, the idea of a person giving birth to a human-like parasite is just funny. The filmmaker is just trying to make a point about female reproductive rights…”

Teenage Mikey came into the room, stared at us, then shrugged, “You guys are watching a new hit horror flick and snuggling up to each other like you’re on a date or something. Geez, married guys are weird.”

As I awoke this time, I found myself in Mikey’s room holding a pillow over his head. Thank God, Mikey was still sound asleep, so he didn’t know what his father had nearly done. I knew there was something wrong with me and I knew I was becoming a danger to him.

For the next day, I knew I needed to get some help, but with the pandemic still raging, I couldn’t go to the hospital or a community health center without risking infection. So, I just followed the old routine and visited the same gravesite of Mikey’s mother again. The same man was also nearby visiting his own loved one. Why have I not noticed him until I started having those dreams and sleepwalking? Could he be connected to all of this somehow?

Fear and paranoia propelled me to make a very uncomfortable approach to a stranger in the cemetery.

“Hello Steve, my name is Adam Wake.”

The man turned and stared at me and Mikey with a confused expression, “Have we met? You seem familiar, but I cannot remember you.”

I answered him with facts from the dream, “You are a doctor, who prefers to live outside the city, make commentaries about cheesy body horror movies, and spend a night at home with your partner rather than go out on a date.”

His eyebrows rose in surprise, “How did you know?”

I was fearful, but I knew I had no other choice except to confide in this stranger about my dreams, “I need your help. I think we met in a dream…”

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