Closet
The dream started out uneventfully
enough. However, her flailing and screaming seemed to have attracted
the attention of the overly vigilant next door neighbor.
"So, you are fine?"
the officer asked. She was a wizened red head of indeterminate
bitterness. At the corners of her knowing eyes were symbols of
laughter and periodically extreme mirth perhaps aided with Jameson's.
"Why yes. It was the
nightmare." She said feeling naked. In fact, she felt like
she did when a highway patrolman had shined a light into her
boyfriend's car and illuminated his head insouciantly affixed
to her teen breast. It was sort of a Jesus and Mary vision with
the people in all the wrong sizes. Definitely in the wrong car.
A parked one in the woods.
"I apologize, but
I would like to come in, just to make sure. You understand, a
neighbor heard screaming and loud noises."
"Why.."
She was brushed aside as
she stood there hands in her hair, disheveled in a devil may
care sort of porno stance but with all the wrong characters.
Her long black gown made her fill forties and grown up. However,
the officers sweep flashlight sweep of her bedroom changed all
of that and reversed her mental time machine. Pink and macabre,
her super-Jamaican fun vibrator was glaringly iridescent against
the super large bottle of Wet she had left by her bedside. The
mangled old copy of the now likely illegal "Little Girls
Want to Have Fun, Too" was in stark relief against the crumpled
Girl Scout Uniform on the floor.
"No one else in here?"
the officer trailed into another room.
Felice was thinking that
her libido left plenty enough evidence that most of the people
in the apartment were insecurely inside her own nightgown.
"Are you OK? There
was nothing outside." The officer's partner's shoulders
filled her door way and then some.
"Everything is fine."
It was hard to maintain eye contact. She hadn't expected company
and it showed badly. She saw the other deputy get smacked in
the head with her cat-o-nine tails that were hanging up in the
closet.
However, it was more than
apparent the closet wasn't at all a place Felice lived. Particularly
telling was the stack of Hustler's in the bathroom she could
only imagine the male deputy was now studying thinking things
in old cliches of "how beautiful women are together."
She couldn't figure out
what she regretted more, the spread of tampons visible on the
counter or the basket of festive multi-colored condoms. Felice
was shaken out of her reverie as the red headed officer knocked
over her rather sloppily stacked porno collection. "Guys
and Dolls and Dolls and Another Guy" skittered across the
floor next to her foot.
"A classic.."
Felice offered weakly.
"Are you really a
Felice?" the officer asked fingering a feather boa.
"I'm O.K. I'm O.K"
Felice sputtered. "Look, officers I appreciate you coming
by, but really, I just had a nightmare and I woke up screaming.
"
"What sort of nightmare
would make you wake up screaming so loud two of your neighbors
dialed 911?"
"Well." She paused.
It hardly seemed horrific compared to two strangers walking through
her din of liquidity. "I was in the grocery store shopping
for vegetables. Squeezing a lemon. Checking out an avocado. Looking
at lettuce. And all then sudden everything I touched sprouted
human eyes. Big human eyes. Then the produce they touched sprouted
eyes till the whole department was staring at me. They were staring
at me and crying for me to pick them up."
"Oh." The red
headed officer smiled. "You're what age? Thirty? Thirty-two?
Unmarried? When I was your age I dreamed about eggs. Every dream
I had, there was an egg. Motionless, yet ever there. That is
when I adopted my boy."
"My wife, she had
the terrorist dream. You know, the one where she was more likely
to get killed by one than get married since she was over the
age of 35."
Both of them looked bemused.
Felice was lost in fecund
thoughts of thwarted fertility.
"Look it, hon, you'll
meet someone. Don't worry. Volunteer somewhere. Go be a Big Sister.
I mean, it doesn't take a psyche major to get what your head
was saying. You know, produce department. Be productive. You
see?"
"Yeah, I met my wife
at a Habitat for Humanities house building weekend up state."
Felice felt those eyeballs
on her again and began to scream.