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The joke’s on...

by Scott McNutt

When I was young, between perhaps 6 and 8 years old, my sleep was haunted by a recurring nightmare. Night after night I would awake screaming.

Each night I would find myself amid absolute darkness, unable to see anything—anything. The air was always heavy and hot in that place of no place, and despite the atmosphere’s clinging closeness, I remember knowing the dark was expansive, that it extended further than I could see, if I could have seen. But I couldn’t, and for a child of 6 or 8, such blank infinity was as terrifying as any tangible threat.

Until I heard a tangible threat. The sound was at first distant and unknowable, yet I knew it was of evil. So I began to run, away from the sound. The more I ran, the nearer it closed. I heard it distinctly then; over my own lungs’ laboring, I could hear it, panting and slavering. If I had dared to look back, I knew what I would behold: Red, glaring eyes fixed upon my form, bloody red talons poised at my neck, red tongue lashing at red-flecked fangs and froth-covered red lips. A werewolf. It was always a werewolf.

All I could do was keep running, despite my cramping legs, despite my bursting lungs, despite the sounds that were always already upon my back, and yet, as it is with the logic of dreams, always drawing closer.

Then I saw it, the hope, the promise: a light, a tiny cone of light. And I knew, as one does with the certainty that dreams offer, I knew that if I could reach that light, I would be safe. So I ran and ran and the light cone grew larger and the rush of my own breath grew so loud I could hear only it and I couldn’t think about what was behind me and I ran and ran and the light grew larger and I saw that it was a street lamp and I ran and ran and I was inside the cone of light and I was safe!

I slumped against the pole’s base and panted and panted and panted air back into my body. As my breathing dwindled and I could hear above it again, I heard a sound. It wasn’t from outside the cone of light.

It was from atop it.

Afraid to see, not wanting to see, knowing what I would see, I looked up. Hovering above the crossbeam of the lamppost were the red eyes, red claws, red teeth, red tongue, red lips. Snarling, the werewolf sprang down, and I, screaming, was once again awake. Over and over I lived that werewolf nightmare, unable to change the sequence or the outcome, waking up just as those rapacious fangs and claws ripped apart my flesh.

Terrifying, yes, but what rent my child conscience was the dream’s cruel unfairness. I was supposed to be safe when I got to the light, like reaching home base in a game of hide ‘n’ seek.

I already knew the world wasn’t fair; in my waking world, we sometimes participated in nuclear war safety drills at school and knew the Commies might attack at any time. But in the dream world when you felt safe you were supposed to be safe. I had trusted that. But this dream changed the rules. Trust had been betrayed, had become a betrayal itself.

Parents and friends proposed no solutions, and it seemed piddly to ask God to fix my dream. So I fixed it myself. Each night before I fell asleep, I whispered that if it would only leave me alone, then the werewolf would be my favorite monster. It was a deal with the devil, but it worked. The werewolf left. I could sleep again.

Good dreams and bad, I’ve learned to accept them all, even if I don’t welcome each one. What dreams may come, all have their meaning and their message. And each its own rules.

You, the industrious, the wakeful, seize each day, with its pollution, humiliation, famine, brutality, pestilence, corruption, torture, betrayal, and death, and make better of its evil, if you can. It’s a noble pursuit, worthy of the highest praise.

If you need me, I’ll be napping.

May 27, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 22 © 2004 Metro Pulse