I think I am depressed. I am not sad, mind you, but physical symptoms of depression are changes in appetite, sleep patterns, and erratic behavior. Considering my manic eating attacks, my inexplicable addiction to “30 Rock”, and my complete lack of a recognizable sleep schedule, there is ample evidence that I am relapsing into the Major Depression I was diagnosed with those 17 years ago.
Whatever the catalyst, I have been having terrifying dreams lately. They make me ashamed that they formed in my brain. Here are two. Please keep in mind that I did not consciously form these stories, and I hope that they are not taken as a reflection of what I find entertaining or exciting:
In one dream, I am house-sitting for a friend, and I’m lying on the carpet next to their small dog of indiscriminate origin. I think it’s a terrier or something. Anyway, I’m looking at the dog and absent-mindedly looking about the room, and the dog is looking at me, lying on the carpet, keeping me company, smiling into my eyes, showering me with unconditional love and comfort. (I think this was based on a comment a guy at Taco Bell said as I eavesdropped on his date. He said “A dog will love you no matter what you do. I can’t be comfortable with unconditional love.”) Out of boredom, hunger, or cruelty, I snap one of the dog’s legs off and start to eat it. The dog just watches me, almost smiling, as if to say “Sure, buddy; whatever you need.” After I finish eating one of its legs, I snap off another and eat it, then another, then another. While I’m eating the last leg, a friend enters the room and sees what I’ve done. Where its legs were, there are furry nubs; no blood stains the carpet or is visible whatsoever. My friend begins to scold me, asking what I could possibly have been thinking, and how could I have been so cruel? I wave her off, saying not to worry and that I’d planned to eat the whole dog, rather than condemn it to live on without its limbs. I look at the dog and the dog is still smiling, as if to say “What a swell fella!” I lean in, about to bite into the dog’s neck, tear out a hunk of its flesh and let it bleed out peacefully, when I stop and consider the violence and bloodshed behind the act. I can’t do it; it’s too much. Now the dog’s eyes narrow, and for the first time it looks at me with contempt. My friend voices the dog’s concerns, condemning me for being unable to finish what I started. I assure her and the dog that I’ll take care of it, remembering that in the house that I’m watching there is something that looks like an old wood-finished pump-action shotgun that should put the dog out of its misery. I go to the room where I remembered seeing it but sadly discover it is a crossbow, with only one arrow, a rather weak-looking old arrow made by tying a blunt arrow-head onto a soft-wood shaft with feathers at one end. So I take it and pick up the dog and head outside. I set the dog on the grass and it regards me with a sidelong glance and drags itself to a totem-pole of sorts and climbs it and sets itself atop. It looks at me resignedly, and so I load the arrow on the crossbow and aim it at the dog, say I’m sorry, and pull the trigger. The arrow goes into its left shoulder, though it doesn’t howl in pain; rather it looks at me angrily and pulls the arrow out with its snout and hurls it down at me. I pick it up and see that some of the feathers have loosened and fallen out. I think remorsefully that it will be even more difficult to hit my target now, but I know it must be done, so I take aim and fire again, this time sending the arrow into the dog’s groin muscles right next to where its thigh was. This time it does howl in pain, and looks at me even more angrily, pries the arrow out and hurls it down at me again. This time the arrow is far too mangled to take another shot with, so I beckon the dog down and it does so sadly, begrudgingly, and starts to speak. It chastises me for being such a pussy, such a bad aim, so selfish and negligent. The voice it uses sounds like a co-worker; one of my bussers, Gabriel.
In another dream, I am working at a government facility, as a receptionist or number-cruncher or something similarly not glamorous, when I see someone coming through one of the multiple security doors that I’ve never seen before. He pulls a gun from his coat and shoots one of the agents who’d just arrived with sensitive information. The other men in the room leap to action and dispatch of him rather quickly, and soon the entire room is locked down so a full investigation can be launched to discern how this tragedy occurred. All of us are interrogated thoroughly, and no conclusive answers are found. I personally have nothing to offer, as it all happened so fast that I hardly knew what happened myself, much less why. Unsatisfied with this outcome, the investigator employs drastically more devious ways of extracting information from us, and soon we are standing in a windowless room in our underwear as he’s announcing that the next stage of questioning will be to explore our chest cavity. He walks straight towards me and with his fingers on my naked flesh traces lines on my collar bones, where a bonesaw will cleave them in half, and my chest will be ripped open so that investigators may peer inside. The weak-willed thin man next to me exclaims in terror, and the investigator wheels on him, saying he will be first. Two heavily-armed guards grab him roughly and pull him screaming from the room, and in moments we hear the whirr of machinery and pained screams from down the hall. We look at each other solemnly for what seems like ages, then a hand on my shoulder tells me it’s my turn. I am lead from the room and then deposited unguarded in a long queue with many other men in similar states of undress. Before long I am seeing a series of doctors, who are depressing my tongue and peering at my tonsils and grabbing my testicles and ordering me to cough. Soon I am standing outside of a steel door through which I hear the buzzing of saws and clanging of metal instruments. My body is rigid with fear (and I feel this in the physical part of me that knows I am lying in bed imagining all of this, and the exertion I am undergoing is not restful and could not justifiably be called sleep) and I am straining to keep my anguished yelps and urge to flee inside my fragile body. The door opens and I enter a pristine white room, expertly cared for and left in sparkling perfection at all times. A kind man next to a white noise machine assures me nothing irreparable will happen to me, and he hands me a manilla envelope with a new identity inside and several hundred dollars. He lets me out of the room through another door and I am back in the catacombs of steel and rock, wandering dazed and bewildered. Soon the catacombs become hallways, and before long I can tell that I am in a hotel or a brownstone, and soon I see another queue of anxious men. I line up with them, hoping for some kindness at the end of the interminable wait. When I get to a closed door, I tap my foot nervously. Soon it opens and a man says it’s one hundred dollars. I reach into the envelope and give it to him. He gives me a rubber band and points to a cot near a window between two other men and says “Use this to secure the elastic band on your underwear to the pipe along the wall and when the lady comes in, do whatever she asks, and nothing more. Have fun.” I am confused and frightened as I enter the room and the door closes behind me.
I am still not smoking. Maybe I should be?
Eric McClanahan 
Leave a comment