special orders
March 30, 3:00AM. I am having a horrible, serialized nightmare. Tonight was the second installment. The plot, basically, is that a deranged customer has backordered a number of books from a small press in upstate New York. This customer turns out to be a murder who tortures his whole family to death. The case is widely covered in the media, but for some reason we've not been able to cancel his special orders. Every week two more titles are sent from the obscure New York press, and each book details a different torture technique. An Introduction to the Art of Blow Torchery, for instance, with a whole chapter illustrating the step-by-step process of melting off human lips. An Intermediate Course in Eyeball Popping. I unpack each of these torture manuals, trying to remember the news accounts. Was this a method he'd employed on his victims? Did he inflict this torture with only a cursory knowledge of the technique, or was he ordering these books as a mere refresher course?
I wake up, but waking up is never the end of a nightmare for me, it's just the point where my conscious mind takes over. I go over the dream again and again, it grows elaborate with my embellishments. Somewhere I fit in a man with pantyhose pulled over his head, obscuring his facial features, an life-long fear culled from crime shows in the 80s that my parents unwisely allowed me to watch. I stare at my door, willing it to stay closed, ignore my growing need to pee, translate every creaking of the house as an intruder's footsteps. Paralyzed with self-inflicted fear.
I wake up, but waking up is never the end of a nightmare for me, it's just the point where my conscious mind takes over. I go over the dream again and again, it grows elaborate with my embellishments. Somewhere I fit in a man with pantyhose pulled over his head, obscuring his facial features, an life-long fear culled from crime shows in the 80s that my parents unwisely allowed me to watch. I stare at my door, willing it to stay closed, ignore my growing need to pee, translate every creaking of the house as an intruder's footsteps. Paralyzed with self-inflicted fear.