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On The Beat: Sleeping Like Babies
Written by Alex TeachJuly 8, 2009 – 1:33 pm
He was raising his gun while I yelled my final command for him to drop it, and as he still refused, I began squeezing the trigger of my own pistol and prepared for the unimaginably loud retort, the likely follow-up shots I’d have to take, the count of my ammo, and the onslaught of scrutiny from the media and the armchair quarterbacks in the aftermath of the terrible thing I was being forced to do, again, of what thousands of brothers before me had been forced to do, and—and nothing.
The trigger felt as if it had a lump of lead behind it. I was having to physically force it back. I kept my target in sight as I unwove my off-hand’s fingers to assist the one pulling, and after an eternity a .45-caliber bullet finally exploded towards its destination and hit home, but to my horror it had no effect and I had to begin the process all over again, the slow squeeze…Then mercifully I awoke, daylight just creeping through the cheap curtains of my bedroom.
I hated that goddamn dream, but it was the least of the bullshit creeping around the back of my skull over the years. I’d had some real doozies alright; the kind that scared the neighbors in the apartment below mine because of the screams that left me sitting bolt upright, elbows locked and palms facing down, fingers gripping the sheets in iron fists, cold sweat beaded and starting to run down my forehead and temples while I panted and looked for dead men running through my bedroom. No, this wasn’t one of those, thank God.
I was still prone, and simply released a crumpled pillow and flipped it over looking for a cool spot, fighting off a mild hangover. I unconsciously reached over to unmask a clock I kept covered to avoid insomniac time-counts when my hand struck an unfamiliar object on the nightstand.
It was a ceramic baby, egg white, posed in a sitting position, about eight inches high and covered in a shiny glaze that smoothed over thousands of intentional antiqued cracks. Its design was obvious enough to let you know it was a baby, sitting up with its arms embracing itself, but vague enough to have only the softest details of where its eyes, nose, and mouth were, with a smattering of hair flipped into a wave on the top of its head. It was shaped like a cherub on a fountain, but made for a shelf in a Southern grandmother’s kitchen. I had no idea where it came from, but there it was between me and my clock.
I struggled to think of who in the world would have given me such a strange gift, or if drunk enough, where I may have stolen it from as a goof the night before. I propped up on an elbow considering the possibilities of its origins and my plans for the day, when blood started seeping from the cracks covering the thing and it began to slowly cry.
I remember thinking that it wasn’t so strange that the statue started moving as that the ceramic didn’t shatter when it slowly began to spread its arms and open its smooth shallow mouth into a grimace, while it turned its round blank eyes towards me, its hopeful embrace widening with the pitch of its cries. The seeping blood began pouring down its glistening form into a pool around its glazed diaper, the white ceramic still visible through dozens of tiny spots between the cracks.
The blood began streaming down the side of the table. It cried louder and louder and the bright crimson began to increase its flow to match the intensity of the noise. When I finally opened my mouth to scream, as I began crawling back on my elbows, I fell backwards off the bed and all at once it stopped…as I woke up on the floor, feet still on the bed. I got up on my elbows and peeked over the edge of the mattress. The baby was gone.
I’d awoken into a second nightmare…again. I hated that shit. I shrugged, and stumbled into the shower.
A short while later I was on the road, my left hand on the wheel, my right forearm resting comfortably, wedged between my holstered pistol and my stomach. It was a treacherous drive from Brainerd to Amnicola in the mornings, but I was in an unmarked and could get around most hazards anonymously those days. I passed a bank on Shallowford Road with a small decorative fountain out front, and it brought me back to the dream from half an hour before.
“Weird,” I said aloud. “What the fuck was that about? Ooh! Hardee’s!” And that was the end of that.
The dream was one of hundreds and I haven’t given it a second thought since then, until now. I still have no idea what it means…but I have to admit, Hardee’s does sound good about now, and who can serve and protect you on an empty stomach?
It was, after all, just a dream.
Nothing wrong with that.
Alexander D. Teach is an occasional student of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and a graduate of Central High. In his spare time he enjoys carpentry, auto mechanic work, boating, and working for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.
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23 Comments »
You are weird. This went green on Fark.com. Your site will be “farked” soon.
Damn, and I thought I had crazy dreams… I hate haveing them doubled up nightmares like that, you think it's over and damnit, it got you again…..
Z
(I actually sleep late on weekends to see how crazy of a dream I can have, yea, I gotta get a life)
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” -Sigmund Freud-
I have similar dreams,though mine are not usually as graphic, and I just chalk it up to my subconscious keeping my conscience in check. It is it's way of processing and showing me the possible results of my decisions and it prepares me for the hell to follows should I have to make the hard decision
What Mr. Teach is experiencing sounds an awful lot like post traumatic stress disorder. Having worked for the attorney general in my state I got to see some pretty awful stuff. But nothing near what the cop on the street sees. What I was was always AFTER the fact when the blood had dried, when the victims brains had been picked up, etc.
We developed a gallows humor about it. And we drank like fish.
Conscience = conscious. Darn spell check..
Good, remember those dreams while your awake and at work. Obviously a lot of cops don't
alcohol? firearm? mental disorder? Is this story about a hillbilly or a cop?
idea for a movie: Beverly Hillbilly Cop.
So you probably were over the limit when you started driving
I was a cop for 6 years. No doubt this happens to everyone in law enforcement. Just another of the unseen things we deal with everyday that no one thinks about when you write them a ticket.
You get the best replies once a story hits Fark.
All of Teach's articles are the win.
Yeah i have one of these every once and while. Last time an evil magician was raping my sister in a giant hamburger building made out of pillows perched on the edge of a cliff. To get into the rooms you had to crawl between the layers of the hamburger. He took a shotgun to the stomach and we crawled out of the hamburger only to realize it was the wrong side and we fell off the edge of the cliff. When we hit the bottom I woke up to a toilet flush. I was all warm and moist with sweat. I was sitting in a hotel room in Italy. Matt was still asleep so i got up to get ready and fell off the bed and hit my head. The corner of a rocking chair popped a hole in the top of my head and i knocked out my front teeth. I started bleeding like crazy and was trying to put my head back together before I realized that the person in the bed wasn't Matt, it was the corpse of a six year old frozen in rigor mortis after being brutally raped by her father (a case file i had done some work on). Then i woke up on the floor.
Sir, you might want to check out http://www.emofree.com.
Download the manual.
Read it.
See if you think it might help — it probably can.
It's weirder than snake's suspenders, but it works.
'Nuff said.
Definitely not a laughing matter, though not a cop I am a vet who 15 years after action still have vivid dreams and even remember some, even though not as many as before. I have never read anything that you have written before but it sounds like, from one of the posts, that you are a regular contributor to this site. and this may be your best outlet. I wish you the best and can empathize with you.
There are many sites in which explain the meanings of dreams.
Lately I've been experiencing a lot of dreams and nightmares… I've had them since I can remember as a toddler… Most of it connects to things I avoid doing in my waking hours… Problems I don't address, issues… It's as if I refuse to let myself escape… They usually go awake once I've addressed the issue. I do however love dreams where I know I'm in a dream so much control
This is why neanderthals shouldn't become cops. Tough-guys are mentally sound enough to handle the job. That's why the divorce rate is higher than average. That's why American cops act like thugs. Bunch of losers joining for all the wrong reasons.
Neanderthals use words like “smattering”? You want “Tough Guys” to be cops so they wont act like “thugs”? Sounds like someone got a ticket recently. OR, maybe they're just stupid.
Weird article. Funny it went green on Fark.
I succumbed to the relentless indoctrination by the politically correct mob and mass media etc. and am spewing the requisite knee-jerk rhetoric at the essay and all the comments.
Racists!!!! Bigots!!!! xenophobes!!!!
Assuredly card-carrying KKK members and neo-Nazis.
Enjoy the spike in traffic!
“Clicked 28538 times; posted to Main on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 at 3:05 PM”
I had the same dream last night, but I'm in the Army. My pistol's trigger was extremely loose up to the point it released the hammer, then it was impossible to pull. I can't remember what the bullet did when I was able to fire. I think I missed.
It's similar to the dreams about getting in a fist fight but your arms only move in Matrix-like slow motion…
The entire description of the baby dream was a masterpiece of horror. You could write novels.
I….what? “Neanderthal” implies someone tough and thug-like. You say neanderthals shouldn't become cops, then say tough guys should, then say American cops are thugs. These are all the same thing. And what does ANY of it have to do with divorce?! For that matter, what does any of this have to do with the actual post? You're calling him a neanderthal for suffering nightmares?
Instead, I write Columns. Go figure…but thank you all the same.
And to BioG? Of course I was, numbnut. Glad to see you took so much from this bit.
-Ofc. Alex 'Freakin' Teach