Mad Utopia

Not again!

I sit up, and feel my head spin – the room is reeling. Then I pitch forward, right out of bed. I look back at the bed and there I am, tossing and turning, fighting the blankets like a wild animal. I stand disembodied yet again, and know I have entered the world of dreams.

Dreams? No. Nightmares. Immediately the sense of dread wells up. I walk away from the bed, towards the closed bedroom door, unwilling to go forward, yet unable to resist. I walk, not according to my will, but drawn by some force far stronger. I cringe as I open the door, despite every intention not to.

Once again I am walking down the hallway. Not my hallway, the hallway. It waits outside my bedroom door whenever this repeated horror takes me. It is dimly lit, with a slight glow at the end. And at the end – the stairs.

I know these stairs. I have tread them in my dreams for weeks. They do not exist, yet they are so familiar to me. I seem to know them for somewhere in the real world – dark wooden casing, perhaps mahogany, on one side, and an ornately carved banister on the other. Running up the length of the stairs, a narrow maroon runner. Light filters up from below. Resisting with all my effort, I take the first step. Then another. And another.

This is where I wake up every night, on these stairs. Each night a few steps further down. Last night I was nearly at the bottom, about to tread onto the lower landing. Then it would just be a right hand turn and two more steps to bring me to the dread room below. I descend now with great trepidation. Surely tonight I will reach the room and find… What?

The fourth step from the bottom creaks mournfully, as it did last night. I take the third, then the second, and at last, nearly crawling out of my skin, I tread upon the bottom landing. Then, against every fiber of will in my body, I turn to face the room.

I gasp, in disbelief. The room is naught but an entry hall, ornately decorated, but empty. With relief I take the final two steps, almost cavalierly. Then I remember this entry hall, these stairs. This is the funeral parlor where my brother, Herb, was laid out when he was killed at the age of seven. Dread comes flooding back. Too late. I’m here now.

The hallway has two exits. In front of me lies massive ornately carved double doors. They are nearly closed, there is just a bit of a crack where one door stands slightly ajar. A stream of bright light escapes. And sound. Glasses clink. Many people are talking, as if at some party. To my right stands an open doorway to another, dimly lit room.

I turn my head to the right and peer into the room. It is a long, narrow viewing parlor. At the far end, under furls of black bunting, lies a simple open casket. A chill runs down my spine. From where I stand I can see nothing but the nose of the corpse. I feel drawn towards the parlor, and know that I cannot possibly go that way.

To fight the urge I take a step forward, towards the closed double doors. My body screams in pain, as if I am being punished for defying the fates that are willing me towards the casket. I grit my teeth in determination, and take another step forward. Again, a shot of pain, but this one is less than the last. Each step I take brings me pain and punishment, but each time it is less, each step allows me to breathe more freely. I feel certain that if I can just make it to the double doors I can escape the fate of the viewing parlor.

At last, I stand just outside the doors, but now I fear entering this room too. I decide to peek through the crack, to see what lies ahead. Just as I start to bend close, the door flies open and a man steps out into the hall.

“Here he is now!” my father booms. Inside, heads turn toward me. I freeze in place, taking in the enormous banquet hall that lies on the other side of the door. The longest table I have ever seen stretches out before me, set with fine bone china, leaded crystal goblets, richly wrought silverware. The table itself shines of highly polished wood, and has dozens of chairs arrayed around it.

People sitting around the table stop in mid motion, forks and glasses frozen in mid air as they turn and smile at my arrival. My father, dead these ten years now, steps into the hall and wraps his skeletal arm around my shoulders to usher me in. My mother, gone even longer, rushes forward, with a ghastly smile on her vacant face, to pinch my cheeks with her bony fingers. “Oh look at you,” she admonishes in her most maternal voice. “Why you’re nothing but skin and bone! Come in, come, in,” she urges. “There is plenty to go around.”

My feet try to grow roots into the floor, so that I cannot go in.

Then a child scoots out of her chair and rushes over to me. “Hi, Uncle Richard!” she squeals. While her face has rotted away I recognized the happy voice of my dear niece Alice. I scream.

“You can sit by be,” she beams, as if I had just greeted her cheerily, and points to the empty chair next to hers. “Come on!” And with that she grasps my wrist in a vise-like grip and drags me into the room.

“Sit here!” she commands, the smile now gone.

I sit, and dream no more.