Julia Dream

Verse 3: Am I Really Dying?

Will the misty master break me?

Will the key unlock my mind?

Will the following footsteps catch me?

Am I really dying?

Part 2

4

Smelling salts awakened Jake again. He found himself in another small room, but this one was more clinical than penal.

“Wake up, Chambers!” said the officer standing before him. “The doc will be here any minute.”

He was still handcuffed, one pair to each wrist and the other ends clamped around the arms of the old, yellow, metal chair he found himself in. Already his rage was at a fever pitch, and his captivity only furthered it. Jake struck out towards the officer, but the handcuffs kept his hands well short of him.

“Why can’t you fuckers just let me sleep?! Jesus! Is that too much to ask?!”

The officer was sporting a thick pad of gauze over his nose and two very black eyes. Jake recognized him as Lance Hendricks, and he smiled as the beat-up officer pulled his nightstick from its holster and said, “Don’t make me do this, Chambers. The shrink will be here soon enough, then you can tell him your screwed up little story and get locked away until the crazy is gone from you.”

Jake’s face turned threatening. “You’ll be the first to die, Lance. Your broken nose is only the first of your bones I’ll break. I told Nadine that I would kill those who wake me up. You’re now at the top of the list.”

“Good luck with that, psycho boy,” Officer Hendricks retorted with a sneer. His nasally voice made the insult fall flat.

Jake stayed quiet, but even Hendricks backed away a step from the glare. Lance understood, now, that the man he had just insulted and threatened was a true danger. The man meant every word he said, and though he might have been smaller than Hendricks, the officer didn’t think that would be much of a hindrance. Hand remaining on his nightstick, Hendricks backed towards the door and opened it slowly. He spoke a few words that Jake couldn’t understand and closed the door again. Jake smelled the fear pouring out of Lance like Niagara Falls. It was putrid, but he enjoyed it just a little bit.

A couple of minutes of silence and the door to the little room opened. Three men walked in, two more uniformed officers and tall, lanky man with a suit and tie. With Hendricks in tow, the three policemen took their places next to Jake, one on each side and one behind. The man in the suit and tie sat opposite Jake and placed a notebook on the table between them. Jake figured the man to be about six feet, four inches tall, but he couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred eighty pounds. Behind thick-rimmed glasses and slightly shaded lenses, Jake saw bored, glazed-over eyes. He guessed that dealing with murderous psychos on a daily basis could lead to a sort of emotional and behavioral detachment. After all, thought Jake, look at me. I’m ready to commit multiple murders because of a dream, and I’ll have no remorse about it.

The rest of the shrink’s features were gaunt and hard. Frizzy, unkempt hair seemed to bristle from his scalp in graying chaos. That chaos continued past his ears to a scraggly beard that appeared patched with the uneven graying of his beard. Jake had to snicker to himself when he noticed one dark patch of mustache beneath the graying on either side. It gave the man a haunting visage of Adolf Hitler, had the genocidal leader been an American psychiatrist.

“You find something amusing, Jacob?” The shrink’s voice was deep and slow, and it gave the prisoner and the officers a moment of quiet surprise. His use of “Jacob” did not go over well with Jake, but he let the man continue without answering the question. “Alright. We are here to do an initial assessment of patient Jacob Chambers, admitted to St. John’s Hospital Psychiatric Ward for seventy-two-hour observation as recommended by Springfield Police Department. Subject is charged with assault, aggravated assault, and resisting arrest in regard to an earlier attack on his wife and two police officers. Further charges include terroristic threats, attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, and two more counts of assaulting an officer in an incident at Springfield PD. Is all of this information correct thus far, Officer Hendricks?”

“Yes, sir, it is,” Lance answered. Jake could hear the tiniest of tremors in the officer’s response.

“Very well, then,” the doctor continued. “The description of the delusion provided to me seems to be the patient’s unswerving need to return to a dream in which something so important is going to happen that it is worth killing for. Is that correct, Jacob?”

The man’s eyes, for the first time, regarded Jake directly. Again, Jake had the feeling that the good doctor had seen some serious shit in his years of dealing with the psychotic criminal element, and he found Jake to be run-of-the-mill crazy. I can’t even be psychotic in a special way in this goddamn world! The smoldering rage inside was nearing flashover.

“It absolutely is the truth, doc,” Jake said calmly, but he tried to intensify the threat behind his words. It had no effect. “All I wanna do is sleep. Is that so hard?”

“What is in this dream, Jacob, that is so very important that you’re willing to forsake your life here?”

Jake gave a mild snort to the question, “Christ, you’re starting to sound like my wife.”

“Indeed,” the doctor said with a smile. “The one you put in a chokehold and threatened to kill?”

“She was getting in my way, doc. Just like you are now.”

“Are you threatening to kill me then, Jacob?” The doctor leaned closer to him with the question, almost like a taunt to the prisoner handcuffed to a chair across a table.

Jake chuckled mildly and said, “A threat? No! It’s a downright promise. I will rip your throat from your neck and piss in the hole that remains.”

The doctor sighed loudly and shook his head as he sat back. “This is getting us nowhere, Jacob. Why don’t you tell me about the dream that has you so enthralled that you’re willing to commit homicide for it.”

“You wanna know about my dream, doc?” Jake posed the question even as he saw the psychiatrist nod his ascent. With a smile, Jake obliged and began the tale of his short journey in the World of Dreams.

He told it slowly and deliberately, trying to get the good doctor to feel what he himself had gone through. Jake also felt comfort as he recounted the dream. It felt good to have a part of the world that he didn’t belong to as a respite to the drab and dreary world that he belonged to, but that clearly didn’t want him. The doc’s eyebrows raised when Jake recalled the conversation in which Kly told him about Harvey the Armadillo being a totem for the Real World. At the same time, Jake’s mind wandered and wondered. Why can the Dream World have symbolism like Harvey, but the Real World can’t? What makes the Real World real? Comic books tell stories of superheroes with incredible powers. Look at all of the fantasy books full of magic and strange beasts. Why can none of that happen in the Real World? Jake imagined the limits of the Real World, and wondered if there were ways to bend those limits, or to break through them.

He listened to his heartbeat in his ear as he spoke. The vein on his forearm seemed to pulse with the heartbeat, the skin around it glistened with microbeads of sweat. But was it sweat? Jake squinted a little as the words continued to pour from his mouth. Yes! There it is! Surely, that was the glistening sheen that Jake the Hulk had adopted after seeing the prismatic roses. Unexpected strength flowed into him. He let it flow, basking in its glory. The rage swelled with the strength, but he held it at bay as he told the doctor the dream.

At short length, Jake finished telling the story with the most recent waking by Officer Lance only a few minutes ago. He could barely contain himself at this point. Something bad was about to happen in the St. John’s Psychiatric Ward. Jake the Hulk had been channeled from the Dream World, and he was more than ready to show off.

He leaned in towards the good doctor, who was still writing notes in his notebook. “So, whaddya think, doc? Am I crazy?”

Jake didn’t see the officers grab their night sticks, but he knew that they did. On top of the rage that swirled in him like a maelstrom, Jake now felt a bit of frustration. He had never been a violent person. In fact, he abhorred violence. All his life he bore witness to violence, whether it was fights at school, or on the news. America was so full of violence that one did begin to become numb to it. His kids had to practice active shooter drills at their school! Movie theaters, concerts, even breakfast at the local diner wasn’t safe from some maniac with a gun. Jake hated violence… Yet, he had to commit violence to get back to the one thing that mattered to him, the one thing that would matter to the world. And isn’t it ironic? Dontcha think? A little too ironic… Oh, it’s ironic, Alannis!

“Well, you’re obviously a lucid dreamer, Jacob. And I do find it rather fascinating how the dream waits for you now. So, I can understand why you believe the delusion.” The doc’s clinical tone was abrasive and annoying, like a narcissistic older sister talking down her nose to the ignorant little brother. “But Harvey is the key here, I do believe, Jacob. As you said so astutely, the armadillo is a totem for reality. Your brain knows that what you’re seeing isn’t real, and it’s fighting for you. But your fighting against reality is pushing you towards a psychotic break.”

“What is real, doc?” Jake repeated the question intentionally, he wanted to see how the psychiatrist would answer. “Did you ever have one of those falling dreams? You know, the ones where you’re in the dark and you’re just falling. Then, suddenly, you see the instrument of your impending death below you? Spikes… rocks… anything that you know will kill you on impact. And right at the moment of your death, you slam down onto your mattress and wake up. Now, was slamming down on your mattress just a violent convulsion of your muscles, or were you actually levitating and falling? Telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation, mind reading, mind control… All the things that the brain is capable of. All of it has origins within the very organ that produces dreams. All of those things are the product of dreams. And the mind makes them real. So, when you talk to me about reality, I must ask you to define what is real.”

“Death, Jacob. After death, the brain dies. Once the brain is dead, everything within it stops.” The doctor regarded Jake with a quizzical stare, as if he couldn’t understand why Jake was ignorant of one plus one equaling two. “Death is the great equalizer, they say. In the end, we all end up the same… as nothing.”

Jake laughed heartily at the doctor’s words. The laughter came in three quick waves, tempering the rage inside and bringing tears to his eyes. “Are all of you shrinks nihilistic atheists?” And he laughed some more. “Do you truly believe that death is the end, sir? There is so much that you’re missing out on! I can’t comprehend how you people, so learned, know so little. Being clinical has decimated your soul and drained you of any creativity and curiosity. No wonder the worlds of Dreams and Death have abandoned you!”

“I assure you, Jacob, I have dreams.”

“No, you don’t, doc. All you have is the reliving of memories. You’ve lost every bit of flair that could make those memories interesting.” The rage inside began to heat up again. Jake stole a glance at his arm, the skin was glistening and red. Knowing that this doctor, who thought he could assess him and recommend a therapy schedule, had lost most of his humanity for clinical psychology was a travesty. The fact that the man didn’t care is what made Jake livid and ready to kill. “You deserve to die and find out the truth.”

“Now Jacob…”

Jake didn’t give the doctor the chance to finish. He wasn’t Jake the Hulk in the flesh, but he felt the strength coursing through him, and he knew that it was time to release the rage. He pulled his fists together, snapping the handcuffs like string. In a flash, Jake spun and pushed his arms forward. What happened was completely unexpected, and all three officers flew uncontrollably on a pulse of air and connected hard with the wall behind them. Jake was stunned by his ability, but he let it ride. Behind him, the good doctor grunted in disbelief at what he saw. Jumping over the table in a single bound, he grabbed the poor man by the throat and brought his face close enough for their noses to touch. The doc seemed weightless in his grip, making Jake smile. The strength of Jake the Hulk was intoxicating.

“See you on the other side, doc,” Jake whispered.

The man’s neck snapped like a twig. As the eyes glazed over with death, the door to the room slammed open and two orderlies stormed in with guns at the ready. As they fired silently at Jake, he smiled knowing that the guns didn’t hold bullets, they held tranquilizers.

5

“What’s your plan then?” asks Jason.

Jake looks to the tower, nightmarishly tall in a dreamy blue. The shadow of the tower is creeping up on them as the sun follows its track across the sky. It is like day and night as he watches the citygoers walk in and out of the shadow. The roars of Harvey Wallbanger are louder than ever, but nobody, except for them, appears to be making anything of it. Jake looks at Kly, the question on his face as clear as the day.

“They cannot hear the beast, Jake,” she answers. “The people in Harvey’s immediate vicinity, where he is destroying everything, certainly know he’s there. But Harvey belongs to you. You brought him here. And only you can make him go away.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” she says, and Jake catches the first twinges of fear in her voice.

“What’s my plan, Jason?” Jake regards the satyr with confidence, which he will find out in the next moment to be a mistake. “To jump back to the street we were just on, pound the shit out of that damn armadillo, and get my ass back to this tower.”

“Your big boy suit seems to have gone missing, mate.” Jason’s words came out as a humorous insult, but it is obvious that he didn’t intend to be funny.

Indeed, as Jake looks down at his body, he sees exactly what he saw back in the dank room of the psychiatric ward. His skin is still the prismatic red of the roses, but there is no Hulk. The Hulk’s strength he still feels, but not like it was. Something has happened to him, and he doesn’t know what. Jake suddenly feels the need to hurry, as though he’s losing time. An idea comes to mind, and he looks towards Kly.

“Pick me up and fly me back?” he asks her, pleads with her. “Your host can lift me up and get me there so much faster.”

The fairy casts her face down to the cobblestones and shakes her head slowly back and forth. “It is forbidden for the host to touch a dreamer. It can only touch the dreamed. I am sorry, Jake.”

“Then we have no time to waste!” His own voice is now full of panic. “Jason, lead the way.”

As they begin to run out of the plaza and toward the roars of the gigantic armadillo, Jake yells over his shoulder to the fairy. “Take your host and distract Harvey! I don’t care how you do it, just get his attention and see if he follows you!”

He has no idea if what he just said would work, but he watches Kly ascend and order the host of fairies into formation. As he and the satyr run through the streets, Jake tries to make sense of his reversion back to his human self. He remembers the feeling of Jake the Hulk’s strength as he snapped the neck of the good doctor. He remembers the pulse of air he was able to muster without thinking about it (I’ll have to remember that one!). He had taken part of the Dream World with him. But it takes away from my abilities here? The question frightens him because he knows the answer will make his task here, in the Sapphire City, much more difficult. How can he defeat a giant armadillo without Jake the Hulk?

The streets pass by in blurs as Jake’s lungs begin to burn. He pays no attention to the route they are taking, hoping that Jason is taking the most expeditious way. Even Harvey’s roars are nothing more than background noise, despite getting louder and louder as they approach. But what Jake doesn’t see are the people around him panicking and running for their lives. They are going about their business as though it is just another day. Do they not hear the calamity occurring nearby? Jake can hear screams as people are crushed to death, and he can hear the breaking of wood and the cracking of stone as buildings are rent apart. The people around him, though, either can’t hear it, or won’t hear it. I have a lot to learn about this place!

The moments pass by like hours; each person that gets in his way becomes a months-long companion in silence. Jake can see every wrinkle, every pore, every imperfection in the characters ginned up in the minds of the living as they sleep. He finds familiarity in their expressions, and he finds comfort in their existence. It’s always been said that a person will go insane if they can’t dream. As a lucid dreamer, Jake seems to understand that better than most. Yet, in the here and now, his quest to find Julia Dream is driving him mad in the Waking World. He chooses that title over the Real World. Sure, it’s semantics that really isn’t here nor there. But it gives him peace of mind, nonetheless.

“How much farther?” he asks Jason.

The satyr responds with a question of his own. “Can’t you tell by the clamor up ahead, mate?”

Jake lifts himself out of his reverie and realizes that they’re nearly to Harvey’s path of destruction. The noise becomes a din in his ears and the screams of the people flood him with a sense of guilt. It’s his fault, after all, that they’re dying. As they reach the edge of the destruction, Jake wonders if the people here are actually dying. Can they die? Or do they simply vanish like the dreams of childhood often do as we age? This last thought makes Jake angry. He remembers when his dreams began to change. The wonders of the dreams he had as a child vanished quickly and were replaced by the doldrums of maturity. It wasn’t until he began dreaming lucidly that the greatness of dreaming returned to him. Maturity shouldn’t be a prison sentence in the Waking World, he thinks. Why should we subject ourselves to the limited possibilities of one-third of reality?

Harvey doesn’t move fast, but he moves with purpose. Kly and her fairies fly around the armadillo, desperately seeking its attention, but to no avail. Jake sees the bodies of hundreds of dead fairies among the ruins, and he looks at the creature’s eyes. They are searching. It’s Jake that Harvey wants. To crush his dreams is the goal, to push him back to the Waking World and the prison he’s lived in for so long.

As he watches the giant armadillo rampage the block from his hiding place among toppled timbers and piles of stone, Jake wakes up to what reality truly is. Is this the reason that Julia is desirous of him? It all seems to make sense now. Reality has three worlds, just as humans have three aspects. Mind, body, and soul make up the human body. The mind lives in the World of Dreams, where it can learn and explore. It can free itself from the shackles of the body and do things beyond Waking World experience. The body lives in the World of Waking, where it can be challenged and pushed to its limit. It holds itself to account and teaches patience and perseverance that the soul needs in the World of Death. Indeed, the soul lives in the World of Death, even while we’re alive, where it can prepare us for the something that is greater than the three-world experience of life. Jake knows, without a doubt, that what we think we know about the afterlife is nothing compared to what it truly is.

And there is the giant armadillo, Harvey Wallbanger, the essence of Jake’s Waking World experience, intruding onto this world and making a mess of it. Harvey (me) is destroying the dreams of people Jake doesn’t know, nor ever will. What gives him the right to take those things away? Nothing, he thinks. Hulk or no Hulk, he must do something!

“Jake, what’re you doin’?” asks Jason, the panic clear in his voice.

“I have to do something! These people don’t deserve to die!”

Jason shakes his head vigorously from side to side, “You can’t! You have to get the dress. It’s the only way to end this.”

Jake spies the little cottage across the way, unsure of how it escaped any damage from the giant Harvey. But the satyr is right, he has to get the dress and fulfill the promise Julia had made to him. Are their lives worth sacrificing? Jake is torn. He’s also not a hero. But I can be, he thinks as an idea pops into his head. The Hulk left him here because he channeled it into another world, but that doesn’t mean that his lucid dreaming talents are over.

Jason sees Jake grow taller, his clothes change. He is now wearing black leather pants, cowboy boots, and a black leather jacket over a black t-shirt. Jake also sports a pair of dark sunglasses. In his hands, Jake holds a minigun, the linked ammo already fed into it.

“Trust me,” Jake says with a poor imitation of an Austrian accent.

The satyr is startled when Jake’s left eye lights up red through the sunglasses. Jake the Terminator struts slowly into the destruction, never removing his gaze from Harvey. He waits until the giant armadillo spots him. The roar is deafening as the beast recognizes Jake. Once again, Harvey’s eyes flare red with flame, and Jake can see that he’s even larger now. From the ground to the top of his carapace, Harvey must stand around fifty feet tall, but the sight of Jake churns him into a frenzy, and he picks himself up on his hindlegs. Another roar rips through the air as Harvey exposes his belly. He hears Kly call out to her host, unable to make out her words. But the fairies, in unison, back away from the armadillo and dart straight up into the air in retreat.

Let’s do this! Jake takes aim where he expects Harvey’s heart to be. “Hasta la vista, baby!”

His finger depresses the trigger, and the rounds begin their short flight to Harvey’s soft underside. In a couple of moments, though, Jake stops firing. He looks to the linked ammo being fed into the gun. They’re real bullets, to be sure. But what he doesn’t understand is why the gun is firing eggs. He can make out the splatters across Harvey’s body. It’s yolk and white, not 7.62 fragments and blood. As if in response to seeing it is not in danger, Harvey pushes himself back down onto all fours and stares down Jake. The armadillo snorts and grunts, the expelled air kicking up clouds of dust.

“You better get out of there, mate!” Jason yells at him. “We must get to the cottage!”

Jake shakes his head furiously, “No! I will not let any more of these people die because of me!” Especially, if I’m supposed to be their king!

The ground trembles as the giant armadillo begins to charge. The T-rex roar shakes the air as he gains speed. Harvey is about sixty yards away and closing fast. Jake knows that fear is his enemy, not Harvey Wallbanger. And he is petrified with it at this moment. Most people relate this type of fear to when they are facing their own imminent death. To shuffle off your mortal coil is one thing, to have it pulled from you in a situation you can’t control is an altogether different monster. In all his forty-plus years of life, Jake has never had a moment where he felt his life was in danger. Ironically, this moment doesn’t belong in this category, and Jake knows that. The armadillo wants to take him back to where he is supposed to be. Harvey is a part of Jake, his connection to his body and the Waking World.

Jake looks Harvey directly in the eyes and smiles. The only way to defeat Harvey is to die. To rid himself of the totem of the Waking World, Jake has to embrace death. He stands his ground as Harvey barrels towards him. Jake’s petrifying fear has become stolid fortitude. He knows that the armadillo won’t touch him. He knows it like he knows his way around the house with his eyes closed. Harvey is now at twenty yards and shows no signs of slowing. Jake doesn’t care, he stands his ground. Ten yards… five yards.

“Jake!” he hears Jason yell at the last instant.

Harvey hits Jake full force, sparing nothing. Even in the Dream World, he feels the air pushed out of his lungs. No breath remains to even scream as he flies over the rubble and down the street. Jake doesn’t know how he could’ve been so wrong, and now the terror has its grip on him. He looks over his shoulder, there in the distance, yet approaching quickly, is the statue of a Roman centurion, shield at the ready and spear extended out before him. Jake is on target to take the spear in the center of his back. Just like the falling dream… Time becomes extended, and Jake continues to study the statue. He can see the ornate work and imagines the time it must have taken to carve it. There are scars of previous battles on the centurion’s shield, delicate hairs on his jaw, splintered wood on his spear, and even mud stains on his sandals. Then Jake notices the butterfly on the man’s shoulder. No color but that of the stone does the butterfly have, but Jake knows that the insect’s wings are red with a prismatic overlay.

The tip of the spear touches him…

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