I had a very disturbing dream last night. I was unable to fall back to sleep. Instead I looked at the bedroom door, wondered what might be on the other side, and for the first time that I can remember I thought of Hell as an actual fact.
To the best of my daytime memory it went like this:
I was jogging in the inside of the circumference of a tennis court. The tennis court had a gate made of wood built around the entirety of it. The wood planks stopped roughly two feet from the ground. I noticed two homeless men sleeping under the two foot gap. They both wore blue jeans. Their faces were haggard. The men appeared to be sleeping off a large affliction of some kind.
I jogged to the exit of the tennis court where a third homeless man awoke as I came near. His eyes had dark circles under them. He meant to speak to me, but I jogged passed him and down the hill to the building below. I entered the building. The building resembled an old YMCA and was empty. I stood near the entrance desk. The form of a man I knew appeared, squatting, with his back against the wall on the other side of the desk.
“Hello, Matt.”
He looked healthy. He looked good.
I don’t remember everything he said. I wish I did. I asked him about the three homeless men. He told me they are stuck in a cycle and that they will be stuck. The three men were him, but not him. This was a healthy him.
The dream fluttered and I found myself outside of the YMCA look-a-like building with the man’s son. My best friend.
“I just saw your father.”
“What?”
“I saw your father’s ghost.”
His smiled. “Show me where.”
I took him into the building and showed him exactly where his father had been squatting against the wall. The dream developed into the oddity of being that it is, his father reappeared with a bit of a halo. Now though, he was standing, and his eyes shown a deep imprinted knowing.
“There he is.” I nodded my head toward his father’s ghost.
“Where? I don’t see him?”
“He’s standing right there looking at you.”
Scott was speaking, I can’t recall what he was saying.
“Why can’t I see him?”
Scott replied to both of us, “Because he’s still dead.” Only I heard.
“What did you say, Scott?” He replied. I can’t remember what he said. I wanted to know how I was dead. Scott then shook my hand and said something similar to, “I’m going now.” He then turned toward the wall and opened an unseen door. As though it was a portion of time, or fabric of time, itself.
I thought I might see the entrance to heaven. Scott stepped inside the most pitch black tunnel heading steeply downward that I’ve ever seen, dream or otherwise. He was gone.
-M. Taggart
mtaggartwriter 