Going back to sleep

I dreamed last night that I was shot in the neck.

For whatever reason, I was walking down a very dark street on a very dark night in one of The City’s numerous ghetto hoods. The street wasn’t curbed, just a strip of asphalt with tiny houses and trailer homes crowding dirt yards and enough trees to pretend there’s some separation between families, some hope of escape from the lives of others.

I was able to collect just enough reflected light to read a street sign on my right. It was stuck to a c-channel post with a no parking sign and some caution sign. On a white rectangular regulatory sign it read, “K-9 POLICE WHEN CHILDREN PRESENT”. I interpreted it to mean that this block was so bad, kids can’t even go outside to play without a watchdog.

As I walked, I noticed a dark form coming up the street toward me. A slight slope towards him, and a thicker tree canopy all but obscured him. But gray-scale contrast analysis confirmed a walking shaped form, growing ever closer with a loose but determined stride. Then I saw the glint from the darkness of his left hand.

I stopped moving. Normally, I’m not afraid of much, but my spider-sense told me that I was in over my head. I threw up my hands out from my shoulders. “I don’t want any trouble. I don’t want any trouble.” I started to backstep slowly.

His voice came as an exaggerated whisper, too mired in the culture of the hood for me to understand. But I stopped to listen. The words came again. And again, I didn’t understand. “What? I don’t want any trouble!”

I took a few tenative steps towards him, hoping to improve my hearing. He could shoot me at any distance, if in fact he was carrying a gun. I didn’t want to risk offending him by ignoring him! As we closed on each other, we gradually entered a lone circle of light from a tiny yard lamp. The light was bright, but narrow and sharply focused. The new asphalt gave little reflectance. His words came once again, “What’chu need!??”

And then I could see him. He was a scroungy, wiry black male, wearing dark blue hospital scrubs. His eyes were bloodshot and crazied, but still very intent. With a tight grip he carried a large caliber automatic pistol in his left. Glock 9? entered my thoughts, but was quickly replaced by his question on which my life seemed to balance. What do I NEED???

Suddenly, I understood. I broke with a smile, “Oh, hey man, I’m good. I’m not looking for anything. Thanks, no problem. I don’t want any trouble.” He was a dealer, and he wanted to know how to meet my need. Thinking he was a business man whose field of trade required serious protection, the gun was no longer a threat. I was simply a patron passing through. We both kept walking in opposite directions, keeping an eye on each other as we moved out of the cone of light.

“You don’t want any trouble… but you found it,” and he slowly brought his whole body around and raised the gun toward me. Not only did I not do business with him, but I saw his face. If I wasn’t a customer, I was a Narc. It was all very clear. Very simple.

I was now going to die.

Both of us were in shadow again, myself being some 15 feet away from the circle of light, and now I was on the darker end of the street. I took a couple of large steps, then put my side towards him and hunkered. I thought maybe if I stopped moving, he’d loose sight of me. Maybe if I presented a thinner, smaller target, he might miss me entirely.

The air was tense, and I seemed to feel the compression wave from the muzzle before I began hearing the report. He shot me. The report from the gun was simultanious to the musical buzz through the air of the bullet, and I heard a big rubber-band-like thump as the bullet tore through the left side of my neck front to back.

It was almost a graze really, but the tissue popping sound I had heard could only have been my neck vein. I started waking from sleep in case the wound was instantly fatal, then quickly returned when the dream me did not die. I began to wonder, Where is the blood? My neck, my shoulder should be hot by now from the blood!

There was no blood.

The pain I had felt, the sound I had heard through my skull — the dull twumping thudder in my neck — had been real.

I woke again — fully this time — and cached the dream in case I needed the information. I was laying on my stomach with my left arm over my head, my face turned toward my left shoulder, creating a sharp constriction in the soft tissues of my neck. In my skull I felt a warm radiating tingle spreading up from my neck and ear first over the whole left side, then over the top and covering my entire head.

I figured it out.

Somehow, I had pinched off the return vein from my head in my neck. Perfectly placed chin and collarbone and muscle and fat had conspired in this unique pose to restrict the flow.

My head had gone to sleep.

But the supply had continued. Had continued to pump blood to my brain. Had continued to measure in pulse after pulse after pulse until my head couldn’t hold the pressure, and with an elastic rubber twump my vein had popped into a new position. Giving in to the pressure, it had found a new position where blood could flow more freely.

It was hard going back to sleep after that.