I always assumed only Sammy and Boyce were reading this. Maybe Charlotte, I thought, and if I really played my cards right I could get Marcel to read it. That's all. Yet knowing this, it is nevertheless disturbing that for over a week I have been silent after writing how a deranged stranger wanted to badly hurt me, and no one even emailed me to see if I'm okay. Sammy and Boyce knew I wasn't dead, but no one out there in cyberspace bothered to check. It makes me think about the funeral director who gave me my mother's ashes (he was unaware of our burial plans, or he would have undoubtedly called the police). He told me, "When they both go you feel like an orphan, no matter how old you are."
Obviously, to those who care, I did not die. I did, however, endure my third recent episode of physical pain. First was the monkey wrestling, then came Rex's car wreck, and now the crazy father. When I went to the Sleep Center for my first shift after the Labor Day trip, I tried to get off the bus a block early and sneak through the back door. That worked, but it turns out the crazy guy had learned I was the janitor, and when I opened the utility closet, he was standing there. In the instant I saw him I thought he was going to deck me. Instead, he poked me with an electric cattle prod. I immediately collapsed and then he shocked me two more times before Marcel heard my boots kicking violently against the wall. When he showed up the crazy man threw the cattle prod at my face, which just seemed really unnecessary.
He sat peacefully in the waiting room with Marcel and a couple other attendants until the police came. They asked me why the man had done this to me. I told them I had never met the man. They asked me if I wanted to hear the man's version. I said yes. The cops said, "His girlfriend is carrying your baby."
I would not have been shocked if the cops had told me the man wanted to kill me "just because." Twice in my life people have told me they would just feel more comfortable if I were dead. I was willing to hear anything, but that his girlfriend was carrying my baby was just too much. When I told Sammy and Boyce the story, Boyce wondered if the man's girlfriend was a starfish. Sammy said that still wouldn't make sense, but it didn't stop them from talking for fifteen minutes about how starfish do and do not reproduce, and for some reason, another five minutes about whether a goat would or would not eat a tin can. ("I'm just saying, the cliche has to come from somewhere." "It would die." "Maybe it would just chew the can, like when it's bored, and then spit it out if it saw a leather boot." "That I could agree to.")
After the cops showed me a picture of the man's girlfriend, I remembered her. She had come to the Sleep Center about a month ago suffering from insomnia. I heard through the wall when she told the attendant that she was a having a dream of a two-headed dragon. When she walked by me in the hallway I told her, "You're pregnant." She asked me if I were serious, as though I'd just informed her that they were towing her car. "Don't assume it's twins. But you're pregnant."
This seemed to explain why the man called his child "my baby." Once the woman verified my obviously true statement, she told him. He wanted her to abort it, but she told him "the psychic at the Sleep Center knew..." and refused to give up the child.
While this explained everything, the cops wanted to know how I knew the woman was pregnant, even when she didn't know. I told them that the woman had dreamed of dragons, which represented three things in dreams: the devil, pregnancy, or the presence of worms somewhere in the dreamer's digestive system. I didn't think it was the first, because I don't believe in the devil. When I once told Rachel that, she said that if I wasn't going to believe in God, I sure as hell better not believe in the devil. "Baby steps," she said. That left pregnancy or the presence of worms. The latter actually works better with insomnia. When I walked out of the utility closet I assumed it was worms, especially when I saw she was a thin woman with a lot of make-up who didn't look particularly educated (which would tell me: worms through lack of cooking food, walking barefoot, or worms through purposeful insertion of tapeworm.). As I got closer, however, she distinctly struck me as a person who would have a complete fool for a boyfriend, one who would certainly not encourage contraception. Therefore, I went with the pregnancy, despite the unusual presence of insomnia.
The police were stunned. I told them it was something I could do often, and when I began to explain to them that really, archetypal images are only the beginning of dream interpretation, they walked away shaking their head.
When I told Boyce and Sammy, they both interrupted to say that--point of order--it shouldn't matter if I believed in the devil, or even if the woman believed in the devil. It still could have been the devil in the dream. It took a few minutes for them to explain exactly why this is so (the starfish/goat conversation had really angered me and threw off my concentration), and I told them I would not make the mistake again.
Anyway, to avoid possible litigation for being assaulted on company property, I got a paid week off. I did some sketches, some bird watching, and some dreaming. I even went on a few calls with Boyce in his locksmith van. If all it takes to get that kind of week is to be shocked with an electric cattle prod, I will begin looking for other potentially parasite-riddled women to eavesdrop on so that I may say, "Excuse me, ma'am, but you are pregnant or in a losing battle with a real or metaphorical evil presence. Possibly both."
