A Spider's Nightmare

A Spider's Nightmare
By John Riccobono

Dreams. We all have dreams. We all have nightmares. Sometimes our
nightmares seem so very real, scary how real they can be. Haunted by
severe fabrications of pure and utter fear. You close your eyes, next
thing you know your hurling towards the ground at incredible speeds,
every moment growing closer and closer to your inevitable demise. You
can feel the wind in your face, and your heart racing from its bind in
your chest down to your feet. You really are falling to your death, you
have no idea how you got their, but while its taking place you
unwillingly accept your situation and are left with no choice but to
scream as your subconscious has ruthlessly condemned you to unspeakable
horror. You wake up to the greatest feeling of relief; thank god that
dream wasn't real.
We've all been chased by monsters, gone to school naked, maybe even
somebody died. They say if you die your dream, you die in real life due
to shock. Could that possibly be true? What if the dreams or nightmares
rather seem so real that they take over our lives. Living a life in
fear of sleep dreading a hard nights worth of terrible dreams. In these
cases insomnia could be the only answer. Your reality is bullied and
ravished by your relentless, pursuing subconscious. But dreams aren't
real. They are merely a state of abstraction, a trance. Not real. Just
the movies in your mind. You fall asleep after a long day and subject
yourself to a series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations
occurring involuntarily in the mind.
What if your subconscious is so powerful, it's hard to distinguish
what's real and what's not. Ryan Dunnigan knew this all too well. Ryan
Dunnigan had too many dreams.
Still to this day, those that knew him still speak of his incredible
dreams. He was completely tortured by what was not real. Every time he
closed his eyes, constantly an uphill climb, struggling an epic battle
with his own ideas and perceptions. Was he insane? It's tough to say.
The more dreams he had, the more taken in his mind became. The more
time that swallowed him, the higher the intensity of his mind. A
complete victim to his own twisted distortions of what was real and
what was not.

* * * * * * * * *

He turned his head and gasped at the site of the dark shadowy prison
bars that enclosed his person into a cell. He felt like a caged dog
yearning to escape the entrapment and run free in the back yard. What
had he done to merit such inhumane torture?
Beads of sweat danced across his forehead. It was hot. Hot as hell. It
was hell. It had to be. Ryan Dunnigan was under strict lockdown, in
what appeared to be a maximum-security prison. He stood up and with
that, an encompassing head rush caused him slight dizziness. He looked
down at his body and noticed an alien, bright orange jumpsuit with a
prison number embroidered on a patch that hugged the left part of his
chest. The cell was incredibly small, and with every waking moment
seemed to get smaller and smaller, squeezing the insanity out of his
head, drip by drip.
He decided to walk over to the bars in an effort to study and peruse
them. With his right arm he slowly went to clutch one of the bars,
inside his heart hoping and praying that his hands would come up with
nothing but a handful of air, proving this to be just another
nightmare. The bars weren't there he told himself. He was dreaming.
This had to be a dream. His hand slowly closed in on the bar. His
fingers were shaking, inches from the entrapment, his heart racing in
fear.
At the very instant that his fingers would have touched the prison bar,
his heart still pounding, he jerked his hand away as if the bar were
heated to 100 degrees, not wanting to be burned. He chickened out. He
couldn't bring himself to touch the bars, they looked so real. He went
back over to the bed and sat down. The bed felt too real. His eyes
wouldn't break stare with the bars. They looked almost as if they were
taunting him. Mocking and jeering at him. They seemed almost alive.
This cell wants me in here, he thought. This cell is too damn real. God
help me, I'm in prison. I'm a prisoner. This thought struck him and
provided a stone cold, grim icy look on his face.
His head hurt. He examined his every memory trying to provide an answer
to this daunting question that had been plaguing his every thought.
What had he done to be in jail? That was almost more horrifying then
the idea of being locked away into a cell with only his thoughts to
keep him company. Every thought his mind attempted to make seemed to
drown in a violent ocean of confusion. His brain was clouded with a
terribly menacing storm of unanswered questions, all lingering and
probing his every notion.
He continued to dismiss the fact that he was merely having a nightmare,
because usually when dreaming, you don't realize your dreaming. The
fact that he was even struck with such a whim was enough to dismiss it
as a possible conclusion.
After a few long moments of disarray, he managed to get himself
standing once again. He took a deep breath and sized up his foe. He
stared those cold icy bars down, reaching deep within his gut to
formulate enough strength mentally to make another attempt at grasping
those teasing, troubling columns separating him from his freedom. He
used part of his sleeve to wipe the moist sweat that had invented
itself upon his brow. With that he took those four long steps back to
the cell bars, bit his lip and reached with both hands, slowly wrapping
his fingers around two of the bars.
The dark, bleakly stained bars sent a crisp, nerve twisting tingle down
his back, leaving a trail of goose bumps that caused his whole body to
give a sudden shudder. They were real. The horror sprouted into
insanity that slowly got more and more intense eventually leading him
to a slight mental train wreck.
He slowly opened his lips and whispered, "I've gone mad." He looked up
at the concrete ceiling above and with all his might yelled, "GOD HELP
ME!"

"Ryan! Ryan! Wake up!" Her words spoke the voodoo that only a beautiful
woman could be capable of.
He had been dreaming. He sat up and turned his attention to the
beautiful brunette with blue eyes that was staring right back at him.
She had a look of utter concern.
"Madeline. Oh my god, Mattie. That was the worst one yet."
"The jail cell again?" She was very aware of her husbands haunting
nightmares.
"Yea but this time it was worse. It wasn't the jail cell that scared me
the most. It was the fact that I was losing my mind. I actually felt
that I was losing my mind. Do you have any idea what that feels like,
Mattie?"
She knew by the sound of his voice that his fright was genuine.
"Maybe we should see the psychiatrist." She used the term 'we' in an
effort to help ease his mind. Obviously it was he who was in need of a
shrink. She loved him though, and he knew it. That in it self rendered
greatly needed relief.
"No. I think I'm okay now. It just felt so real." He looked at her,
peering deep into her eyes. He always loved her beautiful big blue
eyes. Often he would tease her saying she secretly put in blue contacts
when he wasn't looking, not to say she didn't have blue eyes, just that
they were so very intensely blue. The brightest hue of blue he had ever
seen. It was beautiful. Whenever things were heavy weighing on his mind
he would just think of her and things suddenly didn't matter at all. He
truly loved her far deeper then was allowed within the limits of the
heart beating out of his chest. She kept him sane. If only she was
there in his head to monitor his dreams. Keep me sane in my dreams
baby, please. No, you can't do that can you? His love for her was the
balance he would forever need. He was no mad man when she was
around.
But oh how out of touch he felt sitting in that cell. His head seemed
miles away from his head.
She caught him staring blindly in somewhat of a daze. "Ry? You sure
you're okay? You need some water?"
Her inquires snapped him out of it. He looked at her, "I love you,
baby."
"I love you, too, Ryan Dunnigan. I always will."
That statement seemed to echo in his head causing him to have a giant
smile that commanded his facial expressions. Seeing her was like some
wonderful drug.
He decided that he would rather not sleep for the rest of that
night.

* * * * * * * * *

That next morning he confided to his kitchen table having in depth
conversations with himself, discussing the places his mind had been
within the past twenty-four hours.
Those damn prison bars. They seemed so damn real. He had trouble
forgetting the sensation he got when he grabbed them. He would get
almost something of a flash back just thinking about it. Every time, an
instant shudder down his spine. Something about how the steal felt
seemed to touch him deep, right down to the very bearings of his
soul.
At this point, his troubles enhanced greatly. He was starting to feel
the after affects of that encompassing insanity he had felt in his
dream, only now he wasn't dreaming. Where was Madeline, she'd sooth his
mind.
"Madeline!" He yelled, echoing through the house.
From upstairs he heard her faint voice through the walls, "I'm here
Ryan. Be right down I've got something to show you."
Her voice pleased him.
Any uneasy thoughts he was battling were immediately swept away by the
look of his princess. She came running down the stares with the look on
her face of an innocent teenager about to go to her senior prom. She
was wearing a beautiful dress that she was modeling for him. She had
spoken of a banquet she was going to attend or something, Ryan was a
little unsure exactly of what she had said, he had other things on his
mind when she was discussing it.
It didn't matter though. What mattered was that she was absolutely
stunning. She was wearing a tight blue dress with a slit down the side,
carefully revealing her left leg from her lower thigh down. She was so
beautiful, and so sexy that any immediate ideas he had were dismissed
and replaced by the thought of grabbing his ravishingly gorgeous young
wife and taking her up into the bedroom for some early morning love
making.
As it turns out, that's very well how things went that morning.

* * * * * * * * *

Hot again. Hot as the very darkest depths of hell.
Losing touch.
Where am I? He was distraught and disheveled.
He opened his eyes. Doomed to this hole again. Those bars. Those
terrible, terrible bars. He hated them with an undying passion. The
worst part of all was that she was nowhere to be found. He was alone.
Completely, and horrifically alone.
A slight turn of his head provided a view for the first time, out
beyond the bars. There was a dark silhouette in the distance, down what
appeared to be a hallway, filled with cells just like the one he was
in. What was that figure?
He could almost feel his mind fly off into the clouds, to dance and
fiddle away into nothingness. Again he saw movement of that dark, evil,
lurking predator, meandering up and down the hallway, probably sucking
the hope out of all the rest of inmates in this madhouse. The cell
across the way was empty. Perhaps he was the only prisoner.
Then it struck him. He knew who that daunting figure was. It was surely
the devil and he had died and gone to hell. Surely it was hell, it had
to be. He was viciously kidnapped from his beauty and sentenced to be
judged in this prison, in this hell, by the devil who was now only a
few short paces away from his confinement.
With every step that echoed down the hallway that the evil dark man
made, another piece of Ryan's mind dribbled from his heart and poured
onto the ground, to be licked up by the vermin that paraded down every
corridor of this prison. Step, step, step, step. Each pace screamed
horror into his soul. With every waking moment he seemed to shiver in
pure fear and terror of who was coming for him.
"Get away from me! Stay away!" His voice was flustered with the most
intense and purest panic.
That's when he heard it. He heard the voice of his pursuer.
"Cell five! Quiet down." It mimicked that of a human voice.
That rogue demonic warrior and his dastardly influencing tricks. He was
no human. Not a chance.
"Hail Mary, full of grace-"
"Cell five, this is your last warning, quiet down or I'm coming over
there."
"For the love of God," he began, "Stay far, keep away!" The fright in
his voice was topped only by the agony in his heart.
"That's it." The figure came brisk fully walking over.
"Nooo!" He screamed!
His head rushed with pain, causing him to faint and pass out to the
barren, musty floor. Within seconds he regained himself opening his
eyes in fearful anticipation of what was looking at him.
Yet what he saw did not scare him. Of course, it was her.
"Jesus Christ Ryan, what the hell are you doing?"
He had fallen to the ground, lying on straight on his stomach on the
floor. Only it wasn't anything of a jail cell, but of his
kitchen.
He was sweating, and shivering slightly.
"Honey?" He looked up, quite disoriented.
"Ryan, what the hell happened to your eye?" She noticed some blood
coming down from a cut on his eye.
He hopped up off the floor and ran over to the mirror of the bathroom
connected to his kitchen.
His face had a little cut near his left eye, which spilled a slight
stream of blood running from it. A moist towel was the perfect
remedy.
"Why were you on the floor? What the hell happened?"
The thing was, he didn't know what happened. He must have passed out
cause he had no memory of even being in the kitchen.
"I tripped over the damn kitchen table's chair." He didn't want to
worry her.
"Fell down and slammed my head on the floor. I'm all right though,
Hun, I'm a trooper. Where the band aids?"
He suddenly felt a stinging sensation in his rib.
"Don't think we have any left, but you can check the-"
"Jesus!"
She jumped. "What? What is it?"
"My rib is killing me. Damn it!" He was in pain.
"Here, let me get you some Advil, go lay down." She checked her
cabinet where the Advil should have been but there was nothing. She
walked over into the bathroom and none their in the medicine cabinet
either.
Ryan laid with his head back on the couch. His head pounded, his eye
bloody, and his rib was really aching him. None of this bothered him
more than the dream he had while he was passed out. Had he been sleep
walking? That couldn't have been. He was dressed in street clothes with
his sneakers still freshly tied tightly. It was hot outside; perhaps
the heat had gotten to him. Must have just collapsed on his way to get
something to drink in the kitchen.
That thought scared him. Simply passing out and still being haunted by
the nightmares. Why was this happening to him? What had he done to
deserve this?
Madeline came waltzing into the living room where Ryan was sleeping.
She was carrying a nice cold glass of water to ease her husband. She
was always very nurturing.
"You sure you're okay, hun? Feeling a little dizzy cause of the heat
outside? Maybe we should rearrange the setup in there so the kitchen
chairs aren't in the way of everything."
"Yeah, I'm okay, but I am feeling a little dizzy. I think I should
just rest for a second. Man my head is killing me." He reclined and got
comfy.
"Okay baby doll. Just yell for me if you need anything. You look
awfully tired."
With that he rested his head and so the nightmares continued, this
time the worst of them all.

* * * * * * * * *

A tall, bearded man with a hard-edged look on his face sat staring
directly at Ryan. His was dressed handsomely in some sort of blue
uniform with a badge on his chest, and his right hand tightly gripping
a Tommy bat. He seemed winded and had a slight bit of sweat under his
armpits.
He gave a deep breath and glanced at Ryan, "Now listen boy, You're
going to have to get a hold of yourself. I know your situation is a
tough one, but you can't be attacking guards. Look at you now, all
bullied up. Now I got this on my conscience too, I'm supposed to be the
good guy of the guards around here and you got me whackin' on your
skull. I hate doin' that kinda shit."
"Attack you?" He softly muttered.
"Attack me? I opened up this cell here to see what you were praying to
God about. You got the guards all spooked out with that constant crazy
worship. This is prison boy this ain't no church. Before I could muster
one word you go on swinging your fists at me. That's why I had to whack
you across your eye there."
"You did this to me?" He was shocked. Dreams aren't real.
"I sure as hell did. And it wasn't even enough to calm you down. For
Christ's sake, boy, how do you think I got this?" He pointed to his
right wrist that had incredibly deep bite marks sunken into it. Not
quite enough to make a man bleed but definitely enough to make him
react. "You damn near swallowed my whole arm."
"Did you do this to me?" He responded by showing grimace as he motioned
towards his rib.
"Of course I did, Son. Where the hell ya been? You got damn amnesia or
something? You were bitin' me so I socked ya in the gut to bust you off
me. Glad I did too otherwise I'd be going home to my wife with one hand
missing. You got some crazy bite in you."
"What'd you do to her?" He feared for where his beautiful Madeline
was.
"Her? What crazy nonsense you talkin' now boy?"
"My Madeline." He responded.
What the officer said next blew Ryan's mind.
"Madeline?" The cop said in a laughing tone. "Listen boy, I don't know
what the hell is going on in that mind of yours, but last time I
checked, they don't allow pretty broads on death row."
Death Row!! How can this be death row? Where is my baby? What happened
to my baby? Get me out of this hell! Somebody please!
His words came in a high-pitched whisper, "Death Row? I am on Death
Row?"
"You must be losing your mind, son. For what you did, you're lucky
Death Row is all you got."
What had he done?
His eyes opened. He was in his living room again.

* * * * * * * * *

He was scared. He was terrified. He never wanted to sleep again.
He got up and turned the television on and stared at it for hours. The
only thing was, he hadn't watched a single thing. After a while, he
helped his sanity by talking to his wife. Without her he surely would
have lost his mind, long ago. Things seemed almost at ease, but it was
short fallen after what happened later on that night.

* * * * * * * * *

Madeline lay ready for a night's worth of calm dreams in her bed, but
the other side of the bed was empty. Ryan was staring deep into his own
eyes in the bathroom mirror, now hampered by giant saddlebags beneath
them. He ran his hands under frigid water and splashed them onto his
face. He didn't want to sleep. He didn't ever want to sleep.
"Hunny?" Madeline summoned.
He heard her calls but ignored them.
"Hunny-baby, why don't you come to bed and keep me warm?"
Again no response from Ryan.
But again she attempted, "Ryan Joseph! Come over here and join me
please, baby."
Ryan came minutes later and got into the bed, his eyes completely open
and aware.
"Death Row." He started.
"What?"
"Fucking Death Row, Mattie."
"What about Death Row?"
"My fucking nightmares, Mattie."
"Please don't curse at me, Ryan. I know they are causing you a lot of
grief but it's just a nightmare, we've all had them. They'll go-"
"Not like this you haven't!" He forcefully interjected. "You've never
experienced this, Madeline. It's more than a nightmare. It's too real
to be just a nightmare. And things are happening to me."
"What things?" She was worried.
"I didn't fall over any kitchen chairs."
"You didn't? What the hell happened then? Jesus, Ryan you are scaring
me."
"I'm scaring me more, Mattie. I don't know how I ended up on the floor.
I must have been sleepwalking or something, but the point is I was
dreaming while I was out. There was a man this time, a guard." He
stopped for a minute to gain himself.
"And what happened?"
"Well he came over to me in my dream. That's when I woke up and saw
you. I was staring right at that guard in my dream, then woke up only
to be staring right at you."
She began to joke, "Well was I prettier than he was?" She was trying to
ease him a bit.
He ignored her jest. "When I woke up I was bleeding. And my rib was
killing me too, only I didn't even seem to notice it till minutes
later."
"You were probably in shock."
"It still hurt, and I was still bleeding from my eye."
"Well, what in hell does that have to do with your dreams? It doesn't
make sense."
"The thing is I dreamt again later and it was perfect."
"What was perfect?" She was horribly confused.
"The man in my dream . . . what he said to me. It was just too
perfect."
She sat there silently waiting for an explanation.
"He told me I attacked him, and he defended himself and hit me
back&;#8230;"
"Okay," she wanted him to continue.
"&;#8230;Right in the eye, and in the rib." He paused.
She said nothing. Then a slight smile escaped from her lips. "I don't
know what's causing these crazy nightmares, but you sure do have an
active imagination."
He was growing angry, "You are not understanding, this is not my
imagination, it seems too real, its just so damn real. It's as real as
you are to me right now, and it's more than that."
"What's more than that?"
"What I'm trying to say is that&;#8230;" He didn't know how to tell
her that he honestly believed that his dreams were somehow manifesting
themselves into his real life.
"What is it, honey? You can tell me." Her hand now touching his ever so
slightly. This comforted him greatly. She really did keep him
sane.
"Well, somehow, things that are happening to me when I sleep, make
things happen to me in real life."
She pulled her hand away. "Are you trying to tell me if some weird guy
in your dreams does something to you&;#8230;" she raised her voice
and emphasized, "&;#8230;In your head. Then it happens to you in
real life?"
"I guess I don't understand it either."
"That's it, first things first we are seeing a psychiatrist tomorrow.
We'll see what's going on in that mind of yours, Ryan. Try and sleep
now."
"No, I think I'm going to stay up for a while, I'm not really tired."
The truth was he was exhausted.
"Well don't stay up too much longer, I need someone holding me while I
sleep, and you seem good for the job." She smiled.
Ryan got up out of bed and back to the bathroom. That's when things got
ugly. That's when he saw it.
He noticed something out of the corner of his eye as he again was
staring himself in the mirror. An incredibly large tarantula sitting
motionless on his arm. It's hairy legs and numerous eyes striking fear
through the Ryan's heart.
"Jesus Christ!!" He yelled.
He shook his arm and jerked it around rapidly in an effort to toss it
off him. His right arm flailed about violently and his whole body
frantically tossing himself about the room. He stopped to gain himself.
Was it really there? He no longer felt it on his arm, but then again he
didn't really feel it the first time either. He was scared stiff as he
sat breathing heavily with his back against the wall in a sitting
position. Looking down at his arm to further investigate the spider was
the last thing he wanted to do. It was still there, and now it had some
company.
The tarantula, seemed untainted by his violent arm bursts, sat sitting,
clutching his arm like as if it would stay positioned there forever. It
was no longer alone. Ryan froze. His forearm now was the current home
of a giant tarantula, and three jet black, vicious looking Black
Widows, all surrounding the tarantula.
He closed his eyes in reaction to the medley of fears that engulfed
him. Upon opening them, he peeked again, and they were gone. All four
of the spiders were gone. Just like that, vanished. He could finally
breath again.
What in God's name was happening to him?
Now not only was he haunted in his dreams, but now his consciousness
was inhabited by manifestations. They were manifestations weren't they?
There couldn't possibly have been a giant tarantula on his arm, not to
mention the three incredibly poisonous black widows.
He got on his hands and knees, still trembling, to investigate the
bathroom floor. Nothing behind the toilet, all the bathroom tiles
glistened brilliantly as if they had been cleaned earlier that day. Not
a single solitary sign of any sort of arachnid presence. Perhaps he was
dreaming again. No that's impossible; he could see through the cracked
door that Madeline rested silently on her side of the bed, seemingly
unaware of any of this outlandish activity taking place only yards away
from her. Madeline had always had no place in his nightmares. She was
on the complete other end of the spectrum.
But then how could these terrible creatures find their way here? Had to
be a dream, maybe just a simple hallucination. After all, animals of
this variety lived in far off parts of the country. At least tarantulas
did. There had been a case of a black widow that had bitten an infant
and killed it a few towns away several years back. But that family had
a house whose backyard was surrounded by woods. This house had no sign
of woods within miles. And that's completely beyond reason anyway
because where the hell did the big boy come from?
(Losing my mind.)
(Get a grip, Ryan.)
He stood back up again and stared himself in the mirror. Again,
splashed some cold water on his face to mollify his situation. Boy,
what did you do to deserve all this? What in God's name is going on
around here? Then his thoughts wandered back to that prison guard in
his dream. Something stuck out in his mind about what he said.
For what you did boy, you're lucky you got Death Row.
What could he possibly have done? Nonsense. Just a nightmare, Ryan.
Your old imagination just getting the best of you. Mom always said
you'd make a great fiction writer, ever since you were a little boy
coming up with these demented stories, mostly ones with some kind of
grizzly murder mysteries.
(I was a strange kid. As I'm finding out, I'm an even stranger
adult.)
Eventually he left that bathroom and paced around for a lot of the
night. And even so, eventually found himself in his other world once
again.

* * * * * * * * *

Awake. Ryan found himself staring at a huge collection of his favorite
foods. Was he dreaming? He had to have been; no way Madeline could have
come up with such delicious pleasantries. There was freshly cooked ham,
a side of baked potatoes, and even some freshly sliced white meat
turkey. He loved Madeline to death, but she wasn't much of a cook.
Often she attempted, and sometimes she wasn't half bad, but the
majority of the time&;#8230;let's just say Ryan was no stranger to
fast food restaurants.
The only thing more exciting than the delicious taste of every morsel
of food to enter his body was the vivacious smile that beckoned itself
from his left ear all the way to his right ear. Finally a good dream. A
vacation from those horrible jail cell dreams. For the first time in a
while, Ryan's mind was at great ease.
But this ease was short lived.
When he was done with all his food, and feeling quite content and
satisfied, he was accompanied by a familiar face. No it wasn't
Madeline. The crisp brown beard ruled that out. It was him. That prison
guard from his nightmares that roughed him up so badly. What the hell
was going on now?
"Taste good boy? Quite a choice you got there, then again everybody
usually goes all out for their dinner." He seemed to be almost
patronizing him.
"What is this?" Again confused.
"What's what? Boy, you sure did too many drugs on the outside. You've
gone and flipped your lid, this is your supper."
"What supper?"
The guard was getting frustrated with Ryan's clueless demeanor. "Your
last supper. Damn well get to choose just about anything you wanted to
eat. Freshly baked ham and turkey, and them tators. Mmmmm."
LAST SUPPER? Immediately his stomach ached and hurt. He felt as though
he was going to vomit, but nothing came of it. The guard wasn't talking
about anything from the bible; this was his last dinner, which meant
one thing. He was a dead man. Dead man walking! He could hear it
ringing in his ears already. If this was the last time he was to eat
his evening dinner, that means within a few hours he was going to die.
Executions on death row were always done at midnight.
Tears came streaming down his face.
"Tell me something, Sir."
"Sir?" The guard was surprised. "That's the first time you ever called
me Sir since you came here, in fact this is the first time you've
resembled anything other than a vegetable. All it took was a nice home
cooked meal I guess." Inside, the officer knew that probably being
faced with death was the true reason for his change in behavior. He
didn't want to mention that though, people could be pretty unstable in
this kind of situation.
"I'm not well." His face had gone pale, almost lifeless. "Just one
question. What'd I do to get myself thrown in here?" His curiosity was
overwhelming. What could have his imagination conjured up for him in
this dreamland, this hellhole? It's just a dream, he thought. Pretty
soon you will wake up and see her and everything will be fine.
"You really can't recall, can you boy?"
"What could I possibly have done to end up here?"
How the cop responded culminated this nightmare into the nightmare of
all nightmares. The unthinkable, the preposterous, the
unimaginable.
"Well, don't know the best way to put this but. You shot your wife in
the head."
"What? Madeline? Impossible. I would never!" His voice was enraged with
fury.
"I find it hard to believe that you don't remember a damn thing. You
confessed it to the judge right in court, boy, what the hell is wrong
with you?"
He was now standing, his head pounding, his wrists swamped with sweat.
"I would never kill my wife! Never would the thought even enter my
mind!"
"Well I guess in situations like yours, son, you might not really have
been in control. But now you got to pay it back boy, two lives."
"What situation? What two lives? Now it's two?"
"Yes, your wife and her lover."
Ryan's face went blank. He dropped to his knees.
"Her lover?"
"If it makes you feel any better at all, which I know is impossible, if
I caught my wife fucking another guy while I wasn't
there&;#8230;well I shouldn't speak of such things. In fact I
shouldn't even be having this conversation."
Ryan's knees gave way from under him and he fell to the floor.

* * * * * * * * *

He stood up and spoke in garrulous mumbling. Utterly confused and
incredibly disoriented, he ran down what was now his fresh smelling
kitchen. He felt just as mad now as he had in his dreams. Something was
terribly wrong.
For a moment he stood quiet trying to collect himself. His mouth was
parched, and his ribs hurt very badly. He had to see a doctor, but more
importantly, he had to find Madeline and make sure she was all right. A
deep, distant feeling was swirling around his conscience haunting it
with images of a dead corpse that looked too much like Madeline. What
had he done? He couldn't have killed his wife, he would never.
He got rushed out the door into the living, bumping the side wall as he
made a turn to fly up the stairs in an urgent mission to find his
beloved bride. Images kept jumping into his brain, almost straight out
of his dreams of his murderous alter ego who could never possibly
exist. What were in his dreams and real life were two completely
different habitats. But why were those nightmares sending true waves of
pure fear into every network of veins in his body?
For a moment as he fumbled and follied his way up the stairs,
constantly bumping from against the walls in disorientation, resembling
a seasoned drunkard trying to find his way to pass out, he had visions
of turning the corner only to find his wife in bed with another man
viciously murdered in cold blooded jealousy.
"Hunny?" He cried. "Hunny, are you there?"
No answer.
He turned the corner and he saw their bed, only his wife was absent
from it. What the hell happened to his beautiful Mattie?
His heart seemed to stop pounding in his chest. He was frozen in
fear.
"Ryan? What are you doing?" It was her, she came walking in from the
bathroom with her hair freshly brushed, and thankfully no make up on
her face, he hated when she wore make up. She looked like an
angel.
Relief overwhelmed him. "Baby! Oh thank god! Thank God you're okay." He
ran over and hugged her, bumping into her and grasping her with her
arms laying flat against her sides almost confused by the elaborate
hug.
She slowly put her arms around him, "Are you okay? You look like you've
seen a ghost. What's a matter with you, this is getting serious."
Still hugging, with a huge smile covering his face, "I'm sorry baby, it
was just those damn nightmares again, they are getting worse but its
okay now, its really really okay." He was overjoyed. "Lets lay on the
bed, I need to relax."
She took a deep breath, "Alright," and sat down on her side.
"Jesus, Madeline, these nightmares are making me lose my mind. Just
stay here and talk with me for a while, I need to get my mind off that
place."
"That place?" She asked.
"The nightmares." He responded. "It was just too horrible." He took her
hand and placed a soft kiss on it. He raised his eyes towards her and
favourly joked, "You'll never leave me for someone else will ya,
baby?"
"Of course not, why would you ever say such a thing?" She was almost
insulted.
"Just give me a kiss."
She agreed with her eyes. The eyes a man sees confirming the most
perfect mutual anticipation of the beginnings of a nice kiss. She
slowly leaned in and closed her eyes giving Ryan a beautiful view that
struck him forcefully to really realize just how perfectly beautiful
his angel was. With that, he too began to lean forward and at the exact
point before the kiss was to commence, a huge lightening bolt of panic
jolted into Ryan's body, causing him to jerk back.
His wife was no longer there. Huge straps were forcing his head tightly
against a padded backrest. His arms too were confined to their spaces
by straps, on a board almost resembling a crucifix. Confused again.
Scared again. Terrified again. A sound could not be heard causing a
hollow feeling of extreme loneliness and isolation. He looked around a
room revealing several uniformed men surrounding him, a man that looked
to be some type of doctor to his right, and what scared him most, a man
in the back dressed in all black with a white collar. It was a
priest.
He was back at death row, but it was worse this time. That's when the
realization hit him. He was about to be executed through the use of
lethal injection. It was all too real. It appeared as though he had
missed the proper procedures that were to take place previous to the
actual injection. It was either that, or they hadn't happened yet, he
couldn't tell. Then a horrid site. Truth hit his heart like a waning
sledgehammer. The clock located above the door read 11:59 pm. That's
why it was so dead quiet.
The glorious anticipation of a woman's find tender kiss had quickly
malformed into that of a condemned man.
There was a fine pinching sensation in his right arm, he moved his
drowsy nauseated eyes down to investigate the matter. There was no pain
anymore, and things seemed especially dreamy. Must have been the
anesthesia. Slow motion. Nodding off. He saw the needle, with fully
active solutions filtering through it from a tube into his skin. His
body had gone white except for exactly where the needle was piercing
one of his veins. It was black as midnight. His vision focused for a
slight moment revealing the elaborate, finely detailed tattoo of a
tarantula that covered his arm. Behind it were three masterfully drawn
black widow spiders. Tattoos.
His conscious lost, and his mind went quiet.

* * * * * * * * *

Officer Jonathan Landen sat there moments after the execution with a
few of his prison guard coworkers. It was another tough day at the job,
the days of executions always were.
"Thinking I might be done in this profession now, Billy." Billy was a
slight bit shorter and stockier than Jonathan.
Unsurprisingly he lazily inquired, "Yeah? Seen one too many go?"
"Well, yeah that too, but this one was just too weird." He looked at
Ryan Dunnigan's freshly passed corpse. "He had completely lost
touch."
"Lost touch, Jon?"
"Completely."
"Yeah, well, what happened to him surely would do a number on my
psyche, I'll tell you that much. If I caught my Margie with some other
man, I tell ya."
Jonathan paused for a moment and then began, "Yeah but he was so far
out of his mind, he constantly would lose touch with his reality,
always talking about how in his dreams his wife Madeline was cooking
him dinner, how she was wearing a pretty dress, all this crazy shit, no
clue where he got it from. Then sometimes he would go on forever about
those dreams saying how real they were."
"Dreams, Jon?"
"Yeah, dreams of his wife. I guess in his head she was still alive and
kicking as before the day he shot her to death. Kind of freaked me out
a little, seeing a man like that."
"Every man has that line protecting their sanity ya know. Guess he
found that out all too well. I mean pulling the trigger on his
wife&;#8230;that'll do it, if you ask me."
"Absolutely," he agreed. "Traumatic experience like that. Shit. Lost
his marbles. Never seen such an incredible case of denial, no sir.
Maybe, he was sorry for what he did."
"Yeah, but who knows, he didn't even know who he was anymore. I mean
today he was executed, but he died that very night, I'm sure of
it."
Jonathan let out a hearty breath, "Do me a favor their, Billy."
"What's that?"
"Go home tonight and hug your Margie like you never have before. Thing
like this makes ya appreciate what you got."
Billy nodded, "Amen."