A Dream or a Journey?

A DREAM ON THE NIGHT OF OCTOBER 14, 2005

Have you ever had a dream that was so real and so clear that you could remember the details of not only the sights, but also the sounds and the smells of the place that you found yourself in the dream?

That happened to me a few days ago, and I still can’t get the images and odors out of my mind, so I figured I would share it here and see if anyone else had ever suffered the same level of dream reality themselves.


I went to bed late on the night of October 14, 2005. I had worked several hours, adding bits and pieces to a few short stories, and making notes on several more that I thought I might want to write some day. I felt tired but satisfied with the amount of work I had accomplished and fell asleep quickly, which is unusual for me.

My memory of the dream starts as I am moving down a street somewhere following behind a three-wheeled motorcycle. There is moderate traffic on the street and I can see cars moving through intersections ahead, but I don’t think I was in a car or any other kind of conveyance. I was just moving. There were two people on the motorcycle ahead, one driving and one in a wide high seat in the back.

We came up to an intersection that had a flashing red light and the motorcycle stopped. I moved up next to it and looked at the driver. He didn’t seem to notice me looking at him but just kept staring straight ahead as if transfixed on some unseen vision of his own. He was dressed in the traditional California biker gear, like something out of a cheap movie, and the motorcycle was like something out of a 1930’s gangster movie, hand gearshift and all.

In the back seat the other man was dressed in the same biker ‘uniform’ as the man in front, the jeans and leather vest and heavy boots but this man was different in a very important way. He was strapped on to the motorcycle; his skin was gray and his eyes unblinking as his head lolled around with the movement of the motorcycle.

He was very dead.

More motorcycles moved up around the three-wheeler and they stopped. The riders of these motorcycles had the same transfixed stare as the first and none paid any attention to me. The noise and the smell of exhaust was overpowering so I moved off to the side and let them go on without me.

I started slowly down the sidewalk and passed by the storefronts, each with shattered windows and no doors. The buildings were empty.

There were men roaming in and out of the buildings, most of them muttering to themselves and some picking up trash and rubble and throwing it against the wall of the buildings. Some of the men were dressed in what I assume is my mental caricature of a sixties motorcycle movie bad guy, but most were more like the homeless people I see on the streets of Fresno.

There were also a few men in dirty and disheveled suits, their ties half off, some with fresh urine stains spreading from their crotch down their legs, and they seemed to be the most agitated of all. At first none of them paid any attention to me, but as I moved along, I noticed one here and there that would stop and look at me with their vacant and dark circled eyes for a long time and then go back to their wandering and rambling. It was as if they thought they could see something but weren’t quite sure.

I began to get afraid.

A little further on I saw two men in the sidewalk ahead of me. They were different from the others in that they were well dressed. One was sitting on the sidewalk leaning against a lamppost and the other was standing. They were both looking at me. Oddly enough they were wearing hats. The one standing had on a blue hat and the one seated was wearing an orange hat.
As I approached, the one in the orange hat said to the other, “What do you think”?

The one in the blue hat replied, “He looks like a good candidate to me”.

The man in the orange hat got up from the sidewalk and they both moved toward me.

“Come with us,” the man in the blue hat said, “we’ll take you somewhere safe”

Then they both reached for me.

It seems like I heard a loud NO coming from somewhere, possibly from me and I started to move backwards away from them very quickly and then…

…I woke up.

I felt an excruciating pain in my chest. I struggled to get up from the bed and I stumbled into the bathroom where I foolishly (I now know) keep my Nitroglycerine pills stored. The numbness in my left hand and arm made it very difficult to get the lid off, but finally I managed and got a pill under my tongue.

I stumbled back into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed and then lay back, waiting for the pill to melt. Slowly the pain started to subside, but the residual weakness made it more acceptable to just lie there and not move.

I could still remember the dream vividly. I could see the two men in the hats still staring at me, but more importantly I could still smell the exhaust of the motorcycles mixed with smell of rotting meat.

I hope that this was just a dream and not some short journey into the land of the dead that is waiting for me. And I especially hope that I didn’t piss off the two guys with the hats because, if that wasn’t a dream, I fear that I am going to need them all too soon.

Jim Bronaugh