Metafiction_Dreams

April 17^th, 2014

“Gear up! Gunshots on Kyse Drive!”

             I jump into the police car and floor the gas, with the siren blowing and three other cars on my tail. The radio buzzes.

             “Multiple gunshots heard, nothing else confirmed.”

             “Copy that. Should be there in three minutes.”

             Kyse Drive, huh. It’s the biggest road that cuts through the abandoned part of the city, so called “the Kyse.” All there is around that neighborhood are some old, closed-down factories. There’s no resident, no cell reception, no light, no nothing. That pretty much explains why all the gang-related murders and kidnappings happen there.

             Something’s going to happen today.

             “Address confirmed. 5334 Kyse Drive. It’s an abandoned factory.”

             “Copy that. Are we going in?”

             “No, just look around and report what you see.”

             “Alright.”

             “And don’t get caught.”

             “Seriously, boss?”

             There it is: a giant rectangular piece of the background that’s slightly darker than its surroundings. There are lights leaking out through the small cracks and holes. It almost looks like a haunted house. Why would someone put the lights on if they are going to fire guns, though?

             As soon as I see it, I kill the siren and the headlights. It’s dark and silent all around and I can’t see anything; I almost crash into the wall looking for the entrance to the factory. The other three cars still on my tail, I drive around the building and park in the back. I get out, with the doors left open, and creep toward a crack on the wall. It seems big enough to look inside. And it is. I do a head count—oh god, that’s a lot of people in there. I count forty-one heads, all alive and well, spread out all over the first floor. The gun’s lying on the floor, all alone. That’s weird… Forty-one people, nobody hurt, gun on the floor. Not a typical scene you would expect from—oh wait, that’s a colored statue, not a person. Wait, it looks weird. It looks like that ET I saw in a movie. Let me count again. Okay, I can’t really see clearly, but I think I see forty ET statues and one person sitting on a stool, facing this way, his back to the front door. Now that’s even weirder. Who’s that? Whitish blond hair… Tall… Round glasses…

             Shit, that sounds familiar.

             It’s Thomas Mortenson.

             I buzz my boss.

             “Uh, boss?”

             “Shh, what are you doing? What if they hear—“

             “No, uh, it’s Mortenson.”

             Silence.

             “Boss?”

             “Shit! What’s he doing in the Kyse?”

“That, I have no idea.”

“Jeez! Bring him in.”

             I call to the other three officers who are still lingering around their cars.

             “It’s Mortenson!”

             They give me the shrug—the shrug that says, “What the hell?” I shrug back the same. Disappointed and infuriated, they go back into their cars, bang the doors closed, and drive off.

             Huh, I never told them to drive off, though. Oh well, who cares. I drive back around to the front of the building and open the door. It feels really weird to be inside. I feel forty pairs of extraterrestrial eyes all staring at me. The walls are all painted to look like I’m standing on… Mars, I think. The floor’s all red and cratered. Oh, I see the earth on the far left corner. And under that…

             Mortenson must have heard us. He’s crouching under the earth, trembling and hugging his knees. His blue eyes are filled with fear. I first take the gun from the floor near me—where did he pick it up?—slip its safety catch back into place, and then take a step toward him—

             “Dreams! My dreams!”

             “Mr. Mortenson, you have to come with me.”

             “My dreams!”

             “Mr. Mortenson—“

             “Dreams! Dreams! MY DREAMS!”

             Mortenson’s a joke in the police community. Considering his actions, it’s understandable. He’s a tall guy, well into his twenties. He’s an artist, and is really good at it; I mean, look at the things he draws. I’m pretty sure that he created all these paintings on the factory walls and the ET statues staring at me right now. They’re all flawless. From the outside, he looks perfectly like a normal person. But sometimes, he does really weird things that go against the common sense. One time, he burned up his own house on purpose, and built a new one next to it instead. Another time, he drilled in a deep hole on his driveway and freaked out all his neighbors. Such things usually involve violations of minor laws, like vandalism, so the police usually get calls and we always have to go see what’s happening. He never does harm to other people, though. That’s good. But still, it’s really annoying when you find Mortenson after a long tense police car ride.

            What’s more annoying is that we don’t know why he does such things. We see no connections in his actions, and when we bring him in, all he does is yell the word “DREAMS” at us, so we cannot communicate with him; he has no known relatives and no close neighbors. Doctors say that it has something to do with his autistic behaviors. But although we have consulted a number of profilers and psychologists, we could not exactly pinpoint any motivations or connections. He does have a notepad that he carries with him at all times that might bear a secret inside. But when we ask him to show us the notepad, he furiously shakes his head and grips on it. We probably will never know what’s inside it.

             Anyway, my job right now is to somehow get this guy in front of me to get in my car.

             “Mr. Mortenson, I repeat, you have to come with us.”

             Silence. I go to him—he shrieks—and I grab his arm and pull on it. He half-resists. He wants to stay here, but he’s already been in this kind of situation several times; he knows he’ll have to follow me in the end. I half-drag him to the backseat of my car, push him in, and take off.

             Buzz.

“Sergeant Jacobs, you coming?”

             “On my way, boss.”

---

             As I pull into the police garage, I hear my boss yelling at someone.

             “It’s Mortenson again! Didn’t I tell you to keep a close eye on him?”

             “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, I won’t let it happen again.”

             “You’d better.”

             Oops, that must be Officer Williams. Last time Mortenson was here, boss told him to keep Mortenson from doing weird stuff again. I guess he didn’t do his job well enough. As I kill the engine, boss stomps angrily toward my car and yanks Mortenson out of the backseat.

             “My dreams!”

             “Shut up! Enough with your freakin’ dreams! You’ve got on your records an arson, three vandalism cases, two trespasses, and you still want to add another one? An illegal possession of firearms this time? Alright, do as you will, but please, please just get out of our jurisdiction, will ya?”

             “No, my dreams! Dreams!”

             “Which dreams! How are we supposed to know what—“

             Mortenson faints.

Taken by surprise, boss and I take hold of him to stop him from falling to the floor. What? Now he faints all of a sudden? What the…

We lay him carefully on the floor. His pulse is fine, and his breathing’s fine.

“What’s this now? His vital signs are fine. Should we call an ambulance?”

             Just then, Officer Williams, who has been watching from the door, cuts in.

            “Uh, sir? Mortenson has a rare illness that makes him fall asleep at times, called nar-something. Narcolepsy, I think. If his pulse is fine, it may be that the illness just kicked in.”

             “And you know this because?”

             “Because I’ve been sifting through his files, sir. I thought knowing about him could help me keep a better watch on him.”

             “So is he going to wake up soon?”

             “As far as I know, sir, yes he will.”

             We relax. It is just then that we see a small notepad sticking out of his pocket.

             “Boss, isn’t that the notepad he always carries?”

             I just can’t suppress my curiosity. I carefully take it out, and open it to the first page.

            

11.06.1993.

There was another sleep attack during geology class today. But unlike the previous times, today I found myself in another person's body.
I opened my eyes and found myself lying in a hospital, dressed up in white, hearing words of shock and disbelief. It was some time before I realized I wasn't the six year old Thomas, but a middle-aged man called Fred. Supposedly, I had been in a coma for 6 years, but today I suddenly regained consciousness.
I was listening to the babbles of my supposed family when I suddenly woke up, sprawling in my geology class.

            

It says 1993. So it is a twenty-year-old book that he’s been holding onto all these times. Judging from its contents, it probably is a record of his dreams, maybe the ones he had during what he calls “sleep attacks.” Is it related to that nar-whatever illness he has? Are these the dreams he has been talking about?

I run through the rest of the entries.

01.05.1994.

In my dream, I found a white clean paper on my desk during first period. I had a pen in my hand; there was only one thing to do. As I drew for two hours, the teacher came to me and said, "Tom, participate in class, don't do other things." 

…

04.17.1994.

The dreams were getting better, till yesterday night. This time, I was in the far future, presumably, and I was the master of an interestingly, inquisitive race. Seemed anthropomorphic, but the people weren't human. Just kind of ET-like. It was good to be a leader, though. No homework, no duties, no studies. Eating fruits while sitting on the throne, looking at the overseeing balcony, playing sports with my closest alien friends—those were all the "chores" to do.

…

             Wait, ET-like?

             That was the diary entry of April 17^th, 1994, which was exactly twenty years ago. And tonight, he was playing games—presumably—with his ET-like statues. Thinking of it, his other entries sounds familiar, too. Some time ago, he just randomly marched into a hospital, claiming that his name was Fred Hamilton and that he should be lying half dead on a hospital bed. The nurse there thought he was a crazy man, so she called us. That, I think, was the first time we met him. I remember the January entry, too. A teacher called the police, angry that a man was sitting on a desk in her classroom, drawing on a piece of paper, insisting that he should stay there for two hours. Weird….

             I call out to Williams.

             “Williams, you still there?”

             “Yes, sir.”

             “Could you find me the exact dates for Mortenson cases?”

             “You mean all of them, sir? That might take some time.”

             “No, not all of them. Do you remember the hospital case and the school case?”

             “Sure I do, sir. Do you only need the dates for those two?”

             “That’ll do for now. You might want to put on a search for all his cases, though. I think I might need them later.”

             “Okay, sir. I’ll be back soon.”

             After Williams leaves, I go back to the start of the notepad, and record the dates and the general outlines of each dream on my PDA. When I almost get to the ET entry, Williams comes back.

             “Sir, the hospital case was on November 6^th, last year, and the school case was on January 5^th, this year.”

             So it is. Mortenson’s replicating his dreams exactly twenty years after he had it. But why? I look at my boss’s eyes, and see that he is wondering exactly the same thing.

             Mortenson flinches.

             I quickly shut the notepad and shove it into his pocket.

             Mortenson opens his eyes, and sees us staring at him. His blue eyes widen in fear. He gets up and slowly backs away. I take a step towards him and reach out to grab his arms. Boss stops me.

             “Jacobs, just let him go.”

             “What? But boss—“

             “What are we going to do with him? He isn’t going to talk to us anyway. There’s nothing more than another opportunity to yell at him that we can get by keeping him in custody.”

             “We should at least write up his crime. It was clearly an illegal possession of firearms.”

             “As I said, he isn’t going to talk. It always has been us that wrote up everything, based on the witness statements, remember? As long as you have his gun, it’s all fine.”

             “We can get a second look at his notepad, then.”

             “You really think he is going to let us do that? We’ve tried it every time he was here, and he never let us. You know that more than anybody else.”

             “But we could wait for him to fall asleep again or something!”

             “Well, in fact, as you know, we aren’t supposed to just take a peek at other people’s stuff whenever we want to. I know, we just did that, but we really shouldn’t have.”

             “What? Boss, I really don’t understand. You were the one who’s always been angry at him. From when did you become such a law-abiding citizen? Why did you tell me to bring him in in the first place, then?”

             “Well… I really don’t know. I just feel sorry for him. I never knew he was ill.”

             “What—Boss!”

             Mortenson is already nowhere to be seen.

             A call comes from inside the building.

             “There’s been a dead body found under Railton Bridge!”

             I give boss a long last look, angry and disappointed. Boss does not.

I get back in the car, reverse it, and drive off.

             Buzz.

             “Railton Bridge? Male? Female? Age? Any witnesses?”

---

May 28^th, 2014

From: Sergeant A. J. Jacobs

To: Lieutenant C. C. Pierce

             Found Thomas K. Mortenson, dead. He was crushed by a fallen tree in a forest behind East Park. Told you, boss, we should have held him in custody and taken a look at his notepad. The dates I recorded from his notepad exactly match the rest of the dates Williams found for me. Had we looked only a little further in that pad, we could have stopped him from dying. Now it’s too late. And we’ll never know why he did this revisiting-his-dreams thing in the first place.

05.28.1994.

I don't even remember how and when I fell asleep. In the dream, I was a tree, a gigantic tree that had survived for thousands of years, waiting for humans to find me. And I finally felt what I have been waiting for! I finally felt human beings, and their sharp axes cutting down my trunk. I felt no pain at all, as my brain was then full of ecstasy. I could finally escape from that wretched body, and die to take an eternal rest. Goodbye to myself, goodbye to the world I have made, and goodbye to Mortenson. I felt my consciousness going away… Goodbye, world...!