15
The dream came again that night.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. Even as he woke up, felt his shortness of breath, Justin knew that this dream wasn’t merely a gut-wrenching reminder of the past. It was a warning about the future. About the violence and danger and death that were all around them.
His instincts had dulled but they had not completely disappeared. His nostrils were filled with the scent of fear. What he didn’t know— what one never knows, he thought—was whether he would be strong enough to fight off the fear and make sure they all survived.
It’s why the dream kept haunting him; he understood that. It wasn’t just the losses he’d suffered. Nor was it the exposure to genuine malevolence. It was the despairing feeling in the pit of his stomach that told him he hadn’t been strong enough—or quick enough, or smart enough, or tough enough or mean enough or caring enough—to protect the people he had loved.
It had been his fault, everything that had happened. His choices. His decisions. His stubbornness. His life.
Their deaths.
The dream was shorter tonight. It spared him the pleasure and brought him right to the pain. He woke up to the image of himself, lying on the floor, feeling the river of blood spread beneath him. He could feel himself turning and he could see the remarkably vacant eyes staring down at him. It was a new detail, these eyes, and it forced him to remember that they had not been hate-filled or vicious. They were the eyes of a sociopath, calm and unemotional. They were the eyes of someone doing his job. Doing what he had been bred to do.
The image of Lili’s body was there, of course. Broken and crumpled. And he could see her eyes, too. Desperate and sad, in so much pain. Confused and pleading with him for help. In real life, there had been no pleading. Things had happened too fast. But in his dream, the sadness in her eyes lingered long after her life had ended.
Alicia’s eyes were in the dream too. Large and round and brown. And accusing. Staring and accusing.
Then there was the final bang, the last shot. It filled his head like an explosion, and then he woke up to find himself sweating and afraid of the violence that was sure to come.
Justin heard a door swing open and suddenly the dream didn’t matter. He hurled himself toward the bed table, grabbed his gun. His hands were shaking as he pointed it toward the door, toward the figure that was standing in the shadows. He exhaled a long and quivering breath when he heard a woman’s voice say, in hushed tones, “Are you all right?”
Justin focused his eyes on Deena, peering at him from behind the door that linked their adjoining rooms. He put the gun down.
“You cried out,” she said. “I heard you. I thought—”
“I’m fine,” he told her.
“I got frightened.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Me too, I guess.”
“Did you have a bad dream?”
He thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Just the usual.”
“What do you dream about when you have bad dreams?”
“Just life,” he said, putting his gun back down on the nearby table. “That’s all it takes.”
Neither of them said anything for several moments. Then Deena whispered, “Well, I better go back to bed. Kenny’s still sleeping. Nothing seems to wake her up.”
He watched her disappear and close the door behind her. He looked at the cheap plastic clock radio by the side of his bed. It was 5 a.m. Justin decided to turn on his light. He would stay awake now.
No more dreaming today.