Some Kind of Cop

I’ve never had the slightest urge to be a police officer of any sort, but I’ve never had a dream like the one I had last night.  It was just so fresh and vivid, so real, I’m still sweating a little bit.  The title of this post is what I muttered when I woke up.  I want to write it down before it’s forgotten.

It was the end of spring, one of those days that feels thin; no humidity, the only heat coming from the sun.  I think I’d gone out to get a bag of groceries, and parking on the street in front of my house is where the dream begins.  As I exited the vehicle, I was surprised at my surroundings.  Creeping gooseflesh crawled over my shoulders, neck, and up into my scalp as the thought rolled around in my mind; my side of the street neither contained my house nor my neighbors’ houses anymore.  

What stood there gleaming in the afternoon sun wasn’t five or six upper middle class suburban houses, but one mountainous cobalt blue steel warehouse.  The thought gradually occurring to me, tumbling, turning, and tasted by my brain, was that this is how it has always been.  The realization that this warehouse is where I’d been living for God knows how long, that it was beyond my capacity to sense in any way was a dangerous thought process.  My mind has a tendency to wander off on tangents, especially in these highly lucid dreams where my conscious mind has a say in my actions.  Eventually, either my sub-conscious grew tired of my wandering, pondering conscious, or the person (Who I am in a dream is rarely if ever me) whose mind I’m inside of has been trained to stop any abstract thought, stop their mind from rambling on about the possibilities, to focus on definable things like survival in high stress situations.  

Whatever it was, the person I was in, or my sub conscious, my tangent seeking thought process was interrupted.  I had been standing there sizing the place up, still on the driver side of the car, my arms laying on the warm roof of my old car.  Something caught my eye down the street in the cul-de-sac, a neighbor named Carlos whom I’ve known since I was a kid.  He and a few friends were just sitting under some trees at the end of the block, just watching me.  Their houses still stood, the only thing that was out of place was this massive warehouse.  When I looked back towards it, putting off paying attention to Carlos for the moment, I noticed that I could see it slightly more clearly.  It was completely made out of that blue steel; vertical grooves like the side of a quonset hut ran up the front of the building, instilling a sense of vertigo.  As I looked closer, I could see that around the edges several rust spots had began to spring up, probably from years of lack of maintenance.  

Putting off going and talking to Carlos (Kid always rubbed me the wrong way, probably stemming from when I was around ten and he kicked me in the ear while I was wrestling with another friend, and literally destroyed the ear drum in my right ear), I decided to inspect the place further.  I moved over to the trunk, popped it, and reached in under the mat to my spare tire.  I kept a spare clip in the little compartment where the tire iron should be, and an unregistered 1911 Colt.  It’s a much bigger gun than I’d ever use in real life for personal protection, and I’d certainly never keep it in the trunk; but the character stopped me from going down further tangents of thoughts.  His concern was to check the chamber for a round, which he did, and a smile reached his dry lips as we saw a shiny brass casing.  

I’m going to start writing like that, because from this point on is where we started to be two people in the same body.  I became more of an observer, but saw with his eyes.  His consciousness had veto power over mine, for some reason, so it stopped being as lucid as many of my dreams have been at this point.  When it came to aiming and when to pull the trigger, it was me that caused the action, but it was his training that aided me.  If that makes any sense.  Hopefully it will as I continue on with the story, because I’m left with the feeling that this dream is important, and when I re read it some years later, I hope that I’ll be able to piece this together coherently.  

At any rate, I put the extra clip in our hooded jacket pocket, close the trunk with our free hand, and start our trek up to the entrance of the building.  My driveway is still there, as is the mailbox.  My feet feel like blocks of concrete as I step towards the entrance, which I can see now has been hidden by an optical illusion created by the grooves in the metal.  Looking at it from a slight angle, I can see the doorway is on the side of a little vestibule completely enclosed in the same steel, there’s no way to see inside without actually entering the building.  My heart sinks as I get closer.  Something in his mind, I write it off as his training, eases the tension as I walk; and my feet feel a bit lighter.  I keep the bulky sidearm pointed towards the earth behind my back, in case someone exits as I enter, I’d rather not have them think I’m a threat initially.  

I can feel Carlos’ eyes on me from down the street, and I feel like he’s worried for me.  He wishes that I’d come and spoken with him before making my way to the building, but I’ve already started my way.  I reach the doorway, and open it slowly, trying to be quiet.  I shut it silently behind me, and stick to the inside wall.  The interior of the building is a large and open space, with off-white tile flooring, white beds run in several rows up and down the complex.  It looks like some sort of long deserted hospital, brightly lit, built in the seventies.  It is in disrepair.   Out of date electronics accompany the hospital beds, some of the equipment has been turned over onto the floor, some of the beds don’t have sheets on them, in other places the sheets are strewn about in piles on the floor speckled with red.  We get the impression that this was hastily constructed and deserted even quicker.  As I enter this main room, I’ve drawn my gun.  I’ve got this tunnel vision deal going where I’m viewing just the area right above and slightly around my gun sights.  I make myself a small target, one foot directly in front of the other, walking silently, shoulders cocked at an angle to anything in front of me, head down, and eyes down my sidearm.  

To my right just upon entering I noticed a hallway, the walls of which were yellow concrete.  The lighting down that hallway has been turned off, the only light is from windows that line the walls just below the ceiling, some forty feet in the air.  I hear something clang above me, sounds like a wrench hitting the floor of a garage; I move swiftly to get it in my sights, just in time to see some doves flutter out a small hole in the ceiling.  

I decide to move down the hallway.  I keep to the wall on my right, because I can see the first turn in the hallway goes left, I want to have the largest viewing area possible.  Moving silently, I make it to the turn, and sweep it with my sights.  Small and quiet I stop briefly in the corner to try and get a bearing on whether or not I just heard something in the darkness mutter something.  As my eyes finally adjust to the near-dark, I can make out a nurses station about thirty yards in front of me.  It has a roof on it, looks sort of like it doubles as a guard shack.  It is clearly lit inside, consoles and big cabinet machines that one sees in old sci-fi shows that tell the viewer “This is where science is done.”  Above me is a sign that reads “Triage” with an arrow pointing forward, and underneath that it reads “Lockers” with an arrow pointing to my right.  I decide to scope out the lockers before moving to the nurses’ station.  

It’s awfully quiet in here, if there are other people in here, they must know that they are not alone otherwise why be quiet?  They must also either be a) afraid of me or b) trying to stay quiet to get the element of surprise when they attack.  Either way, I should be careful.  I start to walk slower.

The hallway labeled “Lockers” is exactly that.  A long hallway with lockers embedded into the dim yellow concrete walls, running up and down both sides.  Gray metal, some open, some closed, some with stuff hanging out, some with stained stuff hanging out.  At the end is a boxed in area that looks to be showers and toilets, I decide to go check it out.  I hear something click and fumble behind me, turn sharply, but nothing’s there.  I make it to the restroom, sit on a bench, and rest for a little while.  Neither of us in this body are used to being so tense for so long; so if this guy was ever a cop, he hasn’t seen any action in a while.  I look over myself in the mirror in the bathroom, and I seem to be in pretty good shape.  I can’t see my face, but the body I’m in looks to be in its late thirties, judging from the way it’s dressed.  

I hear a yell of frustration from down the hallway, probably originating from Triage, and what sounds to be like someone pounding its fists on something metal.  Footsteps.  Then a door slamming.  Then it opening again, and slamming again.  I imagined someone in a lab coat entering the nurses’ station angrily, and then leaving it once more.  Without realizing it, I’ve tensed up and made myself small again, looking down my sights again.  I’m moving down the hallway a bit quicker, for some reason thinking there’s a time limit.  Something has to be done quickly and quietly.  Heel-toe, heel-toe, careful not to make my tennis shoes squeak on the tile, trying to move fast and quiet, keeping to the wall on my left in preparation for the right turn ahead towards Triage.  

I smell stagnation as I move back into the initial hallway, and move closer towards the nurses’ station.  The hallway opens up on the right side, there are no more windows anymore near the ceiling, so where it opens up is completely dark save just a small bit of ambient light from the nurses’ station.  Having noticed that whoever it was isn’t in the nurses’ station anymore, and being that I’ve run out of hallway, I have to assume that whoever it is; is in the darkness.  There’s a light switch behind me, despite the other person’s insistence to the contrary (He has somehow lost veto power, he is now the observer in what used to be his body), I free my left hand for a moment and flip the switch.  The hum of electricity fills the room before the lights warm up, and gradually the opening is illuminated brighter than the nurses’ station.  My eyes adjust quickly and I see four operating room tables, the three closest to me are empty, except for sheets with brown blood splotches on them.  The last one has a small person, probably a child in it.  I can only see its feet; the rest is obscured by a person in a lab coat laying over him.  He looks to be crying, or pouting.  Both hands on my sidearm still, pointing at whatever this person may be, I command him to put his hands in the air and turn towards me, that I’m here to help (Might be a lie, I don’t know.).  Collecting himself, he puts his latex-gloved hands in the air slowly, and I see a syringe in his right hand filled halfway with something puke-green colored.  The left hand has what looks like a cap to put over the needle in between his index and middle fingers.  As he leans back up over the body with his hands still above his head, he turns, and I see his face.  A man in his fifties, he looks defeated and tired.  His eyes are fixed either on mine, or on the barrel, I’m not sure which.  One of the little feet on the table twitch just once.  For some reason this makes the other person in my mind very angry, and I shout at him to drop the syringe.  He cocks his head to the side, and whatever sorrowful or defeated expression that was on his face, changed violently into derangement.  He smirks, lowers his head and looks at me from the tops of his eye sockets, and says in a low, gravelly voice “Now, that would be contrary to what’s in both of our best interests.”

I shout the command once more, this time my voice cracks a bit due to it being so dry.  The other person in my mind really, really wants to make up for this sign of weakness I’ve just given up.  The man in the lab coat still leering at me, still holding the syringe, but still twenty feet away or so.  The other person in my mind is pleading with me to just kill the good doctor and go to the child, trying to focus all of his energy into forcing my finger to squeeze the trigger.   To be honest, I wanted to, but not just yet.  

He takes a couple of cautious but obviously predatory steps towards me, I train the gun on his throat, and tell him to drop the syringe; and to not take another step.  This time, no voice cracking, no shouting, I’m clear and forceful.  His face softens a bit.  In this final moment of the dream, he says to me “No matter how many times we do this, you never learn, do you?”   My mind started to wander off the moment at hand for just a second, which considering his drawn frame wouldn’t seem like enough time to close the gap between us, certainly not enough time for him to inject me with whatever’s in that syringe, but it’s been a strange day. 

I had my left hand off my sidearm, signing to him to stop, I was so tense I didn’t need it to steady the gun.  What brought me back to reality was the feeling of his left hand gripping my right arm, and the syringe puncturing deep into my left palm.  I pulled off three or so rounds, but the world was black, and the gunfire sounded as though half a mile away, I was already falling through darkness.