...Isn't real...Can't be Real

Beep…beep…beep….bee—

My hand came down on the alarm clock.  Then I lay there. Every night, it was getting harder and harder to fall asleep, and every morning, it was harder and harder to wake up.  I was having difficulties, too, when deciding if I was asleep or awake.  But that wasn’t the worst.  Or, at least, it wouldn’t have been it if weren’t for my dreams.  Well, my nightmares.  My nightmares felt so real, and my reality felt so nightmarish.  The haunting feelings were following me always, surrounding me, getting closer and closer to the point where things could not possibly get any—the phone rang.  

Like a snake, slowly drawn out of its warm burrow, my hand slid out from underneath my bedding to pick up the receiver.  The cold, plastic shell sent a tingling shiver down my spine, a reminder of how lifeless everything me was becoming.

“Uh,” I mumbled, “hello?”

“Andrew,” a calm voice answered me, “do you know what time it is?”

“Er, ummm…” I fumbled with the clock.  “Ten-fifteen.”

“Then where the hell are you?” The formerly calm voice unleashed its full fury upon my ears with a stream of profanity and insults that would make the heartiest sailor piss himself in horror before jumping overboard.  “Now, get yourself together and get your ass down here in twenty minutes, or don’t bother showin’ up ever again. Got it?”  The sound of the receiver being slammed down on the other end of the line reminded me of the kind of punishment cars get in a crusher.  How many phones does that man go through?

“Yes, sir.”  I slowly replaced the handset and slid out of bed, shedding my warm protective shell.  The harsh cold of reality hit me as my feet hit the floor, and another shiver was released through me.  Quickly, I dressed and left.

Stepping out of the elevator, the chatter of keyboards and telephones formed a seemingly impenetrable wall.  Slowly, I stepped through, proceeding to my desk.  From my drawer I drew my badge, while I dutifully clipped to the chain around my neck.  Following that, I clipped my holster to my belt and placed the nine-millimeter within.  Before I could do anything else, Captain Price threw a folder in front of me.  As I jumped in shock, he pushed me back down.

“Nice of you to bless us with your appearance today, Carter.”  He stared down at me, his cold brown eyes burning over the ridge of his glasses.  

“Just doing my duty, sir.”

“Save it, smart ass.”  And so began another, of many, famous Captain Price Rants.  As the old man cut into me, as one would expect the edge of a fine samurai blade to slice through the air, the nightmares began again.  Well, this time they weren’t so bad.

I was sure I was awake, but who could tell?  Streams of color were pouring in through the windows, bright rainbows bringing bits of heaven on the wings of butterflies.  The magnificent beauty hypnotized me and a world of visions exploded before me.  Mixing swirls of the palette of life were painted into stunning shapes and ideas before me.  Everything had a color, even sounds.  This magic before me ran together into a fantasy that I was sure couldn’t be real.  My definition of reality was up in the air, anyway, but these hallucinations—I had no idea what they were.

Before long, I was returned to the typical grayscale existence that is everyday life, only to find myself in my car.  That had not been my first bit of delirium, but it had been a strong one.  In fact, it had been the strongest since the war.  A lot of guys had them back then, but we were told they would go away.  So much for that.

Leaning back into the soft cloth seat, I shut my eyes.  Vermilion Pt. 2 was playing on the radio.  This struck me funny, as groups like Slipknot rarely ever got radio time these days, especially with their lesser-known songs.  The sweet harmony of soft guitar and Corey’s voice became a symphonic lullaby, cradling me ever closer to the sweet bliss of true rest.  A dark shadow passed before, enough to strike open my eyes and let cracks of blaring light in.  Through my slits, I swore I saw a face staring back at me from down the street.  No details of the face came to me, save the brilliant blue eyes carving deep into me.  I blinked, and it was gone.  A lavender scent filled the air.  

Leaning back again, I allowed this new aroma to soak into me.  Rarely had hallucinations ever come so closely together, and never before had they involved a sense other than sight.  Thus, I found myself wondering if the thing veil of sanity I covered myself with had torn, leaving me as exposed as the earth to radiation through our maligned ozone layer.  A brick wall hit me.

Well, that’s what it felt like.  The truth, as those around me later told, was that it was an armored truck.  A large armored truck, fresh from a bank job, and on the run.  The inexperienced driver had cornered too quickly and hit me.  No, it was more than a simple hit.  My vehicle was annihilated, crushed into a small, unrecognizable mass of metal, plastic, and glass.  Inside, the steering wheel was crushing my chest.  Every part of me, in fact, was being crushed.  My vision was gone from my right eye, and I couldn’t feel anything.  Watching with my left eye, I saw the thieves exit their truck and break into a nearby car.  One of the thugs ran over to stare at me, seeing the bloody badge hung around my neck.

“The goddamn bitch is a mutha’ fuckin’ cop!” he announced to his compatriots.  Promptly, the nice young masked marauder placed two bullets in me.  One entered the base of my neck and exited between two of my ribs.  The other entered just below my left eye and exited beneath my jaw.  Consciousness left as tires squealed away.  
Absolute darkness surrounded me.  All I could hear was my own, harsh breathing.  The lavender scent filled the air again.  Slowly, lights flickered on around me.  There were neither bulbs, nor any light fixtures, but the clean whiteness came nevertheless.  After several moments, it became apparent that I was in a large, round room of some kind.  I stood, mesmerized by what was around me.  Out of nowhere, a large wooden table formed, as did a matching chair.  

I seated myself, waiting for the rest of reality to appear.  Before anything else, I heard a voice.  Not just any voice, but a soft, gentle voice, full of warmth and beauty.  Its sweet song filled me with peace and caressed my very soul.  

“Hello, Andrew.”  For several moments, I didn’t even respond.  I wanted this magical voice to continue to speak to me, smothering my pain like the salve of the gods.  Another wall hit me.

“You,” I almost stuttered, “you’re the face I saw.”

“Yes, Andrew.  Do you know why you’re here?”

“Am I dead?”

“No, but you are in for a change.  It’s time to wake up.”  My eyes opened.  I heard the machine in the corner beep its beeps, counting my hearbeats.  I had been lying there for over a year.

“Your heart was stopped for six minutes.  You shouldn’t have come back to us, Mr. Carter.  It was a miracle.  The doctors had decided you were too far gone on the table, and were preparing to send you to the morgue when you started breathing again.”  My thoughts drifted to the fleeting darkness in time-warping dream.

“How bad is the damage, doc?”

“Well, you’re never going to play pro football, but overall, not too bad.  You’ll have some aches and pains from now on, and a bit of a limp, and that’s expected.  However, you’ve amazed us in many ways.  Your right eye should be an unusable mass, yet it has repaired itself.  It will never have proper vision, but you still can, at the very least, see a bit out of it.”  He smiled at me.  “Welcome back to the land of the living, Andrew.  You’ve been missed.”

The dim tavern lighting suited me more than ever.  I had discovered that a new sensitivity to light was bestowed upon me.  Reclining, as was my new fashion, into the deep, worn cushioned booth, I took a long drink of Guinness.  The thick, warm liquid filled me, numbing my aching body.  My cell phone buzzed, and an address was given to me.  Murders—so many murders these days.  It was hard being a detective.  I picked up my cane and lumbered out the door.  The heavy weight of my pistol was security at my hand, and I felt safe, if only for a moment.

I pulled up to the warehouse and was shown the scene by the officer on duty.  Gang-bangers lay all around, each with a single bullet hole through the heart.  Surveying the scene, I noted the ramshackle living quarters, the chaotic destruction, and the positioning of the bodies.  From above, they spelled a word: “SICK”.  One goon was lying at my feet, with claw marks on his face.  Kneeling down for further examination, I was shocked; the green eyes I was staring into were the same that I had last seen inside my dismembered old car.  This was the man that had killed me.  A bit of short brown hair was stuck to the blood of one of the cuts, and this I carefully bagged and handed to the forensics specialist.

“What is this? A joke?” she asked me.

“Huh? What do you mean?” I questioned her.

“The bag is empty, detective.  Very funny,” she said with a bit of a grimace.  And right she was.  Or I should say, only when I closed my right eye.  When looking with just my right, it was there; with just my left it was gone.  Suddenly, it was gone altogether.  I didn’t report my observations to her.

Crawling into bed, I couldn’t wait to pull the covers over me, to drown out the cold, lonely world with a warmth of my own, emanating deep from within my cloth den.  Waiting, as always, for sleep to come, I was overwhelmed with the scent of lavender yet again.  

The door of my bedroom opened, and in walked the physical embodiment of beauty.  

“This must be a dream,” I said in disbelief.

“This,” said that most wonderful voice of before, “is no dream.”

Slowly, she entered, her hips swaying in the air as a skyscraper far above.  Her soft curves and quiet, mysterious demeanor enticed the eyes, leading to her voluptuous lips and brilliant, vibrant blue eyes.  She sat on the edge of the bed, and only at the twitch of her round, rabbit tail did I realize this amazing figure was an anthropomorphic rabbit.

From head to toe, she had a short, soft brown fur that gleamed and glimmered in the moonlight.  Her mouth was morphed—a cross between a human face and a rabbit’s snout, yet it was beautiful.  Her long years hung out, past her shoulders with her soft blue hair in contrast to her fur.

“You dreamed of hope, of love, of happiness, and here I am.”  She drew close, and in our embrace, sleep came to me.

The next day, I left without my cane.  My limp was there, but it was no problem for me.  My aches were unnoticeable, and I actually felt joyous.  This joy, however, was taken from me, over the next week, as I discovered body after body of those who had ever wronged me.  I hadn’t seen that much death so close together since the massacres of the war.  That damned war never left me.  At every site, I found the same brown hair, and it stopped disappearing.  The lab told me it was actually fur, fur from an unknown animal.  

The rain came down, pouring in torrents unimaginable.  The spiritual among us might say it was a form of baptism; I say it was a pain in the ass.  Over the thunder and storm, I had still heard the screams of terror from above.  Climbing up the fire escape of the nearby roach motel, I found myself holding the crying, bloody body of Marcus Barley.  He had fought with me back in the war, and together we had done many unspeakable things.  Now he cried out to me.

“Andrew! Andrew! Help me!  It’s after me!”  He tried to stand, but fell as a puff of smoke rose nearby.  Blood poured from his chest, and he slid off the roof, hitting the ground seven stories below.  

“Amber!” I yelled at the savage rabbit.  “What the hell did you just do?”

“I’m eliminating your pain, Andrew.  This is what I have been doing.”

“No! No!  Nothing I created, by any means, could kill like this.”

“What do you mean?  You kill all the time.”

“That was before…”

“Before what?  You died?  I’m here to help you, Andrew.  That’s why it was allowed that I be created.”

Dropping to my knees, I cried into my hands.  “Nooo…” I moaned.  “This can’t be.”

“Shhh…” Amber came to me, attempting to sooth me.  Her effect was gone.  “Come on, now.” She helped me stand.

“Amber?”

“Yes?” She again drew me close.

“I’d like to wake up now.”  With that, I pulled the trigger.  She fell away, holding her gut as she bled out.  I watched, my left eye closed, as she faded away.  With a running start, I jumped from the roof.  The colors followed me down, cutting through the gray around me.  “I’m going to wake up now.”  And the ground swallowed me.