Bad Dream / Real Dream

WARNING: This post contains descriptions of gun violence that some readers may find disturbing.

I had a dream a few nights ago that I had to shoot someone. 

There was the concrete framework of a gutted building and sunlight shining in the hollowed spaces behind a man in uniform with an automatic weapon.  I had mine raised, filled with fear, and my palms sweating.  As he took notice of me, turning, I fired.

I was surprised it wasn't louder, like balloons popping, the smell of fire crackers from my cousin's 8th birthday, the heavy mist in the air was perfumed with the smell of dirty pennies, piled in my grandfather's jar.  My thoughts quickly turned to the man, now limp on the grit of the cold, gray floor.  "Was there another way?"  "Did I have to shoot?"  "What will his family think?"  "Was his family like mine?"  But still, I pointed my own weapon at him, as though he might jump to his feet.

Then, as my stomach tightened, before I could vomit, an ally of the man stepped out.  Aiming for me, I shot him too.  "Damn it!"  I hadn't wanted to kill him either.  However, there wasn't as much time to contemplate the second man as the first, because three uniformed men, all friends of the men on the floor burst forth from a doorway to my right.  Without hesitance, I killed the man farthest from me.  A burping burst of Fourth of July celebrations at home, a sweep to the left as the other two tripped over the falling man, their shirts tear open, and they too fall to the floor.

It occurs to me that death is not as instant as in the Westerns as I watch them drain out like water from the puncture in our plastic wading pool.  There is a moment of transition: "as good as dead" isn't the same as "dead."  I felt somehow, as I looked down, that nothing could be done now.  It was final.  Even as one looked right through me and mouthed something that had no words.

You have to be self-righteous and fatalistic with something like this.  There couldn't have been another way, and I'm just doing what I have to do.  Otherwise, I won't see tomorrow.  Yet, some part of me knows, I will think of this moment every time I clean out the garage or mow my lawn.  "What would they have been doing?" and "How did it come to this?"

Writing about this dream does not encourage nor indorse violence or any kind. That said, I do think special consideration should be given to our nation's veterans when reflecting on the duties they perform and the repercussions of those required duties. Some thanks are in order.