Don't Let the Rapture Pass You By

I think of dreams as material, honestly—raw visual information, useful or not, that's beamed into the head for free—and I've stripped mine (strip-mined?) shamelessly.

This goes along with feeling that "inspiration," or "talent," or whatever you want to call it, is a cheap commodity, as cheap and plentiful as water.

But what makes it work? Something that you wouldn't notice twice in waking life will, in dreams, have enormous significance and power to disturb: a burned-out light bulb, the crackle of a radio, an abandoned shopping cart... Words can capture the images: but what is it that makes them fraught with significance?

dreamt September 1998

Night. Moonless, lit only by streetlamps. A violent Autumn thunderstorm is gathering; wet leaves whip round my feet as I stalk up my old street towards my mother's old house. The storm has not yet broken—ominous clouds silver and crackling across the black sky and a shivery smell in the air. Earthquake weather. All meteorologists say this storm is going to be a monster: the general public, though (or a large percentage, anyway) believes that it's the Dies Irae, the Rapture, the day of reckoning—the end of the world. Me, I don't believe the hype. I'm heading to my Mom's to wait out the storm with her.

Every house on the street is dark and silent, except hers: all the neighbors are awaiting the end in churches. But from my mother's house, every light blazed, and music crooned out into the front hall; Tony Bennett, on vinyl. But she does not come to greet me, and the house is so still, and the phonograph so loud, that every crackle of dust on the needle reverberates like a gunshot. The stillness of the neighborhood, and the odd loudness of the music in the house (otherwise as silent as a doll's house) makes my flesh creep. Where is she?

I round the corner and touch to cellar door. It opens under my fingertips. Looking down the stairs, I can see her legs slowly swinging. She has hanged herself from a crossbeam. She's smiling.

I cut her down, close her eyes, and dial 9-1-1. All phone circuits are jammed: I know the cops will never come, in all the chaos and panic of the Rapture.

Outside, the storm begins in earnest.