A Mind's Eyes 06

Story by Mantrid_Brizon on SoFurry

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#6 of A Mind's Eyes: Dream Journal

Date: Recurring (2008-present)

Perspective: 1st-person.


To contrast the previous dream, which I now realize in retrospect probably made me sound like I needed anti-depressants, here is a dream that I've had for many years. In reality, it's a series of dreams, coming in various forms. Sometimes little details change, which I'll describe. The dream begins as follows: I'm simply walking into a store or a non-business, often in a location that I've never been to before and typically in the slums, surrounded by a class of people that I've grown to both appreciate and understand.

Form 1: Approaching the store, I am either in a car or, more typically, on foot. Growing closer to the store, I find myself glancing in through the typically sticker-covered, swinging plate glass doors. There, I see anywhere between 1 and 3 assailants, typically in masks and holding firearms. As an avid collector, with nearly 40 firearms to my name (most of them being pistols), I tend to write them into stories, but they also appear in dreams. With a cache that looks eerily familiar, I draw whatever firearm I've been carrying on my person, as I am certified and licensed to carry concealed firearms in my home state.

Drawing the weapon, I watch and wait for an opportune moment. The assailants, always male, begin berating the clerk. In cases where the clerk is female, they make derogatory remarks that seriously hint to a desire to gang-rape her while they're at it. In dreams with only one attacker, I wait for him to lean over the counter to grab the clerk. In dreams where there are 2 or more, I wait for the man nearest the door to turn his back. Deciding that I can no longer wait, as the clerk's life is in jeopardy, I barge in. Before he/they can turn, I am already opening fire. With a proper two-handed grip and semi-bladed, slightly crouching stance, I fire repeatedly into their center-mass.

Within seconds he/they are lying dead or dying on the ground. With the threat stopped, I kick their weapons away and hold my weapon on whoever is still alive. I tell the panicked clerk to call the police and then the dream ends. I am never wounded, and the clerk doesn't have time to thank me before I wake up. I don't require thanks for doing the right thing by protecting an innocent person, nor would I want it, which is why the dreams cut out so fast.

Form 2: I am wandering through the city, usually the outskirts of Detroit where it's incredibly dangerous. I am often with a friend, and when I'm dating, the person with me might be a girlfriend. Sometimes it's a home of someone my companion knows, who may or may not even exist, and at other times it's just some abandoned location that, for no particular reason, we've decided to explore. This is something I have actually done with friends in the past; exploring abandoned buildings. Regardless of the location, either nearby (in the case of a friend's home), or inside of the abandoned structure, we bump into a group of males who are violently assaulting someone.

Most often, it's another male, who they are beating and robbing. Very rarely, it's a woman who's being dragged off; you can guess the reason why. If we're in an abandoned building, I try to take up a defensive position. With some cover to protect me, I keep my companion safely hidden but close-by. Announcing for the attackers to cease, they immediate turn and draw weapons. Having already picked a target, I squeeze the trigger and fire one round, shooting one of them in the head. Dropping him to the ground like a sack of bricks, his friends panic.

Using their brief distraction to my advantage, I shoot at and usually kill the remaining assailants while a bloodied man or a half-naked woman with torn clothes lies groaning/crying on the ground. I then order my companion to call the police while I reload and make sure that the attackers are no longer a threat. In the case of it happening outside and nearby a home, the occupants and my companion want nothing to do with it, while I am appalled and heartbroken by their coldness, as well as disgusted by their fear.

I look out through a window and see where they are; the 2 or more men are doing exactly what they would be doing in the abandoned building version, but instead are in a trash-filled backyard of a (probably) abandoned house. Leaving the house of my companion's friends, I wrap around the building so that I am at the attacker's side or rear flank. Doing exactly what I did in the abandoned building version, usually partially hiding behind a tree, I yell at them to stop and let their victim go. They refuse. I promptly execute one man with a headshot, before opening fire on the other(s). As usual, these dreams end before I can ever speak to the victim.

Special occurrence: On only one occasion I had a version of Form 1 where I also took off the black ski-mask of the robber. The robber looked like the adult version of a friend that I had when I was in elementary school. I recalled him from the first-grade, but I also remember that he was a horrible delinquent. He knew how to break into nearby trailers without a trace, and often stole and broke things. There were also rumors that he was being molested by his pre-teen sister, who in turn had been or was being routinely raped by her step-father. Recognizing his facial features, I felt incredible pity for my old friend turned crook. However, it was his choice to fall, and I did not feel badly for killing him in defense of the helpless and frightened clerk.

Additional Note: Form 2 is based on an event that actually happened to friends of mine. They went to a friend's cheap apartment in the slums of Detroit and heard a man, the son of the landlord, barging in and assaulting (beating/raping; they were never specific) a woman he liked, who lived in his dad's apartment complex. She screamed and pleaded but my friends sat inside a nearby apartment and did nothing. Their claim was that "We didn't want to get involved because [insert their friend here] will be on their own when we're gone." My response was "If that bastard was dead, your friend wouldn't have a problem."

One of my buddies who was there is also a licensed concealed-pistol holder. To my knowledge, he was armed at the time and did nothing, though I am not 100% certain of that. I was so disgusted with them that I conveniently forgot to call them for several months afterward. It bothered me even more because the potentially armed friend also went to college courses with me to become a police officer. Though the job market was terrible and neither of us found a department to work for, I still act and think like a cop most of the time. For the record, they visited that friend's apartment again and the woman who was assaulted/raped was still there, and her attacker had apparently done it again and was still not in prison or even charged; she was too scared to turn him in, in case his family might kill her.

One of the first lessons that every ex-cop professor will tell you is this... "Some people are just not worth saving; they are so dangerous and depraved that the world would be better off if they were dead." Many might consider that opinion to be cold or even heartless. However, considering the people I've met, heard/read about, and what I've witnessed in the slums and trailer parks, that is 100% true. Though my Christian faith tells me that everyone can be saved, my personal experiences say otherwise; I hold out hope for even the worst among us, but I'm "pessimistically optimistic", as I like to call it. I believe my desire to save people at the expense of myself was always my motivation for wanting to be in law enforcement, and enforced the recurring dreams where I often employ violence and/or deadly force to protect them.

My previous dream where I'm eating bullets is simply a warning: If I ever find myself in that scenario, I might not survive it, but at least I'd die for someone else, which is far more than most can ever say about themselves.