A real life consciousness is a thing of the past. I read the message a few times over and thought this could be it. I'm losing it. I've lost my marbles— I'm out of my mind. Shit like this, this message I received, make me question all of reality. It's been a day and whoever it was isn't there anymore I'm sure, but I got up anyway. Jemaika and Dame were talking over me, looking in my eyes and questioning me. It's cool of him to come check on me and it was even cooler of Jemaika to call him on behalf of me. But I'm not me. They could tell.
I walked past the two of them into the bathroom in the hallway. I showered. Within half an hour I was following the GPS to the address. I'd been driving for a while and nothing looked familiar, but I kept going.
I arrived at a small diner out in Taylor, Michigan. It was quaint and obscure. A hole in a wall for sure. Nothing was recognizable except for the yellow bug that was parked a few cars over. My heart began to beat from nervousness as I opened the door to the diner. I looked around only to be greeted by Jill at the counter.
"Wow, Colin? What a surprise?" She gushed.
A surprise, my ass is what I was thinking. "Oh, wow. What are you doing here?" I asked sarcastically assuming it was her who had messaged me.
She shrugged "I like to pick up a few shifts here and there to help out my friend. I would've never thought I'd see you here." She said, rendering any chalance. She was too calm, almost strange. She offered me a seat at the bar across from where she was standing.
I looked around. The place was just about empty. The air was stained with a thick coat of Coffee aroma and the seats were a bright red glittery shellac upholstery. She poured me a mug and looked into my eyes the instant I'd turned back. "Can I get you anything?" She cooed.
I shook my head no, but she gave me the menu anyway. It was nothing like I'd ever seen. "What is this place?"
"It's a diner babes. Read the room." She smiled, but something was off— it was in her eyes. Or maybe it was something about the lock of hair that stuck out at the top of her bun? It could've been the small spot on her nail where the paint was chipped or the way her t-shirt hung off of her shoulder. She would never wear that type of t-shirt, and her buns are always sleek, pristine. It's her staple.
She looked at me but it wasn't at me it was past me or through me. I turned around but there was no one there. I opened my eyes and I was back laying in the bed at Jemaika's house with J and Dame still standing over me discussing the new baby. I tried to move, but it was like I wasn't even there. I couldn't move my arms or feet. I could see though my eyes weren't open?
It felt like I was in a trance. I looked over on the other side of the room and saw my pops sitting in his chair. He laughed at me, shaking his head. "Remember what I told you about Dreams?"
I just watched him. "When you were about eighteen or so, you came into the living room where I was watching my stories. You remember? You were telling me about a dream you had. It was the first time you ever woke up and was able to remember a dream vividly. You were so excited and scared shitless at the same time. Your heart was still racing and your eyes were wild." He laughed. He didn't move at all. Only his eyes and his mouth when he talked. He looked like a doll. Or more like taxidermy.
"You told me about the dream. You were chasing people. Chasing your friends. Well, I guess you described it more as following them. You were trying to catch up, and they were too fast. They'd gone so fast down the hallway and around the corner, that when you got to the stairs you couldn't see them anymore. But you kept going. You kept running. You turned that corner and you began the journey down the long flight of stairs. You remember?"
I nodded my head, imagining myself and him in the living room on that morning. The sun was peeking through the way that it is now, brightening the bedroom. I smiled at the memory.
"You said you were running so fast that you tripped. You tripped and you fell down the stairs. But instead of hitting the bottom, you just kept falling and falling even after the stairs were long done. The path became a dark nothing as you continued to fall and you felt weightless and heavy all at once. You said that your heart felt like was filled with air or water and you couldn't breathe and you felt like you were going to die just before you woke up." He nodded. "You remember what I said to you?"
"I asked you, I said, 'do you know why you woke up?' And you said no. Do remember what I said to you?"
I did remember, but I couldn't speak.
"Do you remember what I said to you?" He asked again, getting impatient. He asked again. Then, two more times. His eyes were growing wide and he was getting closer to me but farther away and it felt just like the dream he was talking about. I could feel myself slipping away, falling farther and farther way from him and Jemaika and Dame whose voices I could still hear distinctly.
He was yelling now. He'd stopped asking the question and was now saying something different that I could barely make out. Once I heard it, he said, "COLE. You have to wake up before you die!"
He told me that if I die in a dream, I will never wake up. The trick is to always wake up before you die. He was frantic. I could see it in his eyes that like me, he was trying everything he could to move, to run, to wake up— but, he never woke up.
Sounds were mixing in my head. The more I tried to move, the more voices I heard. It was Jemaika and my pops. Dame and Jill. Foreign voices I've never heard before. There were beeps and footsteps, many of them. I heard shushing and weeping and that voice again. "Cole, wake up before you die." Because if I die while in this dream, I'll never wake up. I gotta wake up.
I could feel myself slipping back to Jemaika's room. I closed my eyes and tried hard to focus on waking up. But instead of waking up, I was in another dream. I was back at the loft.
I hear my father's voice clear as day. I remember this moment. I was eighteen. This was the first time I'd ever waken up and remembered what I had dreamt. I was so psyched I ran to the front room where he was sitting in his green chair. He loved that chair. I could always find him there. "Dad!" I yelled.
Before my suicide attempt just two years before, I'd never called him that. It was Mr.Adenbanjo, doc, sir and whatever other respectable titles I could think of- never dad, not even pops. I was still holding on to the idea that I had real parents out there. Around this time, I had begun to give in to the fact that he was my father and Adjoa was my mother. They were my real parents.
It wasn't even a good dream. It was scary. I was so fucking scared. I said, "Dad!" He looked up and zipped his little pouch, tucking it between the cushions as he did back then— before he thought I knew anything. "What's going on, son?" He chuckled.
I used to love it when he laughed— even when he smiled. His eyes sparkled like stars in the darkest of nightskies. He always looked so happy. "I just had a dream." I said, sitting on the couch across from him.
"Oh yeah?" He asked, intrigued. He was always much more interested in things like this after he'd indulged in whatever he was keeping zipped up in that pouch. That pouch that i'd unzipped many times finding it fully stocked, always. I had started stealing from it not too long before this day. When he found out, he never said anything to me, he just stopped hiding the pouch. Eventually he stopped using the pouch altogether; he just left them in the main bathroom so that we both could get to them easily. "What happened?"
"I was falling," I laughed, even though just moments before I was shocked out of my sleep with a rapid beat in my chest and a sweaty pillow. "I was walking down this hallway. I saw a couple of friends and they went down the stairs before I could get their attention so I followed them."
"Mhm." He nodded his head, letting me know he was following,
"So I tried catching up to them. I ran down the hallway and down a few steps then there were no more steps... I was just falling for soooo long. Then, right before I hit the bottom, BOOM!" I yelled,
"You woke up!" He nodded, taking a sip from his glass,
"Yep."
"You know why you woke up?" He asked in that way he always does when there's a lesson coming. I shook my head 'no' waiting for him to tell me. His face got serious. He looked down at his hands, then rubbed his nose with the tips of his finger and thumb.
"You know.." he started, "if you die in your dream, you'll never wake up." I squinted my eyes at him.
"You mean I'll die in real life?"
"Yes. If you don't wake up before you hit the bottom, you will not wake up. You have to wake up, but your body knows when to wake up. Sometimes."
"Sometimes? What do you mean sometimes?"
He shrugged, standing up from his chair. As he walked past me he stopped and said, "if you feel like you're about to die, wake up." He said sternly before leaving out the door for work.
I have to wake up before I die I repeated over and over in the void of my unconsciousness.
I struggled, trying to bring feeling to my fingertips, an eyelid, a toe— anything to alarm my body that I needed to wake up! A familiar voice crept into my ears, "no I saw it!" I heard a frantic voice yelling. Others were soon heard too, what is it that she saw?
"Jill, you just want him to wake up, it's okay, we all do." I heard the voice, but I couldn't place it.
"Don't talk to me like I'm crazy, Dame. I saw the blanket move. It was his foot." She said
matter-of-factly. I felt a cold sensation on my foot suddenly, "see! He flinched!" She said, excitedly. "Go get the nurse."
Then there was nothing. I was shocked back again. I was in my pops bedroom, shaking him and screaming. "Wake up! Please, don't do this to me!" He laid, sprawled out on the floor, unconscious. There was a needle and a spoon beside him on the floor. His arm was wrapped with a thin fabric. I shook him more, yelling for him. He wouldn't wake up.
"Come on, babes. Please wake up." I heard Jill's voice in my ear, then a sensation on my cheek. I felt something in the palm of my hand, but I couldn't make my hand move to feel what it was. "Come on, Colin. Squeeze my hand. You can do it. I know you're there." She cooed.
My pops appeared right beside me. It feels like it's been ages since I've seen his face. His eyes aren't sparkling now though. They're dark and stone like. "Baby boy, you need to wake up before you die." He said sternly, standing right beside me, "come on, let's go." He said, taking my hand. He ran pulling me along with him. I could see some sort of image— I can't explain it, but something was closing, Pops knew what it was. He'd been here before. He'd gotten there too late when he was here last, whatever it was had closed before he could make it. He fell asleep and never woke up.
"This can never happen again." He chastised me as we neared the closing, "If I ever see you here again, I will beat your ass!" He growled, trying to breathe and run all while he talked, "I love you, baby boy." He said, panting while we ran, "You gotta do better this time. I fear you won't get another chance after this one." He said sorrowfully, "I'm sorry, baby boy. I led you down this road, but I found the way out. I couldn't make it there, but you can! You can do this!"
"But, what if I don't want to do this? Dad, I'm tired."
"I know, baby boy. But you gotta fight that. You have to keep going until it isn't tough anymore. You'll find joy again."
"How do you know? You never did."
"But I did, son. Look at how much I missed since I been gone. There's so much more life out there. You just can't see it yet."
I looked at him while we stood at helm of consciousness and unconsciousness, "you're getting a second chance, my boy. Don't mess it up." He said, taking me into a warm hug, kissing me on the crown of my head before pushing me out into the world, "he's awake!" I heard Jill cry, "Coley? Baby? Can you hear me?"
My chest heaved dramatically as I drew breath along with whatever machine that was stuffed down my throat. It was hard to breathe. Jill held tightly onto my hand, waving frantically towards the door. "Take this shit off him! He can't breathe!" She yelled.
I began to feel heaviness in my chest and my eyes grew heavier and filled with tears. I could feel myself falling again. I squeezed her hand tightly, begging for help. I could hear my pops voice again, "wake up." He said, "keep going until it isn't tough anymore." So I did. I kept drawing heavy breath after heavy breath until I couldn't anymore. Everything had gone dark. I couldn't see or hear my pops anymore. I couldn't feel Jill's hand or hear her screams any longer. It was a pitched blackness surrounding me. There were no sounds. There was no feeling.
I thought it'd be better if I died than if I woke up for all of it to only be a dream. For Lonnie to only be a dream. As much as I fought, I knew what was really pulling me back in. It was him. The feeling of having him again and of knowing him again. I didn't want to let him go again.
The next day, Jill told me what happened. Everyone else had gone home for the night and it was just me and her. She described what it looked like from the outside to see me struggling for life and I told her what it felt like. We were watching reruns of Jeopardy on the hospital TV. Neither of us talked for a whole episode. We laughed a few times and mumbled answers, but didn't really acknowledge each other aside from our hands being intertwined.
When it went to commercial, she watched the beef patties being thrown about the screen as if it was a scene on SpongeBob. Her eyes were glued to the commercial. "You overdosed, Cole." She said plainly. I could hear the disappointment in her tone. There was something else there too, uncommon for her so I couldn't place it, but I could feel it. "Dame got a call from you. He was in Ohio at the time and he drove down because he was worried about you."
She looked away from the screen. I looked at her and she asked, "Why didn't you call me?"
I didn't feel like it was fair of her to ask me that shit. I don't know what was going through my mind then, but I couldn't imagine Jill being the first on my emergency contacts list after the way we left things. Dame on the other hand, he always shows up. It was quiet and I could hear the humming of the machines and the liquid from the IV swishing. Jill sighed, grabbing my hand. "I have something to tell you." She hummed, "So, Dame has a surprise for you that just might kill you." She smiled, "And I'm not even joking."
"What is it?"
"Not a what, a who."
"Who?" I asked, my heart beating fast again. She only smiled and leaned up against the bed to where our heads were touching. I shook my head, knowing she wasn't one to ruin a surprise. But, my mind grew full of ideas. I wondered who it could be as I drifted off into sleep.
Book three coming soon:
[03222022]