Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-35711173-20180607073559

After the abrupt demise of my last story, I thought I would try something simpler, something hopefully a bit different.

The cliche is that it is easiest to write from personal experience. I thought I would give that a try here.

I was going to go for these categories: Dreams/Sleep Mental Illness History

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The night was bitterly cold, near freezing. It had been far too cold to sleep in my cold little room on the third floor of the Musgrave Street Station barracks. Somehow, I had managed to rise, dress in my uniform, shave and assemble in the squad room in time to be mustered out for my Midnight shift. As I walked from Musgrave Street station to my beat on the docks I was very thankful for my thick coat and comforted by the heavy weight I had slipped in my coat pocket.

The damp cold made my bones ache. I wanted a drink to arm my insides so badly. Even more than that, I wanted a quiet night. I was tired and my throat was sore. The baked beans, boxty and crumbs of what they called white pudding they served for breakfast didn’t sit well either. I didn’t want anything to happen during my shift that I couldn’t pretend to not have noticed.

The fog across the River Lagan was thick, white and murky. I was following my scheduled rounds, trying doors to check for burglars as I went. I crossed the Queen’s Bridge over the river and made it to the call box by the Custom House at 2:00. I was walking along Donnegall Quay and rang at 2:15 from the call box by the old railroad bridge along the Quay. As I walked towards the Harbour Commissioners for my 2:30, I felt something move. I shined my torch in that direction and saw a small man with a grey cap behind heavy reels of ship’s rope next to the Sirocco Works factory. “You there,” I called. “Come on out.” He didn’t come out. He ducked down, pulled a small gun and fired at me.

The world around me instantly became blind and stupid. Everything seemed so slow and yet I was not thinking at all. Everything just happened without thinking like double post passes in rugby. I pulled the big revolver out of my coat pocket and fired three times as I ducked around a corner but he kept firing back.

I retreated, having to fire twice more to keep him down. Then I ducked through a storm door that I knew from my rounds was unlocked. He was IRA and he was there to ambush and kill me as much as if I were the Black and Tan that had murdered poor Father Michael Griffin. No time to reload. I had one last shot, one chance to live. He stormed through the doorway and I slammed that heavy door on his gun arm and held it tight with all the might I had. He struggled and shot, trying to wiggle loose but as he tried I used my weight to hold him fast as I put my gun to his head. As I watched his eyes pop and plead for mercy I pulled the trigger, splattering blood and brains and bone all over me.

He dropped his gun. I picked it up, letting the door swing open. He dropped. I could see the insides of his skull. I could see his brain and the big hole I had put in it. I had expected him to be dead but his eyes followed me and he cried with a whimpering sound that you would think only a dying dog could make.

I had killed during the war but it was never like this, never where I could see in his eyes and smell his sweat and the cheap whiskey on his breath, not where I had to watch him die an inch at a time. I screamed. I could not help it but I screamed.

My wife Judith was shaking my shoulder. “Noah, Wake up. Wake up.”

I sighed, still shaking. I looked across the room. The big green LED numbers on the clock radio read 2:17 am.

Little Esther and Aaron opened our door and stared. “Daddy are you alright,” Esther asked.

My lips trembled. My wife turned the light on and said “Daddy will be alright. Just go back to bed.”

After the children closed the door and returned to bed, she turned to me and said “Dear God, Noah. What are we going to do with you?”

I fought back tears, shaking. I had no idea.

“Which one was it,” she finally said.

“The docks.”

“You … what you did was self-defense and in the line of duty.”

Judith was right. It could have been one that was far, far worse. They say dying in your dreams was the worst nightmare. Dying was nothing compared to things I remembered doing. I used to have very little dream recall. I wished for those days to return. Now every sight, every smell was burned into my mind because I kept seeing the same horrors unfold exactly the same way over and over again until they had become more real than my waking days.

“Did you take your prazosin and sertraline and your risperidone before bed, Dear?”

I showed her the empty pill strip. Not that it mattered. The dreams seemed to be getting worse no matter how many pills the psychiatrists crammed into me. I honestly had no idea what or how or why my nights were suddenly filled with battles and death. Why these? If I had dreamed of dying in pogroms in Kiev or going up the chimneys in Auschwitz at least that would make some sense.

She turned the light off. “Let’s just go back to sleep. Everything will be alright in the morning.”

I lay back because I wanted her to go to sleep but I was too afraid to sleep. It was as if my life had been invaded and was being taken over by horrors from another century. I had seriously considered making a pot of strong coffee so I could stay up but I knew that sleep deprivation would lead to complete madness. Finally, exhaustion took control of my mind.

It was a pleasant night, cloudy but with just the smallest spots of rain, the night of the August bank holiday. I walked along Whitechapel Road. It was well past Midnight. I had a hunger that no food could satisfy. Yet I would know my satisfaction.

I knew the filth would search for me. That is why I had taken certain simple preventative measures to see to it that they would never catch me. An old guardsman’s uniform purchased from a rag and bone man for half a shilling, a private to be even more invisible.

Another “guardsman” was out that night. He wore the cap band of the Coldstream Guards and his chest carried far too many medals. We eyed each other and as we made vague murmurs towards each other as our prey approached us. There were two of them, one young but harsh and far too man like and the other rather fat and ill.

“I get the young one,” my imitation superior said. I pretended to acquiesce but the fat one had always been my target.

“Half a shilling for a poke,” she said to me.

A poke it would be, but not the one the whore imagined. “Four pence, and a shot from my flask.”

We separated from the “corporal” and his choice. I followed her through the arch that led into George Yard and to the George Yard Buildings. We climbed the staircase up to the first-floor landing and into impenetrable darkness. She lay down. “How about that drink first?” I let her drain the flask. She raised her clothing to her middle and I lay down on her, quickly pulling the knife. 