NIGHT TERRORS

By Ryan Usher

FIRST MOVEMENT

I woke up suddenly, each time. The bed sheets clung to my sweaty body, but this time, nothing else really seemed out of sorts. The first time, I had knocked my glasses halfway across the room, and last night, the mattress had slid off of the box spring several feet. Even though I managed not to destroy my bedroom this time, the nightmare I had was no less terrifying. I guess I’m just getting better at handling it.

I suppose that the worst nightmares are the ones you can’t remember, and this was definitely one of them. Fragments and threads are all that come with me to the waking world, not enough to figure out, but enough to know that the nightmare is recurring. Whatever it was, it was really awful, and it was one of those dreams that you aren’t sure is over even when you know you’re awake.

In other words, it was scaring the hell out of me.

The soft glow of the alarm clock’s LED was the only source of light, and it told me that it was a quarter to four in the morning. It never would wait until I had to get up at six. I reached for my glasses and clicked on the lamp, because I knew it was a waste of time to try and go back to sleep. I’ve been learning over the last few days, you know. Besides, I had to take a piss, which I did.

I’m sorry. Here I am telling you about my bathroom functions without even properly introducing myself. My name is Benjamin Ramsey, Ben to my friends, few that there are. Where my story begins, I was 37 years old, unhappily divorced, I work for an investment firm, which bores the hell out of me but pays well. I no longer had a kid, which leads to why I no longer have a wife. I have no close family other than my brother Barry. I was all alone in this world now, pretty much. Aren’t I the kind of guy that brightens up the room? I’m not the kind of guy who usually stokes the fires even in good times, and for a while, getting to know me was a waste of your time.

But yet you’re here.

Anyway, as I was saying, I went to take a leak. It was easier this time, since I did have my glasses. That being done, I plodded to the sink, and gargled with mouthwash. I hate having bad breath. When I looked at the mirror, I did not like what I saw. That wasn’t always so. I used to be quite good-looking. Had the muscles, washboard stomach, you name it. Now I saw time. The handsome face I had was growing lines. A second chin was in the making, concurrent with the belly that was creeping its way into prominence a few feet south. The hairline is in retreat. I look like shit now. That probably had something to do with why Alice left me. It would have just been icing on the cake, probably. After our son died, everything went to shit between us, and I could look like Robert Fucking Redford with Schwarzenegger’s physique and Bill Gates’ bankroll, things would not have turned out differently. It wasn’t my fault. I knew that, and she knew it too, but that didn’t stop her from blaming me. Sure, she never vocalized that blame unless we were really deep into one of our heated ‘discussions’, but even when things were cooled, the look was always there. And there were almost never apologies. I hate her for that. It wasn’t my fault!

The divorce was inevitable. Both of us wanted it. When we got married, it seemed so perfect, and until December 2, 2002, it was, more or less. That’s when Christopher died. He was only five years old. He tripped, on his shoelaces, probably, and fell down the stairs. He hit his head on the way down, three times. That alone would probably have killed him, figuratively if not literally, the doctor later said, but there wasn’t even that much time. One of those strikes broke two vertebrae in his neck. He died before he even stopped falling.

Didn’t I tell you I was a veritable paragon of uplifting mojo?

I was at home alone with him at the time. I’m not a bad father. I was nowhere near negligent. But you can’t have an eye on them every single goddamn second of their lives, either. It was an accident, a stupid, freak accident. Had I been there, there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do to save him.

I tell myself that, because I truly believe it. Alice, she never believed it. At best, I was at fault for not getting there fast enough (the stupid bitch doesn’t seem to realize how fast a broken neck kills), but I think she blamed me primarily because I wasn’t all over him every second of his life, as if she was whenever they were alone together.

Anyway, he died, and there are no words I can think of to describe how terrible that Christmas was. We already had his gifts. She even wrapped them afterwards, and in the end, the local Christmas Mother chapter hit pay dirt with us. Alice and I both normally enjoyed the season, especially after Christopher was born, and we tried as hard as we could manage to not allow this one to be totally devoid of joy and cheer, but even though the radio was playing “Feliz Navidad” and “Joy to the World”, and the tree was lit nicely, Christmas dinner that year was cold, lonely, and either the food had no taste, or we didn’t.

Everything went to shit after New Year’s. I read once that tragedies like this usually brought families closer. Supposedly, a natural result of dealing with the death of a child tends to create an even stronger bond between the parents. This is exactly what did not happen. The Ramsey household was short one-third of its population, and what was left was disintegrating faster than pavement under a jackhammer. It was becoming impossible to maintain the illusion of love between us.

She insisted on placing the blame for this on me, and to be frank, I was hardly in the mood for it. Alice and I had our friction throughout our marriage, maybe more than the average couple, but I usually let it roll off my back. Taking blame from her was more or less just another constant in my life, and until now I had never really let it get my goat. But goddamn, this wasn’t something stupid like forgetting to thaw the roast or neglecting to record a check. This was the death of our son, and as much as she might not have wanted to believe it, I’ve never felt so downright terrible about anything in my entire life. I was there for it. I felt responsible. I wished like hell that I could have been there to stop what happened, even though I know it was impossible. I was a fucking emotional train wreck. And what do I get from her? Comfort? Sympathy? I’d have liked it, but I would have never expected it, given the circumstances. Reassurance was what I wanted. Human beings tend to blame themselves in these situations, and we do this because when no one’s at fault, it’s just not fair to blame anyone else. Alice did not see it that way.

At first, the blame was subtle. But subtlety was not her strong suit. It did not take long for the blame to become overt and obvious. At first, I was shocked and hurt, and of course, I kind of agreed with her. Therefore, for the first few weeks, I didn’t argue with her. That only seemed to drive her harder. It almost seemed like an obsession, and after so much, I did start to defend myself. I was a man about it. I never once blamed her for it (for doing so would have been as childish and stupid as what she was doing), so instead I chose to attack her for being such a cold, unloving bitch (as though that didn’t make me childish and stupid, huh?). How many variations of that phrase I used I will never remember, but they were said and I still believe it. Our arguments became heated, loud, and long, and before too long, it would be more accurate to call them fights. This led up to what I consider the second-lowest moment of my life, after the death of my son of course, and that was the day I slapped her across her snarling face. And, I have to admit, I didn’t pull this hit. She stumbled backwards with the force of it.

I had been taught growing up never, ever to strike a woman in anger. I had never before done it. Yet, when it finally happened, I could feel nothing except sweet satisfaction. It felt good. The stunned look on her face, the sudden interruption of her maniacal ranting, the sobbing and the mostly-incoherent screaming that followed, all seemed so sweet. She didn’t dare hit me back, probably afraid I’d belt her another good one, and honest to God, I’m not at all certain I wouldn’t have if provoked further. I hadn’t felt so satisfied since the day Chris died. And if you really need a damning indictment of my character, I doubt you could do better than that.

So anyway, she runs home to her mother, and like any mother-in-law worth her salt, the old battle-axe distrusted and disliked me already, and all she needed was one good reason to outright seethe hatred for me, and it didn’t get a whole lot better than being a wife-beater. Either of them could probably have filed an assault charge against me, but they didn’t. Instead, Alice visited a divorce attorney the very next morning, some self-important prick named Ellington I think. I was only too happy to go along with it. When she tried to leech my assets, I fought her. I lost, in the end. Men always seem to end up on the short end of these sticks, and the fact that I knocked the shit out of her that night did me no good. I ended up giving her the house, one of our cars, and a hefty portion of what I had stewing in the bank. Now, I don’t like to think of myself as a cheapskate, but whenever I part with more than a hundred dollars at a time for pretty much anything, no matter what it is, I always feel at least a small bit of regret. Yet, here I was, losing tens of thousands of dollars worth of my assets, yet so deep was the hatred I felt for my ex-wife that I felt it was a price worth paying twice over just to be rid of her forever.

After all this happened, I ended up transferring to an office near Harrisburg, and I rented a nice little apartment in an outskirt called Kimberly Hills. I got a dog to keep me company, a little beagle I named Watson, and I embraced the bachelor’s life once again. I had sworn to stay away from women for awhile, but within six months I was out dating again. It was so different doing it in my thirties, easier. I met several nice-looking women, slept with a handful of them, and never even thought about committing to a single one of them. I didn’t want to be put in this situation, but since I had no choice but to live for myself, that’s exactly what I did.

Now don’t get me wrong, I did miss my son terribly. To this day, even after the little miracle I was blessed with, I see his face in my dreams, and seeing a photo of him can still bring me to tears. Not for even a thousandth of a second was I even remotely glad to be rid of him. Even though I was having a good time, and believe me, after the disintegration of my marriage, it was a total necessity, I would have given it all up in a heartbeat, if it meant I could turn back the clock to that December day.

Whew, what a ramble. I’m sorry. It’s just that, to understand everything that happened since, it helps to know what led to it. Maybe what happened may have happened even if things had stayed sane for me, but the more I think about it, the more I doubt it. Just bear with me a little while longer.

So, here I was, lonely and cold. My life was experiencing a slow leak, and with every passing day, I felt slightly less like waking up in the morning. God knows that when I didn’t have to wake up, I wouldn’t bother stumbling out of bed until it was late afternoon and my bladder just wouldn’t take it anymore. This of course led to many sleepless nights, which led to me being sluggish and lifeless in the mornings when I had to pretend to be alive. It was a vicious cycle that’s hard to break even when you put real effort into trying. As it was, I just went with the flow. I stopped talking to people. I ignored my friends and the rest of my family.

After several months of this, my boss called me into his office. It was in November, and it was on a morning that was just way too bright. I had all of about ninety minutes of sleep that night. Now, I have to say that Mr. Jackson, as far as supervisors go, is a pretty decent guy. He’s fair, and as likely to praise you as criticize you. Therefore, I knew that when he told me that I needed a vacation, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer, most other bosses would have used phrases like “unsatisfactory performance” and “decision-making time”. Now, these phrases would have hardly been untrue, but Jackson, ever the diplomat, was able to put that across to me without making me feel too crappy about it.

I took him up on the offer. After all, I didn’t really have a choice. It was one rung below mandatory. But I had two weeks without obligations and a good amount of free money to spend. As I drove home that cold evening, I thought about where I might go, as the Beach Boys said, to get away from it all. Hell, south Florida might be a good idea, anyway.

But when I got back to my apartment, I guess I just forgot about the idea, for the time being, anyway. I got into my boxers, nuked some leftover chicken, and sat in front of the old idiot box, with Watson lounging across my lap. The last remaining rays of sunlight disappeared to the west, and the TV soon became the only light illuminating the room. I let my brain go into standby, and I drifted into dreamland.

I couldn’t have known then, or even for quite some time afterward, but my life was about to change forever.