The dream was back. It usually came in the nights when I had drank too much and kicked in at the point when the body's blood sugar is altered and drops as it is effected by the amount of demon rum pumping through it's veins, heart, and brain. First the eyes snap open. Looking at the clock you realized you've only been asleep a few hours. You already feel the start of a hangover. Terrible cottonmouth. The dreaded hot pipes. You need a drink of water but don't get out of bed. You need to piss but you don't stir. Your eyes close. You start to drift off. The snakes and spiders in your brain start to stir and to move about. The dream is about Rose. It almost always is. You now know that Rose is dead. Or worse. A year or so ago you called a buddy of yours back in Hawaii. Big time weed dealer on the island. A Navy guy that got into the business while stationed in Pearl Harbor and decided to stay after his hitch ended. He's always full of colorful stories, information, and gossip. Which is one of the reasons you call him. That and to check up on the past. Janine has found Jesus and changed her cock chasing ways and is now the secretary to the Pearl Harbor Chaplain. A huge drunk. The chaplain not Janine. Chief Mason dropped dead of a heart attack at work. "That guy was a prick with ears." Old news.
Then he tells you that Rose came back to
Hawaii. Somehow she was still in the Navy. Some
big wig admiral on the island liked that pussy so
much that he pulled some strings and got her re-
assigned to his staff. Then one day she disappeared.
The kind of disappeared that involves being ground
up and fed to the sharks or buried in a shallow
grave. The rumor going around is the old admiral
flipped out and beat poor Rose to death over some
weird sex thing gone wrong. Supposedly a couple
of enlisted pukes took care of the dirty work for the
feeble prick.
In the dream, which is always the same, you
walk into Rose's apartment. You call out her name.
Your looking for Reggie but will fuck Rose if she's
willing. The place is dark, disheveled, and smells of
death. When you call out her name, she answers
from the bedroom. The bedroom is even darker than
the living room, lit only by a candle. A black
candle. Rose is sitting on the bed. Naked. Her body
is emaciated. Her face is battered and covered in
dried blood. Her eyeballs have eight ball
hemorrhages. She looks at you as she plays with
herself and beckons you to come to her with her
free hand. When she smiles at you, you can see that
her teeth are rotted and stained like she's been
chewing betel nut. Like an old Viet Names whore.
Sometimes you wake up screaming.
Not this time. A loud clicking noise wakes
me. It's my answering machine shutting down after
taking a message. I had turned down both machine's
volume and the telephone's ringer. Even though I
had been a full time, dues paying member of the
longshoreman's union for almost three years I was
still considered a rookie. So if a ship came in
unexpectedly on a weekend - this was a Saturday
morning - I was often called in for the unloading,
hence the answering machine which I fucking
hated. The sun was coming through the only
window of my shitty studio apartment - one room
that holds a bed, ratty couch from the Salvation
Army, small stove and refrigerator, television, and a
tiny bathroom off to the side. My hangover appears
to be bad but not crippling and I painfully roll over
and discover that I still have company from last
night.
A cute, chubby Mexican gal named Felicia, a
waitress from the bar that is just across the street
from my apartment. One of those bars that is so
ancient and so nasty that it doesn't even have a
name any longer. For some reason it used to be
called "The Gong" but now is just referred to as
"The Place." She's laying on her back and has her
mouth wide open as she snores softly. The sheet is
pulled down just below her belly button, exposing a
beautiful pair of jugs. This is her third or fourth
time at my place. She's in the country illegally,
speaks very little English, and sends home money
faithfully every month to her husband and two
children who live back somewhere deep in the
interior of old Mexico. I recall drinking shots of
tequila chased by iced down bottles of Pabst Blue
Ribbon - a nasty combination - with Felicia and the
bar's cadaverous-looking owner, Rocky.