The Nightmare Game

Copyright ©2011 by S. Suzanne Martin

Revised, 2012

Reformatted, September 2013

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While great care has gone into this book and its
editing, I am only human, except in the eyes of my pets, Tango and Delta, to
whom I am faithful servant. If you find any mistakes, please call them to my
attention at [email protected] so that I can make
corrections for future editions. Thanks.

Cover by S. Suzanne Martin

My sincerest thanks to:  Judy Gundel, Cathy
Minerva, Cherry Rains, and the best English teacher I ever had, Mr. Tommy
Armour.

A very special thanks to my sister, Margaret
Martin. Without your excellent editing help, this book would not have been
possible. You're a wonderful sister and I'm lucky to have you.

This book is dedicated to our beloved parents, the
late Luise and Berlin Martin. There’s not a day that goes by that Margaret and
I don't miss you.

It was in a dream that I first saw him, that
summer of my thirty-ninth year, the summer of the recurring dream. It was
always the same, that dream, never veering, never changing in the slightest.
Always, the handsome man walked past me, down the foggy, tree-lined boulevard,
stopping to turn and smile at me before he began to walk away. His sleek brown
hair hung just below his shoulders and swung with a movement that matched the grace
of his gait. I could hear the sound of his footsteps and the clank of his
walking stick on the cobbled street as he walked, but I could not hear my own
steps at all. I heard only my own breath, loud but irregular, and my heart,
beating so hard I wondered that I could hear anything else. He stopped again,
but this time when he smiled, he beckoned me to draw near. As I walked toward
him slowly, I trembled, for with his pale skin and dark hair and eyes, he was
the most strikingly beautiful man I had ever seen in my entire life. He held
out one of his white-gloved hands, inviting me to come even closer, while in
the other he held a walking stick, upon which the intricately carved
crystalline head of a dragon was set. As I approached him, I noticed how exquisitely
perfect his features and complexion were. I reached out my hand. He took hold
of it and still smiling, began to talk to me. But as his mouth moved to speak,
no words emanated from it. Instead a soft music began to flow from the mouth of
the dragon, beautiful, uplifting, soulful, and then, from behind me, came a
horrible shrieking that had surely been spawned in the very pit of hell.

That was the dream. It ended here, always, at
exactly the same point every single time, never allowing me to finish it in
order to discover its conclusion. Each and every time without fail, it left me
drained and depleted, as if I had not slept one wink the entire night. At first
I dealt with the exhaustion as best I could, for upon awakening the shrieking
inevitably turned out to be nothing more ominous than my alarm clock, signaling
once again that it was time to get up and go to work at a job which had become
nothing more than a drudge and a paycheck long ago. But as time progressed and
the nights turned into days and the days turned into weeks and then months, the
dream haunted my sleep as it appeared, unasked, unwelcome, unwanted. It jangled
my nerves more and more every time, becoming increasingly frequent and
progressively disconcerting. This dream began to torment me in earnest when it
intruded into my coveted weekends, my precious free time that belonged to me
alone, to catch up on my sleep, to spend as I wished, doing what I wished. I
would have welcomed this lovely man and the foggy boulevard upon which he walked
had I ever been allowed to finish the dream and hear what he wanted to tell me.
But I was not.

On weekends, the shrieking of the alarm clock was
replaced a myriad of rude and jolting interruptions, designed, it seemed, for
no other purpose than to rouse me from the dream. At first came the telephone,
clamoring away due to a wrong number, a telemarketer, or even no voice
whatsoever at the other end of the line. When I began turning off the phone’s
ringer, that sound was replaced by a host of other noises that seemed expressly
designed to awaken me, everything from the sirens of ambulances, police and
fire vehicles to the shrill barking of every single dog in the neighborhood
going crazy at the exact same time. These Saturday and Sunday interruptions
only ever happened whenever I had the dream. Sleep deprivation and its
companion, exhaustion, lured my increasingly paranoid brain into believing
these events had conspired for the sole intention of preventing me from
completing it. Tired and depleted, I’d always curse as I crawled out of bed.
“Damn!” my first words of the day would inevitably be. “Why can’t this dream
ever finish itself?”

These memories dominated my mind as I  later sat
seated in an airplane headed for New Orleans, occupying my time sifting through
the events of the last few months, events which were overshadowed by that
recurring dream. Until then, I’d been relatively comfortable with my life. Not
exactly happy, mind you, but adequately content. Then, about six months ago for
no known reason, I began to descend into a severe malaise that I chalked up to
a mid-life crisis. Then the dream began. It seemed innocent enough at first,
because it wasn’t a nightmare. However, its constant recurrence combined with
its refusal to finish soon turned it into one, deepening my despondency. Along
with the dream came a new fascination with New Orleans, which I attributed to a
case of homesickness, of wanting to go to a place I remembered from my youth.
After all, I’d grown up in a small town not too far north of the city.

A few weeks ago, after a truly horrible fortieth
birthday, my best friend Carolyne took me out for dinner after work to
celebrate and came through for me once again. It was on that night that our
plans began to emerge for our long weekend getaway.

“C’mon, Ashley,” Carolyne chided me later that
evening, after a few more glasses of wine. “You need a real vacation. You owe
yourself one. Why not get out of town? It’s been ages since you’ve been. At
least go visit your family.”

“I’ve only got a few days left this year and
besides, my family’s not even going to be home. Remember, I told you about the
cruise they’re getting ready to take. They’ll be gone a whole month.”

“And you didn’t want to go?”

“Yes, I wanted to go. My sister Jan even offered
to pay my way.”

 “And you still decided not to?”

“Carolyne, you know I don’t even get that much
vacation. Besides, my company would never let me take that much time off all at
once.”

“Okay then, let’s you and I take a short trip.
Where do you want to go?”

No sooner had the words escaped her lips than I
blurted out, “New Orleans. Let’s go to New Orleans!”

“Ashley, you’ve been obsessing about New Orleans
for some time now. Any particular reason?”

“No, not really. I can’t explain it. It just a
strong urge. It almost feels like it’s been calling me.”

“Great! Let’s go. I hear that the Quarter’s made a
big comeback.”

“I’d really love that, but only if I can afford
it, only if we can find a real bargain. With all my recent expenses, I haven’t
been this broke in years.”

“I’m sure we can find a great deal. Let’s start
looking tomorrow.”

Clicking our glasses in a toast, Carolyne said,
“All right, then. New Orleans, here we come!”

So perhaps I couldn’t go with my family on their
cruise, but Carolyne and I could make our own fun for a few days. I knew that
any trip that we took together would be a blast.

We looked around for some great deals the next
day, but by late morning, I still didn’t see a price with which I could be
comfortable, realizing that I should have taken the vacation before I bought my
house or put a little less money into the down payment.

It was that same afternoon, however, that the
e-mails and faxes began to arrive, ads for a townhouse apartment at incredibly
low rates, almost as if it were the answer to my prayers. It was as if somebody
out there knew how strapped for cash I was at the moment and how badly I needed
to get away. The townhouse was an older building, not in pristine condition and
had obviously seen better days, but for the price, it was pretty much what I
expected. Besides, I’d always wanted to stay in a house in the French Quarter
that had an old-style courtyard. It didn’t matter to me that it was just a
little run-down. After all, we only needed it for four days and we weren’t
actually aiming to spend that much time there anyway with all the activities
that we had planned. It was mainly just a place to hang our hats and sleep.

It was with excitement that I was counting down
the days until our New Orleans holiday.  I’d packed and arranged for my next
door neighbor to feed my two cats, Samson and Delilah, while I was gone. Last
night I was ready, waiting eagerly for morning to arrive, until Carolyne
lowered the boom about not being able to go. Her vacation had been postponed
because something had suddenly come up at the office and her boss needed her
there this afternoon and all of next week, but she felt so bad about this new
development that she would gladly drive me to the airport early this morning.
Carolyne had enough free time coming up to be able to postpone the trip, but
for me it was use-or-lose-it time for my vacation. If I didn’t take it now, I’d
just lose the time altogether. Since our busy season was just around the
corner, it would be quite a while until I could get away again. I needed badly
to get away. Now. The stress in my life was starting to show. My fair skin was
beginning to look blotchy, my straight light brown hair was becoming limp and
my blue-gray eyes were overly anxious, holding a timid, fearful and tense
expression these days. I wasn’t really looking forward to traveling alone, but
with all the expenses I’d had recently, this trip was all I could afford.

I tried to cheer myself up, taking out the slip of
paper on which I’d written the apartment’s contact information. Miss Rochere,
that was whom I needed to see. She had the key to the place. Her office was
pretty close to the townhouse. When Carolyne and I had planned this trip, I was
excited about staying in a townhome with a courtyard. That had been a dream of
mine my entire life. But now I truly wished I were staying in a hotel, where
other people would be around me. I was getting a bad feeling about this trip
now. “Don’t be silly, Ashley,” I told myself. “You’re just worried about
getting lonely.”

I told myself that everything would be okay, that
it was just for four days. Even by myself, a long week-end in New Orleans
should be fun. At least I didn’t have to go into work and besides, it’s not
like I’d be visiting a place that I’ve never been before. Finally my excitement
began to return. Hey, I was no stranger to New Orleans. Growing up in a nearby
parish less than a two hour drive away, I took occasional bus day trips there
with family or friends as a child and older adolescent. I knew the city a
little, albeit not much and very superficially. I had wanted to move to there
after college, but when I couldn’t find a job in my field, I realized it was
simply not meant to be and I moved instead to Austin. So unlike any other city
in which I’d ever found myself, New Orleans held a mystery and a romance to
which I could not wait to return. It had been far too long since I’d visited
her and just thinking about this old familiarity perked me up now. Alone or
not, I was looking forward to seeing the Crescent City again. I was finally
anticipating all the tours that I’d always wanted to take, of the Quarter and
the Garden District, tours of the plantation and bayou country outside the city
as well. I would make the most of this trip. And who knows, I heard Carolyne’s
voice chirping inside my head, “You might just meet the man of your dreams on
this trip.” The man of my dreams. Now wouldn’t that be something?

Despite my recent protests to the contrary, I was
ready for it, too, more ready than ever to meet the right guy, the one who was supposed
to be for me. It was weird, I knew, but ever since my earliest teens, I’d
always had a strong feeling that he was out there somewhere and that he wanted
to meet me as much as I wanted to meet him. I was certain that we’d recognize
each other the moment we met. I’d waited patiently and looked everywhere for
him, but he just never showed up. Looking back at all of the men I had ever
dated, and there were many, there was not one who resembled him in the
slightest. Even though the years passed, I could never completely shake the
feeling that the other half of my soul was out there waiting, longing for me.
Mostly on hot, humid nights when I had trouble sleeping, I could still, even
now, physically feel him out there, calling me, thirsting for me, making my
insides ache for him in that sweet, delicious, painful way of his. Eventually,
I started giving up entirely on the idea that he would ever show up. Cruel fate
had caused us to stand each other up and my loneliness became even worse. It
was a fact I’d come to accept gracefully until the dreams stirred up my old
feelings for him, feelings that were now almost unbearable. Increasingly strong
carnal cravings for the imaginary young man from the foggy boulevard gnawed at
me daily, intense yearnings and hot, humid desires. Why did he haunt me so?

I snapped myself out of my thoughts, realizing
that I’d once more become so immersed in them that I’d gone off into my own
little world again. Before I drifted off into a doze, I forced myself to come
to my senses and I stretched, yawned and opened my eyes. But instead of sitting
in my airplane seat, I was standing again on the now too-familiar foggy
boulevard. The trim figure of the dream man was walking in front of me, away
from me. What was it about him that attracted me so irresistibly, so fiercely
to him? For the first time since it began, I realized in my dream that it was a
dream, and so, also for the first time, I took a deliberate action; I ran up to
him and tapped his shoulder. He turned around and smiled and I saw him more
clearly than I ever had in any dream before. His warm brown and gold eyes were
not only seeing me, they were seeing right through me, into my heart, melting
my flesh inside. We locked eyes and in that moment we knew each other
thoroughly. I knew I was in love with him and would be forever. He was the one,
the one for whom I had waited my entire life, the one for whom I had longed
until my insides ached and churned, melted and re-formed and then melted again
over and over, year after year. He was the one that had never shown up and here
he was now, so beautiful and so perfect, his love pouring into me as mine
poured into him. But instead of lifting up his cane for me to hear the
crystalline dragon’s song, as he always had in these dreams, he took my hand
and drew me near to him. He looked at me with great urgency, opened his mouth
to speak and this time the words came pouring out of his mouth, “Ladies and
gentlemen, we are now arriving in New Orleans and approaching the Louis
Armstrong Airport. Please give all cups to your flight attendant. Make sure
your trays are in the upright position and your seatbelts are fastened. Please
remain seated after we’ve landed and until we have arrived at the gate. The
temperature is a humid 94 degrees in the Crescent City and no rain is expected
this weekend, but a cold front should be coming in later today. We hope you
enjoyed your flight and thank you for flying with us.”