The Prophecy...

The words Psychic Psycho just popped into my head. It wasn't going to be, but that can be the name of this story unless I decide to change it in the meantime. After all, maybe that's what I am, especially if dreams are true experiences of the dreamer's soul, which I'm not yet certain that they are.

I've been having kooky dreams for many years now. For all of my life actually. I wish I could remember all of the dreams I've had over the years, for my own sake if not for yours. I'll tell you some of them now, if you like. Of course, as with all dreams, expect them to be fragmented and all over the place. This is one that I've dubbed The Prophecy. Don't panic. There's nothing religious in it if you're against that sort of thing, I promise; it was just one of those really draining dreams people have sometimes, the type where you wake up and fully expect it to come true one day, simply for the fact that it was so vivid and real.

All of the colour are true colours. I feel every sensation as if I am there. It is my Sister's twenty first birthday party. We are at her house and all her friends are there laughing, playing games and drinking. After a while we run out of alcohol, so a couple of us wander through the dark alleys behind her house that lead to the closest pub. We are mostly drunk and stumbling our way along when I drop my purse and it's contents spill into the gutter, and my photo identification- indeed, my very identity- is stolen from me, but I somehow manage to wrestle it back from the thief; who wasn't anybody I recognised, by the by.

Once we have made our way to the pub and are finally ordering more alcohol, and I am thinking that the ordeal for the night is over at last, I am confronted by a curly black-haired bitch who is sitting on a stool, alone, at the bar. She is quite attractive until she speaks, and hits me with the taunt that I am not enough of a woman to be with my man, that they have far better chemistry together, that they, in fact, belong together now, and will be again soon.

At this point I drag her, backwards, by her long curly hair off the stool and enjoy a few true aims to her head with my clenched hand. I feel her soft head yielding beneath my hard fist; her jaw turns to mush and I panic as I flee the scene realising what I have done and the trouble I am in, leaving my purse- and identity- on the counter of the bar in my rush to escape. Now the police will know who I am. It's only a matter of time before they get me. And I know they will. I can see the sirens flashing blue and red and hear their low whine in the distance.

I race up a flight of about one hundred steps but they catch me anyway and place their handcuffs on me; but my wrists are too thin and I slip out of them while no one is watching. I begin to run away up a very short hill and then fall down the grassy slope on the other side, somersaulting over and over again. I wish I had a largish piece of cardboard. With a splash I land in a pool of water at the bottom of the hill and wake up...only to find myself thinking that I'm awake now and in the shower.

At the time I am still at home, living with my Parents, and I can hear my Sisters in my Father's kitchen- they are laughing and making breakfast. I am thinking how glad I am now that the nightmare is finally over but then the shower suddenly starts filling up with water, faster and faster until it is full, until it is almost impossible to hang on until I can get another breath of air into my lungs, which are now screaming for oxygen. It's like that episode of Get Smart where the phone booth gets flooded and Max barely manages to escape from drowning. Another struggle ensues, with the shower door this time, until it gives way with a burst and a rush of water spilling out onto the bathroom floor. Gasping for air, I go into the kitchen, and tell my oldest Sister about the horrible experiences I've just had, with the shower recess filling up and almost drowning me, and the terrible nightmare I had in the night about losing my identity, punching the chick on the stool in the face and having the police chase me all over the place.

She looks at me, incredulously, and tells me that was what had actually happened, and that this was my life; didn't I remember it? Don't I know it wasn't a dream at all? Realising she is telling me the truth, and that it wasn't a dream at all, but that I had just been so drunk again that I had merely forgotten that it had all really happened, I go outside to worry about how I got myself home and sit, unhappily, on the very large pile of tyres that is now miraculously there; imagine if you will, what you'd expect a tyre dump to look like, if there is such a thing as a tyre dump, I mean.

I am sitting on the highest tyre on the heap when I suddenly realise that someone who is very important is missing, and so I ask my other Sister who goes outside with me where my Son is. She tells me that he died when he was very young, so I ask her how old I am, and the answer she gives me is eight years older than was really true.

With a start I wake up, for Real this time, crying, and look down at my newborn Son who was actually asleep in my arms at the time. For the next eight years I convince myself that this awful dream is going to come true, and that my son will somehow die before he reaches his ninth birthday, possibly in a water accident but definitely because of my negligence.

Thank fuck I'm not really psychic. It was a huge relief that August day, four years ago, when he finally turned nine; the day the Prophecy finally died.

All that worry over nothing just melted away...