Dreaming

Greg started to pull and poke at his face in the mirror. Puss and gunk came out from under his eyelids and hard crust fell from his lower lids. He squeezed around his nose and more puss oozed out from the pores in his skin. He didn’t scream or cry. He just went about the business of mashing his face up like it was something he did every morning. The facial refuse dropped into the bathroom sink and swirled around in the water like shaving foam.

Greg’s eyes were watery. He felt his heart beating fast but not from fear. He felt that it was amazement. The goo and nastiness coming out of his face was something good it seemed. It was like excising some deep rooted evil just gurgling under the surface of his skin. He just wanted to stop before there was blood. He didn’t want to squeeze so hard that blood started coming out. Greg thought that if blood started coming out then he would be afraid and things would go terribly wrong.

He saw a giant spider in the corner of the bathroom watching him squeeze his face. It was hairy and brown in color. The spider caught an unfelt breeze and drifted toward the dining room and Greg gave it chase. There was something about the spider that reminded Greg of his ex-girlfriend Amy. It sort of had Amy’s face. The Amy spider bounced effortlessly on the dining room walls as Greg closed in behind it and swatted at it with his shoe. Greg’s sister was in the dining room.

“Did you get it”, she asked.

Greg wasn’t sure. He thought he did. It felt like he did. The shoe smacking against the wall seemed satisfying. Somewhere a noise started and it grew louder and louder and Greg was looking up.

Greg’s eye’s opened and he was in his bed. The alarm clock next to him was rattling away with its normal annoying and evil cadence. Greg sat up and smacked the alarm clock snooze button and dropped back down onto the pillow.  He needed five more minutes and then he could get up and function as a regular person.

He sighed with the realization that he had to get up. It was a work day and work needed to be done. He tossed the covers back and slowly pulled himself from his bed. It wasn’t the most comfortable of beds but he did love it so. Greg was already thinking about when he could return to it later that night.

He organized his clothes for work and then headed to the bathroom for his three “S’s”. Shit, shower and shave. He turned on the water and turned toward the mirror. He saw his reflection and thought of the dream. He moved closer to the mirror and inspected the surface of his face. He needed a shave but other than that everything seemed fine. He had an errant eyebrow poking out in the wrong direction, like some sort of counter-revolutionary going against the grain.

Greg opened the medicine cabinet and took out the tweezers. He leaned a little closer to get a good look at this long misbehaving eyebrow hair and grabbed it with the tweezers. He gave it a hard tug and it pulled right out. There was a rush of air from Greg’s face. The hole left by the missing eyebrow was whistling as air rushed out from Greg’s face. He placed his finger over the hole and tried to wake up. He took his finger away and air continued to hiss out. The hole was getting bigger and more air was rushing out. He couldn’t wake up. He wasn’t dreaming. This was happening.

Greg’s thought’s raced to why this could be happening. Was it something he ate? Was it something he did? He flashed to Amy’s face. He did do something. He called her an airhead and told all his friends she was cruel. She wasn’t though. She was beautiful. Was she a witch?  She was sort of dark but he thought that was just a silly Goth thing.

Greg’s legs were getting weak, his arms dropped to his side as he watched his head start to deform. He tried again to stop the rush of air but he collapsed to the bathroom floor in a rubbery pile of Greg.

The rushing water from the tub spout filled the room as steam from the hot water filled the room. The room started pulsing with a musical beat and the walls started to crack.

Amy opened her eyes as her alarm clock radio blasted an Adele song. She stretched out in her bed. She looked over at Greg sleeping through all the noise and she smiled a little.