My Fucking Nightmare

I got engaged last night, on stage, and that cocksucker still found a way to weasel himself within the webs of my dreams, egging me on with an eerily familiar sense of provocativity. Only this time it was different. Vivid, as though I was there. Every word he said was original and unpredictable. It felt like I was reading his mind.
I would stand and watch him go through the motions of his day-by-day lifestyle. Alone up on the hilltop throwing the rubber-reinforced Frisbee for Bishop, puffing on a cigarette with a sort of angry vibe surrounding him. No, not anger. Bitterness. Special engagement, he thought, clenching his jaw and empty fists. Doesn’t deserve someone like her. There was a more than obvious sense of pain thrown in the mix, and I worried that I’d watch him fall to bad vices again.
The next moment I recalled watching him shutting down the lights in his house, whistling for Bishop to come in from outside. Pale moonlight was the only thing illuminating his silhouette as I watched from what seemed to be the bathroom doorway. He passed by me, never noticing my presence. Tired and frustrated I watched him run both hands through the crop of short hair on his head, ending at his neck, cupping the backs of his shoulders. With a hefty sigh, he threw his arms to his sides and with one, pulled the sheets back from his pillows. Obviously thrown together in a minor effort, the bed was still the one thing in his room that wasn’t a disastrous heap of fabric. Climbing between the sheets, he cushioned his head with the crook of his elbow and pulled another pillow across his face.
Slowly, but surely, I was then drawn to his bedside. I hadn’t recalled moving from the bathroom doorframe to his bedroom, as most dreams go of course. And now here I was, watching him fight the sleepiness and slowly drift off into a light slumber. At the foot of the bed, Bishop groaned and watched his human counterpart carefully. So vulnerable, so broken. Matt had all my pity. And I could only watch him toss and turn, whisper sad nothings to himself. The repetitive she doesn’t deserve him and occasional errant idea of ridding the world of Brian. All to myself, all to myself, he hummed. Burn, fucker burn, fucker burn, fucker.
It couldn’t have just been the jealousy. There was no way Matt still felt this way about something that couldn’t ever happen, especially since the engagement only a few short nights ago. Although, this darkness, this heaviness to his thoughts was new. Threatening and horrific. But all the same, I reached into this fantasy and played into this fantasy my own way.
Eventually the fantasy has to end, and I wake up in my bed next to my sleeping fiancé. I have no qualms with the way things are. I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world, and yet my dreams keep going back to Matt. Something didn’t quite add up there. Now that I think about it, I caught myself daydreaming about it more and more. Finding myself in Matt’s room, imagining his sleeping face. Sometimes it would be mid-day during one of his much-needed naps. Other times it was the middle of the night, where I knew I was sound asleep. Knowing he’d be awake, stewing in his loneliness and contempt for what I had going.
Maybe I never clarified that Matt wouldn’t ever have a chance with me. I never nipped it in the bud, since I never had a reason, until now. Matt was never obsessive or controlling. So whatever anger and jealousy he had was just that: anger and jealousy. Bitterness towards Brian and me for having what he once did—twice—to think that my fiancé’s best friend would be rivalling him. Without acting on it, of course. Grimaces and angry faces here and there, nothing besides pettiness. Nothing to worry about for the time being.
Until, typically, my dreams got worse. It wasn’t only when I was unconscious, dreaming. Or day dreaming for that matter. I guess what I mean is that I started hearing Matt talking out loud…in his head. Er, my head. Like I said, it got weird really quick. And I could hear every single fucking thing he ever thought about. Things I never in a million years needed to know.
The funny thing was that it didn’t happen with anyone else.
I couldn’t understand what exactly had happened, and why all of a sudden I was getting all this feed inside my head that came from Matt’s train of thought. It was like being tapped into his phone line, without all the clicks and paranoia. Just an endless spew of whatever came to that odd little mind of his. When he kept himself busy I noticed, a lot of the errant and angry thoughts subsided. He hummed a lot of music.
As for the longest time I was weirded out and shocked by this ungodly ability I now had, a part of me wanted to somehow play with the ability and see how far I could take it. Meaning, I wanted to play into the fantasy and see if I could somehow project my thoughts into his head. Worth a shot.
First I imagined a scenario. Alluding to the dream I once had where we screamed at each other for an hour in his living room, later taking the frustrations out in his double wide king size mattress. I left that idea alone for a little while, only dwelling on the fight part of it. I didn’t want to shame him for hitting rock bottom, which made me really hope that if he did see the images it wouldn’t upset him, but understand that it was a very important part of our connection. Then I thought of the hospital, the kiss. The reality of it was heavy in my mind. It happened. I won’t deny it, but I missed it. Such a powerful moment over so soon.
Almost instantly I felt his mood shift from its usual miserable state to a more relaxed, reminiscent, regretful mess. Wow, honestly I never thought it was that direct, that fast. So not only did I feel bad now, but yearned for it all. God, the flood of emotions was overpowering. His combined with mine. Matt had what Brian didn’t. Each day I woke up, seeing the man I loved dearly, it hurt Matt more and more.
And what started as a really interesting ability turned quickly into a dreaded curse. A two-way street where feelings and images are shared and exchanged. Maybe I should have looked into a way of shutting it down. I could have gone to a doctor, but the only result that would have come of it would be being called crazy. I didn’t need a bad label on my name, and lord knows we didn’t need any more press coverage.
I guess I should have mentioned that after the engagements we were pursued by tons of reporters and paparazzi. The attention was great for a while, but it definitely got old.
Well anyways, this whole thing was going to spiral out of control if I didn’t get a handle on it soon. I tried so hard to do the same to the others, without results. I felt crazier and crazier and it hurt, honestly. And yet every time I hurt I felt Matt hurt. Something weird was going on and part of me wanted to confront him and see if maybe I was crazy. Only, at the thought of visiting I experienced a wave of panic on his part. I’m not entirely sure he was aware of what was going on, and thought that maybe this was all one big coincidence. There was no evidence that I was telepathic or otherwise. No way of knowing what the hell was going on. Just this gut feeling that Matt dreaded me walking up to his doorstep. He was unsure of how he’d react.
Part of me wondered if maybe I was stuck in some over the top lucid dream. I needed answers. Like, the more I dwelled on it the more confusing it became, and thus the more desperate I became as well. I just felt bad, since every time Brian and I talked about or had sex, Matt was forced to feel everything. Which made it all the more awkward.
A couple weeks passed after discovering this ability. Let me say they were the longest three weeks of my entire life, and I needed answers. The confusion was one thing but the horror of subjecting Matt to more and more torture felt even worse. We hadn’t seen or spoken to him since the week of my engagement. Brian’s shot him several texts, receiving nothing in return. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was almost a hundred percent certain that I was communicating with him on a minute-to-minute basis, there would have been a search party knocking on his door.
It definitely wasn’t against his personality type to hide away, as we’d seen it before to the extreme, obviously. Still, I was inclined to pay him a visit myself. I warned him that if he didn’t call Brian, I’d stop by to see him. He was hesitant, but when Brian got the phone call I was nothing short of satisfied. Least we knew he wasn’t dead.
I just…needed answers. Harriet messaged me about a couple days following Matt’s phone call to Brian. She moved to Vegas with that guy I interviewed for my article, Aaron. The one she left Matt for. Awkward. Anyway, I decided to take a trip to visit her. Vegas was about an hour long flight, only a couple hundred bucks. Brian and I needed some time apart, so since he was planning on visiting his family in Huntington for the weekend I decided to book a hotel room and follow suit. Harriet and I needed to discuss a lot of things, most of which included her estranged ex-husband. Not that she probably cared. And I probably cared too much for all of us.
Things weren’t rocky between Brian and me, just to clarify. I wasn’t overwhelmed with anything, even with the engagement. We engaged in regular—awkward, observed-by-Matt—sex and still lived our regular everyday lives. Brian’s dad called him to bring him home for the weekend to celebrate the engagement, since I guess it was some kind of tradition that the Haner family had to commemorate major accomplishments in their lives. While I briefly met Papa Gates a short few months ago, I had yet to meet his mother and sister. Which was fine, since meeting family was one of my biggest unconventional fears. Really, I’m not that impressive.
I saw him off on his bike early Friday morning. He wasn’t overly excited about returning home for a visit, but regrouping was always a good thing in moderation. After he left I packed my own bag and left, arranging for Jimmy to look after Pinkly for us. Brian would have taken her with him if he wasn’t travelling by bike. Either way, I just wanted to get the hell out of dodge.
My flight would leave within two hours; while waiting in the terminal, I leaned back against one of those awful metal chairs and closed my eyes for a minute, focussing on Matt and his whereabouts. He was still sleeping, typical for the time of day. He would wake around noon or shortly after, depending on how urgently Bishop had to go out. Relieved that he was okay, and trying to not tune in on his dreams as I usually was forced to do, I left him alone. With Brian gone for the weekend, he could have some solace in knowing I’d be alone and therefore wouldn’t force him to be scarred for the thousandth time. Kidding, of course, because my sex life isn’t that great.
And then, out of the blue, I had a thought. More of an idea though, but regardless, it concerned what little privacy I now had with the constant exchange of thoughts. Surely Matt wasn’t there to observe my more private moments, such as my trips to the bathroom, picking shit from my teeth, candid stuff that people normally did when no one watches. But why did he always tune in on when Brian and I were doing the dirty?
Well, it then occurred to me that I frequently thought of Matt in the midst of it all. With some deep, sad realization I found horror and disbelief in that I was no longer as satisfied with the intimacy in my relationship with Brian, more so since we got engaged. I craved something different. Something…better. More raw, angry. Broken.
So all this time Matt spent dwelling on how he could be better than Brian. In more ways than the sex. I knew he saw Brian as inferior. Matt’s ego wasn’t exactly tame, and Brian had no idea. He had me and with me, he had the world. Which was all he ever wanted. The difference was that Matt could give me the world he already had.
Ugh, stop it Melissa. Stop it, Matt, with your bullshit. Stop messing with my head.
When my flight was called I damn near bolted to the gate, needing to get the hell out of Los Angeles as fast as I could to escape this hell I’d been stuck in. Once we boarded, did all the safety bullshit, taxied and took off, I plugged in my headset and drowned out the world. No Avenged Sevenfold. No rock music. Just a relaxing, classical playlist I used when I wrote my articles. The world started calming down at that point.
I napped the whole flight; it was a dreamless, uneventful, boring sleep. Thank god. When we landed I headed straight for the taxi lineup after grabbing my bag. As I hadn’t booked a hotel room I’d do some scouting around and see which hotels had the best vacancy. The last hotel I stayed in was the MGM. It was nice, but nice just wasn’t what I needed this time around. I needed amazing. Incredible. My choice was cut between Caesar’s and Bellagio, with the possibility of Bally’s or the Venetian. Something expensive and beautiful where I could lounge in a bath robe and watch television from sun up to sun down without giving a single fuck in the world. I wasn’t a gambler, and I wanted to make the most out of my money.
Once I decided where to stay, I ordered the cab and headed off to book a suite. I decided to go with the Bellagio where at least I could find a room facing the fountains and the rest of the strip. Tonight I’d call Harriet and tell her to come over for some wine where we could catch up, unsure how Matt would react to her presence. He’d have to suck it up since he owed me a few favours to say the least.
Fifteen hundred dollars later…
When I was checked in to my room the first thing I did was strip and put on that comfortable bath robe I’d been fantasizing about all fucking day. So, so soft. This was luxurious living, the vacation I really needed. And it was only mid-afternoon. I decided to text Harriet and see what she was up to. Within an hour she was knocking at my door, a tall, expensive looking bottle of red wine in her hand. “Hey babe, how’s the rock star life?” she squealed, throwing herself on the bed beside mine.
I tousled my hair and star-fished across the feathery mattress. “Oh, it has its perks. Like being able to come here for no reason. Well, maybe a couple reasons. There’s something odd that’s happening and since you live here now I need your help.”
“Well, what’s happening? By the way, I heard about your engagement! Congratulations, girl. If only Matt and I could have…”
I hushed her. “Don’t uh…don’t worry about bringing it up. It’s kinda what I wanted to talk about. See, after you guys broke up and everything hit the fan, things got really bad. Like, really bad. He went on a bender. Got sick. Went to the hospital. I mean he almost died, okay? Like. Pretty sure he flat-lined for a minute or two. We were scared. Weren’t sure what was going to happen. But up until a couple weeks ago, right after my engagement, right? I start seeing these really vivid images. In my dreams. And then it leached into my day-dreams. Then my regular conscious thought. I began hearing his voice in my head all the time. And everything I said or talked about he would react to it as though he were there.”
“That’s…fucking weird.”
I sighed. “Maybe I should see a medium or something. I did some research. Apparently there’s a few good ones around here. I just want to know because it’s actually driving me insane.”
“Well, tomorrow we could go. Tonight, let’s just get drunk as fuck and forget about our lives. Okay? No worrying about Brian or Matt or any of those guys, Melissa, cuz you look like shit. Just us. Now, get some glasses and let’s do this how we used to.”

Notes

This isn't gonna be as weird as it sounds. Nothing too far fetched.