I’m
telling Jared about this dream I had, as we walk across a wide street lined
with summer trees and green garage doors.
“And
yeah, it was really strange. I had your track suit, and it was protecting my
face from the pepper spray that my captors were using to blind me in the
grocery store. But I’m sorry, I dropped it after they cuffed me.”
And
he goes, “Well, at least it helped you rescue your sister and your brother.”
“Yeah.
But then it was weird. My captors weren’t kidnapping me any more, they were
protecting me as they took me through this freezing cold, lush forest.” As I
say the words, the images flow freely. Jared’s presence at my side hardly
anchors me to our surroundings.
“We had to ford this river made out
of liquid sapphires, but there was a fairy-woman stopping us. She was bright
yellow and had a huge tail that had a dripping, venomous fang on the end of it,
growing out towards my face.”
“Stockholm syndrome,” I hear him
say.
“Yeah,
only they spoke to the fairy-woman and she didn’t attack me and we made it to
the magical land of Jersi. And they trained me to be a futuristic Jedi, only I
turned into Luke Skywalker.”
“Like,
New Jersey.”
“Maybe?”
I turn to look at him, but Jared has been replaced with a balding, muscled,
desolate man. A gritty counter-terrorist with anterograde amnesia. He’s
fighting through burning barrels of oil, trying to rescue me, getting shot at,
diving through open garage doors as I watch from the sidelines in a beautiful silver ball gown.
I
still hear his voice in my head.
“You
have to name me before you wake up,” he insists. I can somehow hear the scar
that runs from his eyebrow to his jaw.
“His
name is Snake,” I say as I wake up. But I know his name used to be something
else, and for the rest of the day I try to think of what it is.