The Trusted Professions - Chapter 15

Okay, so maybe you can help me out with this one, see, cause it?s actually been on my mind ever since, all the through the trial, it?s really been bugging me.

What is that?

Okay, well, I don?t really remember my dreams, as a rule, I mean, I have them, and wake up thinking: ?That was an interesting dream?, but by the time I get to actually telling someone about it, I?ve totally forgotten what happened. But this one, I mean, maybe it was what happened afterwards that kind of cemented it in my mind, or maybe it was just a particularly frightening nightmare, I dunno, but it?s definitely been in there.

I?d be very happy to hear about it.

Okay so, after I?d kind of noticed Max had gone, I fell into a sort of half-sleep, drifting in and out of dreams. This one, I remember, when it started out I was having Christmas with my family, like, the way we used to have it when I was a kid, like, eight. So, it was Christmas, everything laid out just the way we used to have it back in the old homestead back in PNG, y?know, the tree and the presents piled around it, and there was tinsel everywhere, and all my cousins and grandparents were all there, except we weren?t in a house, we were all in this sort of?grotto? Like a cave, except it was all decked out like a house, all Christmassy.

And, when I was y?know, a kid, like, before we moved to England, how we did Christmas was, my granddad, he was like the patriarch of the family, he was everyone?s grandpa, he would be Father Christmas, he?d dress up in the whole Santa suit -unpadded, of course, he was a big guy- with the beard and the hat and everything, and he?d sit by the tree and hand out the presents, announcing to everyone who the present was from and who it was for, and then the owners of both names called out would come up and hug each other and exchange the present.

So it started out a pretty good dream, really, and I remember feeling quite happy, to be back with my family as it was when I was so young. I guess I didn?t even notice that it was all in this bizarre cave. I guess you never do notice those weird things in dreams until they?re over, do you? It all seems to make sense at the time. So grandpa is handing out all these presents, and it starts to irk me that no present is ever for me. In fact, my name is never called out at all. Some people have gotten three or four presents by now, and I haven?t got even one yet. So I yell out: ?How about one for your grandson??, but he doesn?t seem to hear me. So I shake my mum?s arm and say: ?How come I haven?t had any yet?? but my mum, it?s like she hasn?t heard me, she just makes no response at all. So I start to panic, and I stand up in front of everyone, but they all just stare right through me, like I am completely invisible, or, even worse, they?re just choosing to ignore me, as some kind of cruel joke they?ve decided to play.

So I?m jumping up and down at this stage, trying to attract anyone?s attention, when I realize that as I hit the ground with my feet, there?s a splashing. There?s a sort of thin layer of dark, brackish water on the floor of the cave, about ankle deep. I hadn?t noticed it before. As I?m looking down at this water, wondering how I could have missed it, I realize it?s actually rising, getting deeper by the second. Before long it?s up to my knees. The oddest thing is, no-one else in the room seems perturbed that there is this cold, rising water filling up the room, they are all still laughing and handing out presents as if nothing odd was happening. So I start rushing around the grotto, trying to tell them to get out, to start moving, but they can?t see me, I?m yelling at my mum and my dad, begging them to please stop ignoring me and just get out, but they don?t see me.

The babies go first, they?re crawling around the floor and the water just covers them up. No-one bats an eye. Then the little kids, all playing with their new toys they?ve gotten. I think about diving under to try and pull them up, but I?m terrified of what I might see there, the bodies of infants, floating in the darkness. My grandpa?s fake white beard is soon soaked with the water, but still he keeps handing out those presents, handing them out until the water rises above his head, and he?s gone. Pretty soon I am the only one left, treading in this water. The tree, the tinsel, all of my family, they?re all gone, it?s me, alone in this cave which is slowly filling with this freezing, black water.

I?m looking around desperately for an exit, when I spot something on the ceiling of the cave, far above. It?s pale, humanoid figure, naked, clinging to the ceiling like a lizard. I can?t make out the details. Just as I?m squinting at the figure, I?m lifted out of the water and thrown up into the air, flying towards this figure on the ceiling. Just before I think I am going to be thrown headlong into the roof of the cave, I come to a halt and I?m just?sitting there, suspended in space before the white figure. I see then that it?s Max, clinging to the ceiling like some kind of weird insect. Without thinking, I reach into my mouth, pull out two of my teeth, and hold them out towards her.

Then I wake up.

Wow. That?s a lot of detail.

Yeah, well, as I said, it made quite an impression on me. Any thoughts?

Well, the cave, the fear of drowning and modifications on a typical dream with a dental stimulus are all very common dream motifs, and all have fairly obvious interpretations.

That dream has an obvious interpretation? It?s got me stumped.

That?s fairly common, too- it?s very difficult to interpret one?s own dreams objectively. That?s part of the reason your mind disguises them by using symbols and analogies- because one?s own mind is not always comfortable, or indeed capable of, looking directly at itself.

Huh. How about that. Not sure I entirely buy into all this dream interpretation crap, Doc.

It?s certainly a highly controversial theory, and difficult to prove or disprove, but there?s little doubt that psychology owes a great debt to Freud for his pioneering work in the field.

So what do you think it all means?

The cave signifies your unconcious self, your id. I?m not really sure about the true meaning of Christmas, I?d have to look that up, but I think the presence of your family is very significant. The fear of being invisible, unacknowledged by your family, I would normally tie to the fear you expressed earlier, about being unknown, unrecognised, status anxiety. However given the context of the dream, and the setting of the cave, I would associate it with the water, which I think your mind was using to try and warn you about impending danger, which I don?t think you need an expert on dream analysis to realise. You feared straying too far from your values, which are of course handed to you by your family. At the same time your feared, quite correctly, that losing your values would cause you to lose your family, as well.

And the whole?teeth thing?

Freud theorized that the subconscious very often transposes damage from the lower to the upper part of the body, in order to protect itself. Because of this, dreams of losing one?s teeth are extremely common nightmare among adults.

So pulling out my own teeth represents?

?self-castration.

Ah.

I was groggy when I woke up, visions of teeth and drowning babies flooding in and out of my head. I put on a robe and went up to the kitchen for a glass of water. I?m really not very good in the mornings. Sometimes I?ll be doing something, like getting a glass of water or brushing my teeth, and I?ll just stare at the wall or the mirror for a bit, just thinking nothing at all, and when I like, come out of my reverie, I realize that like, ten or twenty minutes have gone by, in a flash. It?s scary. Maybe that?s why I never had the same job for very long? Huh.

So I?m standing there and?wait a second, I have to kind of explain the geography of my flat a little bit before I can tell this bit?okay so, I had a little apartment in Rotherhithe which was kind of tucked away with a dozen other identical apartments in a little lane down by the river- pretty secluded in London terms. It was a split-level apartment, on the lower level was the front door, my bedroom and a small bathroom, and up a small stairway was the lounge and the kitchen. Out back was a wee garden that I paid very little attention to so was actually more like a jungle. You could get access to the garden via a little metal porch off the lounge. But the important thing is that, like, from the window of the kitchen you can look down at the front door.

So I?m kind of standing at the counter with a glass of water in my hand, staring at the wall, kind of spaced out, no idea how long I?ve been standing there, and I?m kind of broken out of it when there?s this knock at the door. One-two-three, sharp, like that. So I turn around from the counter and look out the window, down at the front door. And standing there is this tall man. Black suit, black shirt, black tie. Black hair. The tall man. The assassin. Our assassin.

I stood there shocked for a few moments, really just?blanking out again?trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Then his words rung back at me: ?If it was someone at your social level, you could knock on their front door, shoot them twice in the head at point blank range and walk away. Easiest thing in the world.? That?s when panic set in. As soon as I?d had that thought, he looked up at me, staring down at him through the kitchen window. He was looking directly at me, straight into my eyes. I was frozen in panic, forget my muscles not responding to commands, my mind had stopped working, there were no commands to give. We stared at each other for maybe two seconds, each trying to assess the other?s intent.

In one smooth motion, the tall man pulled a pistol from his pocket, pointed it at me, and fired.

Did you know that when you fire a gun, it is pushed backwards with precisely the same force as is applied to the bullet to push it forward? Physics. Can?t be any other way. So if the gun was shaped like a bullet, it would blow your hand off to fire it- equal force applied to both firer and victim. Certainly didn?t feel that way. Being shot feels a lot like being punched, really fuckin? hard. All over. I went flying backward and hit the floor. Linoleum, cold. The thing I remember most of all was not the pain, which was bad, but adrenaline kicked in almost before the bullet hit to help take care of that. What I remember was trying to breathe, but not being able to. Like when you?ve been winded, and you keep telling yourself to draw in a breath, but you won?t, and you wonder if this is permanent or just a passing thing. You wonder if you?re going to be dead in a few minutes, not from being shot (which to be honest hadn?t really registered at this point), but from just being unable to get your body to breathe when your mammalian response fucking tells it to. I was going into shock.

I could hear a pounding, over and over, and I thought it was in my head for a few terrifying moments, but that terror ramped up when I realized the pounding was coming from downstairs. He was trying to kick the door in. It was a sturdy enough door, but you don?t need to kick a door down to open it. You just need to kick the lock out. Maybe he?d already blown the lock out. The guy was going to walk into my house and shoot me on my own kitchen floor before I could even suffocate.

My brain was going about a thousand miles a minute. Raw panic forced me to take in a huge, ragged breath, and I tried to get up. One of my arms wasn?t working, and screamed in pain when I tried to move it. I looked at my shoulder. The left arm of my robe was covered in blood. It was dripping off my fingers. I?d been shot in the shoulder.

The glass of water I?d been holding had shattered all around me, little bits of glass everywhere. Out, out, out! my mind was screaming at me. Survival response outstripped pain and I staggered to my feet, miraculously avoiding any tiny shards. Out. I stumbled through the lounge, holding my right arm to my left shoulder, I guess thinking somewhere in the back of my mind that I should compress the wound, but not even really knowing where the wound was at this stage.

I stumbled out onto the back porch, and practically fell down the metal staircase and into the garden, lurching wildly to one side as my legs struggled to steady my body. The pounding at the front door stopped with a crash as I stumbled into the tangled vegetation that was my backyard. He was inside my house. Out, out, out. I pushed my way to the back wall of my garden with my right shoulder, the left dragging along uselessly in my wake through the thick brush. At the back of my garden is a wooden fence which is slightly higher than me. With two arms I could have climbed it easily, and often had on the way to my local, but with one it was somewhat more difficult. Thank God for adrenaline, eh? I grabbed the top of the fence with my right hand, placed my foot squarely in the middle of it, and just hurled myself upwards. I had hoisted my way to the top, and pulled up my legs to swing them over the fence. As I turned, I could see my house. He was standing on the metal porch outside my lounge, looking directly at me, still expressionless. Neutral. He raised his gun and I simply fell backwards off the fence, into Southwark Park. And landed on my left shoulder.

I screamed in pure agony, a howl that echoed through the park. But even as I was screaming, I was still forcing myself up and into a torturous gait across the grass of the greenway. It was dew-soaked and fucking freezing on my feet. I was naked except for my blood-stained robe, which flew out behind me like a cape, I must have looked fucking insane, my cock and balls bouncing around wildly as I forced my gait into a run.

The other side of the park was lined by Jamaica Road, which I just ran out onto. There were three cars stopped at a red light, I ran up to the first of them, this boxy little red Micra, and opened the passenger door, falling into the car. The driver was a girl, she looked like a teenager, and stared at me in open-mouthed horror.

?Get out of the car.? I said through pain-gritted teeth.

?What the fuck?? I really wasn?t in the mood for an argument.

?GET OUT OF THE FUCKING CAR!!!? I screamed, and for extra measure turned, lifted up one leg and started kicking her heel-first in the arm repeatedly, until, in a panic, she struggled for the door handle and practically fell, sobbing, onto the sidewalk. I heaved myself into the driver?s seat and slammed down the accelerator. It was an automatic, thank God- no way I could have changed gears in my current state.

My brain was still racing, but for the first time I was able to try and control my panic, calm myself down, if only a fraction. I?d been operating on crude animal instinct ever since I?d woken up, but once I was in the car and had put some distance between me and my house, I was able to line a few thoughts up after each other. The first thing I needed was a hospital. I didn?t want to visit any in my neighbourhood -it?d be far too easy for him to call them up and ask if there?d been any gunshot wounds admitted, and then he?d simply show up and finish the job- and indeed I didn?t even know where the nearest one was. I knew there was a hospital at Paddington, that?d do.

I found a scarf in the back seat and wrapped it tightly around my arm at the next red light, pulling it tight to form a rudimentary tourniquet. I had lost a lot of blood and was now deep into shock. I know this because for the life of me I thought for a moment that I was still inside the dream, dark waters still rising.