CHAPTER 17-XVII
I woke up in a cold sweat, sitting up in bed and panting.
What was that all about! I wondered, trying to remember. But the details of my dream just kept slipping away, like smoke in one's hands. I felt horrible. Not only had I just relived my childhood best friend's death, but I felt guilty... for missing that girl.
I glanced at my wife, lying beside me; her head nestled on the pillow and the blankets haphazardly thrown over her. Her breathing was steady and deep; she was mercifully still asleep. Thank god for that. She's why I felt bad, I mean, I was married, and I still loved Whatsername, and missed her, even though it had been ages since I'd last thought of her.
A particularly deep exhale blew some of her loose hair onto her face. Automatically I brushed it away, but she still didn't stir. I watched her for a minute, and then silently fell back onto my own side of the bed, exhaling a sad sigh. I closed my eyes, but faded images of Jimmy filled the hot space between my eyes and the lids, and I had no choice but to open my eyes and stare into the blackness of my bedroom, thinking, because my now horribly awake mind would not let me sleep. In my state of deanimation, I studied the faint reddish silhouettes of everything around me, lit dimly by the digital numbers on my alarm clock. Definitely a step up from the old warehouse I remembered so vividly. Several steps up; I was doing pretty damn well now. But the warehouse was not the only thing I was now remembering vividly...Jimmy's last moments kept playing like a projector stuck on the same span of a reel. Jimmy apologizing, me screaming, then whilst my young self and my 31-year-old self stared in horror, his head just... disappeared.
It made me want to vomit just thinking about it. That was one of the few times in my life with the power to do it. I was beginning to recall more easily everything that had happened since that night now, like getting out of jail the next morning, since it was only a temporary holding, and Mom taking me home. Everyone was on edge around me, worried that the slightest thing would make me-- as Mom said to Brad when she didn't know I was listening— 'pull a Jimmy'. I admit, it was rather nice that everyone respected me suddenly, but it did get annoying. And within a week, Whatsername had descended upon my house, scaring the hell out of my mom.