I Had a Dream...

I stood in The Showers. It was my dream so I should know if I was clothed or not, but I don't. Besides what I'm wearing isn't an issue. I've got my determination. Nothing is going to stop me from finding my son and flaying the bastard to took him. Nothing in my heart but love and hate and they are both working towards the same goal. Maybe compatable goals in this case.

Whatever string of logic or clues had led me there was gone. I had lost the scent so I stood taking it all in, searching for some spoor, some scent or sound that I could follow.

At first I thought everything had been cleaned with German efficiency. There wasn't a spot on the white (offwhite, maybe the color of bleached bone?) tiling, the grout was all clean. The bronze floordrains sparkled, some big old German word prominent in the casting. "Fussilschluss" or something very similar.

The first two letters were a message to me. "FU". Maybe I was, but at this point it was just another moot point. I'll deal with that later. The "SS" was appropriate to. Nazi gas chambers with cast bronze SS's prominint on the floor. All you had to do was look at them and there they were. That's when I realized what this was. A whole level of Hell as a tribute to Hitler's final solution and I was in the middle of it, looking for a clue.

SS is also the last two letters of my name. It also occurred to me that this was a message, "FU, it's the end of you". Not yet. This is my dream and I'm not dead, not yet. I need to find my son.

The bronze floor drains were about 18 inches in diameter with 1-1/2" openings in it. Probably all the better to wash away any waste or vomit the gassed made while convulsing on the Zyklon B.

So there I stood, looking in all directions for a clue where my son was taken. Nothing but a tribute to mankind's most documented and villified act. The miasma of oppression and misery was so thick, it obscured my vision in the distance. This I knew was product of where I was, not the recreated atmosphere of the actual gas chambers.

Ever wonder what would happen if you were in hell and "things went to hell"?

From the floor grates came gurgling, burgling sounds. Seemed that hells sewers had backed up and were going to flood the gas chambers.

The gas chambers are kind of dreary. Greyscale is all you need to see a Nazi gas chamber. The gore that come up throught the grates reminded me that I dream in color. At each floor grate grew a pile of gore. Chopped flesh, no chunk larger than 3/8 of an inch. Romero could have learned how to flow blood from these piles.

In the piles I noticed details. Finger tips and teeth seemed to be the only things small enough to make it through the grinders. Children's finger with small child sized nails and juvenile teeth.

I knew what was coming next. Then a pile drew my attention as it became top heavy and a side collapsed and avalanched down into an aluvial fan on the floor at my feet. A finger tip who's every curve I know laid there, eye level with me. I picked it up, knowing what it ment.

The curve of the nail, the full roundness of the tip, the profile of the cuticle. It was the tip of the middle finger of the right hand of my son. I clip and file his nails at least once a week. It's either that or rename him Wolverine.

I started to have an emotional reaction, then some voice of reason seemed to call out, in my mind. While I was in a tribute to the Nazi gas chambers, it made no sense to not use them. Why not use them?

Then it hit me. There were no corporeal bodies here in hell. There was no one to kill. Everyone was already dead and judged.

Then what was I looking at in my hand? It was such a bloody mess, I couldn't tell.

Next thing I knew the fingertip was clean and I could taste blood in my mouth. It wasn't till I woke up that I figured out how I cleaned the gore off the fingertip.

Looking at it now, clean, I could see that the nail was more flat, the edge more jagged, the whole color was just a hue to yellow to me my son's and I realized that my son was not being held in hell for if he was, they'd know exactly what he looked like.

It was here that I woke up, disoriented. The clock said 4:08 and the sunlight coming through the window could have been am or pm here in Alaska in the summer. The blood in my mouth from cleaning the finger tip still tasted real and there it was, blood in my spit. The tip of my tonge was sore, seems I had bitten and sliced it. Probably during my 'emotional' reaction when I thought all was lost.

And there he slept, inthe classic pose, palms together, hands under his cheek between my wife and I, he having crept into bed with us sometime earlier in the night.

My dreams are usually mundane. This one by far being the goriest ever.

Having written this, I think I now know two of the orgins of it and what it means, but I'm sure there is more.