Nightmare

?*^?&*·^??^^?&^?^?^?*^^%^^ by Ron Willoughby Dan was alone, hiking the Trail in the sun-dappled greenness, when he came to the rough wooden shelter weathered gray by the years. He knew the girl would be there, and when he walked around to the open side of the shelter he saw her standing inside, dressed in cut-off jeans and a baggy Tshirt , her red nylon backpack propped against one wall. She looked up, smiled, and without a word pulled the T-shirt over her head, dropped the cutoffs around her ankles, and stepped out of them. His hands trembled as he slipped the pack from his back, took her in his arms, and lowered her to the floor. As he caressed her, he looked at her face and he saw not passion but wide-eyed fear. Suddenly he was beating her furiously with fists that seemed not to belong to him, that seemed to have a mind of their own. The girl was twisting her head from side to side and shielding her face with her arms in a vain effort to ward off the blows. He heard his Daddy shouting behind him, something unintelligible, and then the girl's mouth opened in her bloody face, and she screamed—and Dan woke up, sweating and gasping. He sat on the edge of the bed for a minute as his breathing returned to 29 normal, and then lit a cigarette, the yellow flare of the match briefly bright in the darkness. As the smoke eddied about him he thought of the hiking trip he had just completed. He remembered seeing a girl at Chimney Rocks and daydreaming about her later as he walked along. And he remembered approaching the shelter. But from then until he woke up a few minutes ago, his memory was blank. It was as if someone had sprayed black paint on part of a movie reel—he knew there was something there, but he couldn't see what it was. He had at least two other blank spots in his memory. Once he'd beat up a girl in a bar. She'd spent two days in the hospital and Dan had spent thirty days in the county jail. There were a lot of witnesses, so he guessed it must have happened, but he still couldn't remember it. He remembered being in jail, though, and he knew one thing for sure. He was never going back to jail again, no matter what. It was a lot worse then being locked in the closet by his old man. The other blank spot involved a girl who claimed he had slapped her around, but she wasn't marked, and no one else had seen it happen. Dan couldn't remember anything about it, but he didn't believe he'd hit her, and even if he had she had probably asked for it. Women were like that. They'd tease you, rub up against you and let you have a little feel, then laugh and walk away. Or they would ignore you, like you didn't exist. Treat you like dirt, like they were better than you. They deserved to be knocked around. They were all bitches anyway. He stubbed the cigarette out hard, and his hand hurt with the effort. Absently he flexed his fingers, feeling the soreness, the stiffness. He was surprised that they were still so sore from that fight last week. Dan lay back down, and eventually drifted off into a restless sleep. The next morning he was uneasy about the dream, so he read the paper carefully, looking for reports of incidents on the Trail. There were none, and at work, in the bright sunlight, the dream seemed remote and unreal. Later, when there was nothing on the TV news, he forgot about it completely . But that night the dream came again, and he woke up in a panic. After a week of nightmares, searching the papers, and watching the TV news, Dan decided to go to the beach for a few days. He still had some vacation time coming, and this thing with the dream had him on edge. It would do him good...