The Garbage Collector
I dreamt of HIM again last night. Normally he is lurking in the background of my dreams. How can I explain in the background? I don’t know, kind of like a garbage collector that collects rubbish from your front yard. You know they exist and that they stalk the roads yet, even in their luminous yellow jackets, you don’t take any particular notice until someone points out to you, almost like a question:
“ they’ve took the garbage then?”
They ask as though even they can’t really acknowledge the existence of garbage men either but have to concede they exist because the rubbish has gone and neither they nor you removed it. Their existence is further reinforced by a nod and a clean space where the grimy bags had been leaking. Therein follows a sense of satisfaction and knowingness that they are around and have been to clean up the muck that’s your life. That’s how I always saw HIM in my dreams. He was a shadowy figure with a very background presence and yet I knew he was there, like a garbage collector, cleaning the rubbish from my life.
Last night HE smiled at me. He came looming forward to the front of my dream and He smiled at me. It was the biggest happiest smile I have ever seen on any man, period. All except maybe Dermott o Leary but o Learys smile is more boyish, curly lips with a touch of unspoken charm.
Or is that just my perception of him? What the hell, it doesn’t matter if it is, I get a thrill from his smile. Its very naughty and damned erotic without a doubt. Yet, Dermott’s smile is certainly nowhere near the winner smile that my garbage collector gave me last night.
As my dreams go this one was fairly toned down. It wasn’t the usual: earth dies screaming dream with clashes and bangs and east and west armies lined up with nuclear rain pelting down on me. Neither was it the extravagant dream of me having a designer wardrobe of clothes, flash cars and mansions to reside in. The designer clothes dreams really puts me on a downer when I wake up to find the Jimmy Choo shoes were just another designer clothes dream….again. I wake up and all I’m left with are my Primark boots and Walmart jeans. Jesus, I hate those dreams but not nearly as much as the ones where Dermott is NOT ripping my dress of my back.
HE smiled at me in this dream.
I'd gone to sleep very quickly last night. I had not been sleeping well for a few weeks. Its my nerves you see, they have been playing me up again. In fact, come to think of it, I don’t remember even falling asleep. Yet i lay on my bed and within moments I was being viciously stalked. As dreams go it was all very meddling. I was in a house and being viciously stalked. There was a great lump of a man and he was stalking me.
My stalker was old and hairy, with broad shoulders and big arms he was peering through the window at me but he had no face. Full of fear, my heart began pumping itself around the room and he was following it to feel the fear. Fear was where I was and as I got the impression he could not see me, that he could only feel and chase my fear, I was frantically trying to stop my heart from ricocheting through the place and hitting walls and stuff. That didn’t work because once I was aware I was frightened I became more hysterical and my fear had zoomed to the front door and crash- smashed it open. As the blast diminished and the smoke lay down there he was in his full, ugly glory. There was stalker and he saw me…oh yes he saw me and he was coming straight for my beating heart. I screamed out at my heart:
"Shut up heart for gods sake cant you just shut the hell up?" but it just kept pumping loudly.
I was next aware of three other people around me. I am assuming they were female because in my dream they felt female. There was feminine sense of others around me. Hormonal, oestrogen, and a roundness smell and he could smell it. Like a devil on heat that stalker could smell it and he was in the house and coming towards us. One of us had to give in and I knew, i knew he wanted me. i was the sacrifice. The others were younger, their smell was less pungent more floral, less appealing. I knew they wanted me to submit to him. I was the eldest, I was the one with more erotic experience. Maybe I could hold him back whilst the other three ran for help?
He was in and he had me to the ground. He was naked from the waist up and he wasn’t letting go. With his sickening, bile smeared, greasy body he plunged onto me. He was face down. I was on his back. I had to appease him, please him, stroke him and feed him. A sadistic beast, hand fed with small morsels of trembling, terrified, pleasure. A rub, a stroke, a fey romance like some nonce in a nursery school. If I had a knife I would have sliced his jugular and let the blood splash all over the floor.
He turned his head upwards towards me in cinematic slow motion and then there was another screen shot of him, he had stopped, he had zoomed in and ACTION :
"AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH"
I let out the loudest silent scream, sweat dripped from my body making the fear worst because now, not only could he smell my fear he could lick my fear through the sweat and he new exactly where I was. Then he was on top of me and he had grabbed me and then i heard a faint voice and it became louder and it became more clearer and it boomed out :
“GET YOUR HANDS OF HER!!”
Stalker was now breathing down my neck, his hands clammy from my sweat very heavily built hands, tight muscles. The kind of hands you find on an American biker. Someone springs to mind that I could compare him with but I fear a libel case so comparisons will be no good here. He was violent and there was one thing on his mind, he wanted me.
Through my own screams I began to hear doors and windows smashing. Then there were loud, wailing screams, and then crashing and menacing noises and silences. My heart was a violent storm crashing around my fractured universe. Thunder began thumping at my chest and lightening seared down through my head and into my gut, paralysing me right down to my toes. Then i heard again :
“GET YOUR HANDS OF HER!!”But much louder that time.
The sirens whirred around outside. A chase, a panic, a scramble. I spotted an iron flex on the floor out of the corner of my eye. I grasped it in my hand and crack! I Smashed the iron on his skull. I heard a thud and he was out. I noticed a trickle of blood down his face and panicked that the iron had been hot. I hoped to God the iron hadn’t been hot.
Three people ran into the house.
One screamed out :
“ bag him up …bag him up….”
Another, a woman, told us all to run outside, that there was a garbage van waiting.
The van came speeding towards us.
Then I must have skipped a scene or it got cut in the editing suite of night dream productions but I was outside in a dusty Mexican road. Ok so it wasn’t Mexico but it was in my dream. Any way I was on a dusty road with high buildings either side. A black garbage van was screeching down the road, dust trailing behind it. I was watching it from outside the van in a third person perspective but aware that I was also in the van. With me was the young girl and she was trying to run after it, her fingers were on the latch and she was frantically trying to prise open the door to get inside. She had no shoes on her feet. They were bare and I was thinking about how she was going to severely graze her feet on the dusty ground. Her efforts worked because the van slowed down and she swung into the back seat and was sat next me.
Then we were driving away.
All three of us were sat in the back and I was behind the drivers seat, rubbing the young girls feet. The girls were chatting happily away. Relief and euphoria fed conversations washing over me like sweet whiskey, intoxicating and dulling. They chatted of their escape and two of them said they would visit the stalker in the dump, after all they felt sorry for him . I understood and just accepted there were strange emotional ties, with the twisted freak.
Then HE smiled at me . HE was sat in the passengers seat and looked through the windscreen mirror at me in the back and HE smiled at me. There was chatter all around. General chat, like how was I? Did I need a drink? That we would nearly be safe. I heard the chatter but noticed myself becoming flattered by his smile. I started to mumble shy and filled with honour that I was safe and fine and that I was grateful that they were taking us to safety.
Then he spoke! He asked about my life and I said I had children left living with me. The others had grown up and gone. I was flushed that the men would even take an interest in me. In my mind i am hardly worth talking to, I am useless and childish and incompetent and all round ugly crap really. Yet then he started to talk about his girlfriend and my head slammed rock bang down to my chest. Shame whooshing through my veins burning me with my own blood. Why? Why? Why? Would I be so stupid as to think that he or anyone else for that matter was interested in my life and anything I had to say? Stupid! I have always been told I talk too much!
“ Talk too much you do. Shut the hell up can’t you? You stupid idiot always hogging the conversation and look at you now making a drama out of an incident. You was only getting attacked, it happens to millions of women every day. Every bloody day! Why are you so sodding important? why always you? What’s wrong with you woman? you mental or something? “
Each sentence tattooing my inner skin with the red-hot blood ink. Telling a story in pictures etched on my spirit.
What else did I expect from myself? I was a stupid woman, an idiot that can't get anything right and completely useless. My nails were worn down by biting, hair lank and eyes dead. Stupid heart!!!! Why even dare believe that he would be so nice to me! I hid my head down further allowing my hair to cover my face tears dripping humiliation; scorning and taunting me.
The driver carried on driving oblivious to my being bullied in the back. HE rummaged in the front seat and pulled out his mobile phone, chatting on about his wonderful girlfriend how great she was, how proud of her he was and wooosh, wooosh, wooosh, wooosh the words were gushing and rushing round my head and drowning me.
“ She has kids y’know?” He said.
I looked over to the phone and the picture he showed me had a woman, two kids and a man on it all hugged, heads together, happy, suntanned and content on holiday somewhere. I noticed how relaxed she looked and her wide smile. He carried on chatting but I heard nothing. A Dull aching silence of noise and chatter.
: “ They are not mine, they are hers” he carried on. I looked up again out of courtesy and a twisted need to see happiness and love. I bent over the back of the front seat and as I did so the seat melted away. I was sat in air and so was he!
Then as though he could read my mind, which of course he must have done because you can in dreams he added:
“ There is no where else I would rather be than here in this garbage van with you.”
Then the whole van melted away and I was being hugged, an engulfing, warm and golden hug. There was an overwhelming sense of warmth and light like a golden orange globe, a sphere enveloping me. It’s not an earthly feeling, not like tingling lust. It was more powerful than your first kiss. This warmth was from another place, from another heaven. I was enveloped in this amazing warmth and love. Imagine all the street lights glowing dimly gold, orange and all the duvets wrapped around you and all the balmy summer days….well its was better and more glorious a hug than that!
Then as quickly as the hug came it melted away again. (damned dream editors!)
next scene: I was in a bathroom, I was on a toilet. I couldn’t pee. Maybe because he was there and he was looking in the mirror shaving and brushing his teeth and I was ashamed to be so exposed? For some reason I was sobbing deeply in my throat. Shame? Fear? Grief? Relief?
he was watching me in the shaving mirror and put down his toothbrush, patted his face and walked over to me. he put his hand under my chin and he said
: “Don’t cry. You are a strong and brave woman.” Clear firm and loud with intent so I could understand he meant it. Then He kissed my cheek and left the room.
Then I woke up.
I got out of bed.
I went to the toilet and had a piss.
I opened the curtain,
It was another overcast day
The garbage was still there.
“ they’ve took the garbage then?”
They ask as though even they can’t really acknowledge the existence of garbage men either but have to concede they exist because the rubbish has gone and neither they nor you removed it. Their existence is further reinforced by a nod and a clean space where the grimy bags had been leaking. Therein follows a sense of satisfaction and knowingness that they are around and have been to clean up the muck that’s your life. That’s how I always saw HIM in my dreams. He was a shadowy figure with a very background presence and yet I knew he was there, like a garbage collector, cleaning the rubbish from my life.
Last night HE smiled at me. He came looming forward to the front of my dream and He smiled at me. It was the biggest happiest smile I have ever seen on any man, period. All except maybe Dermott o Leary but o Learys smile is more boyish, curly lips with a touch of unspoken charm.
Or is that just my perception of him? What the hell, it doesn’t matter if it is, I get a thrill from his smile. Its very naughty and damned erotic without a doubt. Yet, Dermott’s smile is certainly nowhere near the winner smile that my garbage collector gave me last night.
As my dreams go this one was fairly toned down. It wasn’t the usual: earth dies screaming dream with clashes and bangs and east and west armies lined up with nuclear rain pelting down on me. Neither was it the extravagant dream of me having a designer wardrobe of clothes, flash cars and mansions to reside in. The designer clothes dreams really puts me on a downer when I wake up to find the Jimmy Choo shoes were just another designer clothes dream….again. I wake up and all I’m left with are my Primark boots and Walmart jeans. Jesus, I hate those dreams but not nearly as much as the ones where Dermott is NOT ripping my dress of my back.
HE smiled at me in this dream.
I'd gone to sleep very quickly last night. I had not been sleeping well for a few weeks. Its my nerves you see, they have been playing me up again. In fact, come to think of it, I don’t remember even falling asleep. Yet i lay on my bed and within moments I was being viciously stalked. As dreams go it was all very meddling. I was in a house and being viciously stalked. There was a great lump of a man and he was stalking me.
My stalker was old and hairy, with broad shoulders and big arms he was peering through the window at me but he had no face. Full of fear, my heart began pumping itself around the room and he was following it to feel the fear. Fear was where I was and as I got the impression he could not see me, that he could only feel and chase my fear, I was frantically trying to stop my heart from ricocheting through the place and hitting walls and stuff. That didn’t work because once I was aware I was frightened I became more hysterical and my fear had zoomed to the front door and crash- smashed it open. As the blast diminished and the smoke lay down there he was in his full, ugly glory. There was stalker and he saw me…oh yes he saw me and he was coming straight for my beating heart. I screamed out at my heart:
"Shut up heart for gods sake cant you just shut the hell up?" but it just kept pumping loudly.
I was next aware of three other people around me. I am assuming they were female because in my dream they felt female. There was feminine sense of others around me. Hormonal, oestrogen, and a roundness smell and he could smell it. Like a devil on heat that stalker could smell it and he was in the house and coming towards us. One of us had to give in and I knew, i knew he wanted me. i was the sacrifice. The others were younger, their smell was less pungent more floral, less appealing. I knew they wanted me to submit to him. I was the eldest, I was the one with more erotic experience. Maybe I could hold him back whilst the other three ran for help?
He was in and he had me to the ground. He was naked from the waist up and he wasn’t letting go. With his sickening, bile smeared, greasy body he plunged onto me. He was face down. I was on his back. I had to appease him, please him, stroke him and feed him. A sadistic beast, hand fed with small morsels of trembling, terrified, pleasure. A rub, a stroke, a fey romance like some nonce in a nursery school. If I had a knife I would have sliced his jugular and let the blood splash all over the floor.
He turned his head upwards towards me in cinematic slow motion and then there was another screen shot of him, he had stopped, he had zoomed in and ACTION :
"AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH"
I let out the loudest silent scream, sweat dripped from my body making the fear worst because now, not only could he smell my fear he could lick my fear through the sweat and he new exactly where I was. Then he was on top of me and he had grabbed me and then i heard a faint voice and it became louder and it became more clearer and it boomed out :
“GET YOUR HANDS OF HER!!”
Stalker was now breathing down my neck, his hands clammy from my sweat very heavily built hands, tight muscles. The kind of hands you find on an American biker. Someone springs to mind that I could compare him with but I fear a libel case so comparisons will be no good here. He was violent and there was one thing on his mind, he wanted me.
Through my own screams I began to hear doors and windows smashing. Then there were loud, wailing screams, and then crashing and menacing noises and silences. My heart was a violent storm crashing around my fractured universe. Thunder began thumping at my chest and lightening seared down through my head and into my gut, paralysing me right down to my toes. Then i heard again :
“GET YOUR HANDS OF HER!!”But much louder that time.
The sirens whirred around outside. A chase, a panic, a scramble. I spotted an iron flex on the floor out of the corner of my eye. I grasped it in my hand and crack! I Smashed the iron on his skull. I heard a thud and he was out. I noticed a trickle of blood down his face and panicked that the iron had been hot. I hoped to God the iron hadn’t been hot.
Three people ran into the house.
One screamed out :
“ bag him up …bag him up….”
Another, a woman, told us all to run outside, that there was a garbage van waiting.
The van came speeding towards us.
Then I must have skipped a scene or it got cut in the editing suite of night dream productions but I was outside in a dusty Mexican road. Ok so it wasn’t Mexico but it was in my dream. Any way I was on a dusty road with high buildings either side. A black garbage van was screeching down the road, dust trailing behind it. I was watching it from outside the van in a third person perspective but aware that I was also in the van. With me was the young girl and she was trying to run after it, her fingers were on the latch and she was frantically trying to prise open the door to get inside. She had no shoes on her feet. They were bare and I was thinking about how she was going to severely graze her feet on the dusty ground. Her efforts worked because the van slowed down and she swung into the back seat and was sat next me.
Then we were driving away.
All three of us were sat in the back and I was behind the drivers seat, rubbing the young girls feet. The girls were chatting happily away. Relief and euphoria fed conversations washing over me like sweet whiskey, intoxicating and dulling. They chatted of their escape and two of them said they would visit the stalker in the dump, after all they felt sorry for him . I understood and just accepted there were strange emotional ties, with the twisted freak.
Then HE smiled at me . HE was sat in the passengers seat and looked through the windscreen mirror at me in the back and HE smiled at me. There was chatter all around. General chat, like how was I? Did I need a drink? That we would nearly be safe. I heard the chatter but noticed myself becoming flattered by his smile. I started to mumble shy and filled with honour that I was safe and fine and that I was grateful that they were taking us to safety.
Then he spoke! He asked about my life and I said I had children left living with me. The others had grown up and gone. I was flushed that the men would even take an interest in me. In my mind i am hardly worth talking to, I am useless and childish and incompetent and all round ugly crap really. Yet then he started to talk about his girlfriend and my head slammed rock bang down to my chest. Shame whooshing through my veins burning me with my own blood. Why? Why? Why? Would I be so stupid as to think that he or anyone else for that matter was interested in my life and anything I had to say? Stupid! I have always been told I talk too much!
“ Talk too much you do. Shut the hell up can’t you? You stupid idiot always hogging the conversation and look at you now making a drama out of an incident. You was only getting attacked, it happens to millions of women every day. Every bloody day! Why are you so sodding important? why always you? What’s wrong with you woman? you mental or something? “
Each sentence tattooing my inner skin with the red-hot blood ink. Telling a story in pictures etched on my spirit.
What else did I expect from myself? I was a stupid woman, an idiot that can't get anything right and completely useless. My nails were worn down by biting, hair lank and eyes dead. Stupid heart!!!! Why even dare believe that he would be so nice to me! I hid my head down further allowing my hair to cover my face tears dripping humiliation; scorning and taunting me.
The driver carried on driving oblivious to my being bullied in the back. HE rummaged in the front seat and pulled out his mobile phone, chatting on about his wonderful girlfriend how great she was, how proud of her he was and wooosh, wooosh, wooosh, wooosh the words were gushing and rushing round my head and drowning me.
“ She has kids y’know?” He said.
I looked over to the phone and the picture he showed me had a woman, two kids and a man on it all hugged, heads together, happy, suntanned and content on holiday somewhere. I noticed how relaxed she looked and her wide smile. He carried on chatting but I heard nothing. A Dull aching silence of noise and chatter.
: “ They are not mine, they are hers” he carried on. I looked up again out of courtesy and a twisted need to see happiness and love. I bent over the back of the front seat and as I did so the seat melted away. I was sat in air and so was he!
Then as though he could read my mind, which of course he must have done because you can in dreams he added:
“ There is no where else I would rather be than here in this garbage van with you.”
Then the whole van melted away and I was being hugged, an engulfing, warm and golden hug. There was an overwhelming sense of warmth and light like a golden orange globe, a sphere enveloping me. It’s not an earthly feeling, not like tingling lust. It was more powerful than your first kiss. This warmth was from another place, from another heaven. I was enveloped in this amazing warmth and love. Imagine all the street lights glowing dimly gold, orange and all the duvets wrapped around you and all the balmy summer days….well its was better and more glorious a hug than that!
Then as quickly as the hug came it melted away again. (damned dream editors!)
next scene: I was in a bathroom, I was on a toilet. I couldn’t pee. Maybe because he was there and he was looking in the mirror shaving and brushing his teeth and I was ashamed to be so exposed? For some reason I was sobbing deeply in my throat. Shame? Fear? Grief? Relief?
he was watching me in the shaving mirror and put down his toothbrush, patted his face and walked over to me. he put his hand under my chin and he said
: “Don’t cry. You are a strong and brave woman.” Clear firm and loud with intent so I could understand he meant it. Then He kissed my cheek and left the room.
Then I woke up.
I got out of bed.
I went to the toilet and had a piss.
I opened the curtain,
It was another overcast day
The garbage was still there.
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