From the Pulpit, Chapter 11

After dinner, Mike and the others each went their own way.  They would meet again at one the next afternoon.  Until then, Mike needed to get some sleep. 

Once home he quickly showered and lay down on the cool sheets of the wide king sized bed.  He lay on the side on which he had always lain, and instinctively reached over to the space Janelle had filled for the past two years.  His heart ached with an emptiness that seemed more than emotional.  It was a deep physical darkness that overcame him and brought him to the edge of weeping as it had every time he lay down for the past two weeks.

But then, unexpectedly, something different happened.  The face of Hildegard Rottbruck slowly turned towards him in his minds eye, and the edges of the darkness were softened, and the emptiness became slightly less empty. Then he faded into sleep.

At some point after a couple hours of sleep it happened.  The dream started slowly, as it had almost every night since the shooting.

He was in a small room, the door locked.  His pulse was racing, pounding in his head as he realized he couldn’t get out.  The room suddenly went dark and he could hear shooting, fast and high pitched like the rattle of a snare drum outside the walls of this room. 

Running footsteps came towards the room and the door burst open. There were screams and he could hear his son crying.

“Daddy!  Daddy!”

Janelle and Mini-Mike were lying in a pool of blood in front of him.  Then he could see Akbar Usein smiling at him and snarling the worlds, “I’m going to wear your skin like a shirt.”

Usein’s maniacal laughter continued but his face faded and was replaced by Mikes training sergeant from sniper school, Brett Mathis.  He was wearing a black tactical suit but his face was covered with the blood of innocents that dripped from his nose and chin.

“I’m sorry Mike, but you know how this stuff goes.”

The ground in front of him opened up and he fell in, tumbling past the bodies of dead children clutching their mother’s limp corpses.  Falling past burned bodies into the darkness beneath him.  Usein’s laugh echoed loudly in the pit through which he was falling.  He tried to scream out but there was no sound in his throat.  A bright flash exploded before his eyes.

Mike shot straight up in the bed.  The blankets were soaked with sweat.  His pulse was throbbing in his neck as his heart was pounding into his rib cage.  He looked around the dark room.  He was awake again, he was in his own house, and everything was where he left it.

“Oh dear God!”  He panted, “Please get me through this.  Please don’t let me lose my mind!”

Sleep did not return easily, but once it did arrive, his prayer was answered and he did not dream again that night.

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