My daughter and wife watch. I wish they would run, but they don’t. I am trying to buy time but it won’t matter. I have knowledge, but I am not the wisest, I have great strength, but I am not the strongest. I am also fast and smart and cunning, but in none of these things am I ulitimate.
From outside the dream is the conviction that none of that matters because I am the toughest, but within the dream that vanity is given no credence.
The man that I stand before is larger than me and all these things, and armed with a blade besides. I stand between him and my family, and he comes forward. I wish to move to the left or the right and let him pass, but I know where he is headed, and what he will do if I move.
My family is unconcerned, and now my father and mother and brother and even my grandfather are with them, though somehow I know they are not the target of the man before me, merely witnesses.
They think I am all the things I have mentioned, and the strength of their character flows into me. Within the dream I know the following. It is rote, and with me. Here it needs mentioning:
Twice my father served as a Recon Marine and a Sniper in Vietnam, taught me character and understated strength. My grandfather, retired Chief of Narcotics in NYC, whose huge meaty polack peasant body I inherited, who taught me the Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain, and the strength of roaring hate. Outside the dream is in his final senility, standing guard outside the door of the assisted living center, keeping an eye out for niggers. For the dream he has been granted a reprieve and is here at the full height of his awful, formidable powers. My wife, who bled for two weeks motionless that our daughter might live, who brought an entirely new level of meaning to the term “resolve” for me to behold. My daughter who truly is one in a million, and in who’s innocent eyes I am utterly infallible.
They are all here, for my moment.
The fact is that I’m not up to the task before. Never have been. I have some facile lies and some dirty tricks, some bluff and bluster, but nothing to serve me. Not here.
I’m wearing a suit, and I take the jacket off and wrap it around my arm as a shield. Father and Grandfather smile approval that I’ve leaned their lessons to this extent. You will get cut against an attacker with a knife. It’s up to you to choose how. My wife and child don’t understand the meaning of my gesture but are confident in my abilities. I always have something up my sleeve. In this case my arm.
The man thrusts forward as he must, and I wish my wife and child would run, because I know this isn’t going to work, that I can’t pull it off, make it happen, whatever.
I throw the wrapped arm down onto the blade, and it bites through cloth and flesh, lodging deep into my arm. The suction will hold it in place and I yank hard to rip the blade free from my opponent’s grip, but it’s not happening, and it rips through my arm, and I stand bleeding, as he lunges and I try again with the same result.
I can feel my supporters acknowledging that this is a setback for sure, but nothing insurmountable, but I know the conclusion is foregone. My assailant is grinning, and I know him except I don’t in the way this can happen in dreams.
He lunges again, the blade goes deep, and he lets go as if to acknowledge a moot point, which it is. I pull on the blade to turn it on my attacker but as if to settle the joke, it is lodged deeply in bone, and won’t come free. He grins as he takes a right haded boxing stance. Being ambidextrous I take the superior left, but the blow that comes to my rib cage cannot be blocked or avoided with my skills and strength, and it is crushing.
I step back back staggering, and again feel my supporters acknowledging another setback, nothing serious, they feel, simply something to my eventual victory more notable.
But it’s not gonna happen that way.
I come in with two right jabs anyway, setting up for the big left, but they are brushed aside for the weak efforts they are and the counterpunch comes to the other side of my rib cage, and again I stagger, and I know this guy, don’t I?
And as the next shot, and the next shot land, and as I stagger back, and as my assailant, yanks the knife casually free from my arm, my supporters become concerned and wonder what is happening, when I will take the upper hand, when I will do something, but I am far beyond that as the knife plunges and I feel coldness in my belly, and the ignoble urge to pass gas.
I lay there, looking as the man moves on to other things. No big deal the preliminary.