Violent loan sharks

 

I dreamed that a couple of friends of mine had loaned some money to my brother and sister-in law, Harold and Valerie. They were living in a run down second floor apartment in some beach town that was reminiscent of 70s Santa Monica. The sky was always gray and the air had a faint smell of salty ocean mist. There was a damp patina of sand and salt grime that settled on everything and made me feel as dirty and gritty as the job I was about to do.

Valerie had been late in her repayment of the loan, and now it was time to apply some pressure. My two friends were Houa Vang and a fat guy named Jason, who I can't place exactly, but seemed very familiar in the dream. I know his name was Jason because later on in the dream, when we were seated at a cheap diner, there was place marker with his name on it at the table.

Pulp Fiction style, my two friends and I ascended the staircase to her upstairs apartment, making idle chit chat to ease the tension. We didn't relish the idea of getting rough, but it was familiar territory for us. We'd played this role of loan shark collection thugs before, but it always sucked when it was family. 

We pounded on the door, but no one answered. I was pretty sure someone was home, so I yelled in to rouse them:

"We know you're in there! Open up, fuckers! You know why we're here."   

Still getting no response, I began to kick the door in. I succeeded in smashing out the lower panel of a flimsily framed wooden door. I peeled out the layers of papery pressed pulp, creating a doggie door that was large enough for a St. Bernard to get through. 

"Can you get through there, Jason?" I asked my friend. 

He said he could, and the three of us crawled through on our hands and knees. Inside the place was a dump. Wherever they'd spent the money, it hadn't been on furniture or decor. The dark corners of the living room had a moldy appearance, and there were a few tin cans and empty mac and cheese boxes laying discarded on the floor. It looked like the kind of place where people on the lam spend their last few days holed up, waiting for the final shoe to drop. 

Today, my friends and I intended to be that shoe. Valerie came out from the bedroom where she'd been hiding, relinquishing her last few moments of uneasy respite to the inevitable.

"You got our money, bitch?" I demanded roughly as I began the extraction process.

"You know we don't have it. We need more time," she stubbornly insisted. "We had to buy some things for the baby." Unable to appeal to my apparently non-existent human side, she dug in and prepared for the inevitable. 

I produced an ancient video camera and began recording. I don't know why we did this, but it was standard procedure to record our collections. I handed the camera to Houa, and he filmed as I began to get violent with my sister-in-law.

I felt nothing but rage as I grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face against the table. She continued to protest, which only made me angrier. I pulled her hair harder and brought her face close to mine. 

"You're going to pay us, or you know what will happen," I said through gritted teeth.

 "You better go before the cops get here," she said, breathless but still unbowed. 

I released her hair and she collapsed like a marionette, her stubbornness unable to mask her human frailty. I wasn't falling for the sympathy routine though, and I continued to threaten her.

My friends and I were getting antsy, though. We knew that the cops would be arriving momentarily, so we left the apartment after making a few final threats to Valerie. We got into our pickle green Oldsmobile Delta 88 and sat there for a minute reviewing the tape and deciding our next course of action. 

In my rearview mirror, I could see that the cops had rolled up and were about to go upstairs to investigate. They hadn't spotted us sitting in the car right in front of them. Dumb cops. They were so predictable. Like video game characters who are only programmed with a few primary functions, they could only follow a predetermined path, so they were easy to evade.

We drove away casually and decided to stop at a nearby Denny's. The place was in about as good a condition as Valerie's apartment. I picked out a seat at one of the tables. They were the cheap 4x8 wood laminate folding style, lined up cafeteria style. We discussed our last mission while waiting for the waitress to bring our menus.

"I think they are good for it, I really do," I told Jason.  I noticed that I was sitting in the seat with his name tag in front of it. "Oh, it looks like I'm in your seat. I'd better switch you chairs," I said, sliding out of my seat and into the next one over.

We were still waiting for our menus when the dream came to a close. I didn't have much time to analyze my attitudes and actions while I was in this dream. I was completely caught up in the character, a rather unlikable, ruthless person with no feelings for the those who happened to fall in the path of his mission. I woke up feeling as slimy as the ocean residue from that depressing beach town, for my part in this violent, unpleasant dream.