Wednesday, February 14, 2024

I’m having daddy issues in my dreams.


Walking up my driveway, I could already feel his presence, and my anger began to build. He was always telling me what to do, demeaning me with his most critical commentary. Some of my other relatives were in the house watching TV in a very small den. I tried to find room, but the seats were all filled.

“Get out!” Father screamed at me. “You don’t have any business here!” 

He looked like Mr. Roper from Three's Company, but his voice was that of Burgess Meredith's Mick character in Rocky.

I had been listening to his vicious antagonism for years, but today I was done. I put my hands around his neck and began to choke him. He fought back, but I easily restrained him, grabbing his arms and legs into a bundle, and swinging him around like a sack of laundry.

“Are you going to give up yet?” I seethed at him.

“You don’t have the guts,” he retorted, his breathing labored.

I was determined that this would be the last time he'd ever abuse me, and I kept swinging him around and bashing his head into furniture. I became afraid that I might actually kill him, so I kept my blows just shy of bringing him to unconsciousness.

At some point, his frail body morphed into a large commemorative coin inside an actual laundry sack. Although it still contained his essence, it was now a giant replica of a dime with a human sized head, flat and silvery, inside an oversized gold pocket watch case with a glass door.

This inanimate object still would not stop talking, and I kept bashing him against furniture to silence his obstreperous voice. At some point, the head must have come out of the watch case and slipped out of the bag, and I finally stopped hearing the deriding comments.

Now I was becoming concerned that I might be guilty of actual murder, and I began looking for the missing head.

A young girl was singing a dirge, grieving over the opening to the cellar.  I didn’t suppose that the head had rolled down there, so I bid her a sorrowful afternoon, and she continued her slow singing.

Looking around the property, I could not find this icon of a dastardly father figure anywhere. I knew there would be questions, so I kept looking. I did want him dead, but I was afraid of the consequences. Infinitely bad karma? Punishment in this lifetime and a hellish afterlife?

I kept looking, but I never did find him. I awoke with an uneasy sense of guilt.

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