Excerpt: My Last Night On Earth

Dreams induced by alcohol and pills were often weirder and, to me, more frightening than a trip I had with my eyes wide open (though I had been told that I sometimes slept with my eyes open before, by my sister when I was 13 and she had to take Val and I to school all month). I don't know why my mind stops protecting me once I shut down for the night when I never had any other reason to believe my mind was protecting me in the first place. It had betrayed me a couple times, to say the very least. This dream almost made me shit my pants and swallow my tongue the first time I had it. Tongiht was the fifth time I'd had it in a month.

I started out in a blue, windowless room — it always started out there, and, no matter how many times I'd had this dream, no matter how much I'd memorized every nook and cranny and tiny detail of that damn blue room, while in that dream state, I never knew what to expect next.

The blue, windowless room I was in grew colder, and the walls expanded outward. I started to shiver, even though I couldn't feel the cold in my dream; I just knew it was freezing, and, this time, I was acutely aware of not having a shirt on, be it in the dream or in real life. I hugged my chest and grasped my elbows so I could hold in what little warmth I seemed to have in my dream body, and began to walk around the big room. The ground was a dark gray, like asphalt, and, though I could see an end in the distance, the ground and the windowless room never ended. It seemed limitless.

Eventually, and the length of time it took varied from dream to dream, I realized I wasn't in a blue, windowless room, but outside, and the endless expanse of blue was the night sky, it was just a cartoonish, artistic interpretation of outside and the night sky. This time, I would like to say that I realized it fairly early on. So I will. I realized it almost right away.

I walked along the ground for what felt like hours or days, maybe even years. I knew where I was, but I didn't know what to do. It was just empty, and the cold was seeping into my bones. I could feel the cold by now, and it hurt. I was cold and I was alone. Completely and utterly alone. I had only been alone for more than a day a handful of times in my life, and I hated it every time. I was a twin. Val might not have been a good heater, and he wasn't going to be able to protect me from very much (though God knows he would try) but he was a friend and he was my constant companion. I couldn't be alone. It was one of my biggest fears.

After hours of stumbling around in the cold, lost and alone as I was, I came to the end of the dark gray path. When I got there, I looked down. I was on the top of a tall building, and the city was lit up all around me. It was Chicago. I knew it was, but sometimes, I would tell myself it was Vilnius. I missed Vilnius so damn much. Why couldn't I even go there in my dreams?

"What the fuck am I doing here?" I called out across the city. There was no answer. Not even an echo. Of course there wasn't even an echo, it was a dream. I sighed and turned around.

And that's where it was. That's where I was. On the ground, my eyes rolled back in my head, blood running down my face, pale white, not breathing... that was me, and I was dead.