Short Story # 7 — AN ACCIDENTAL DREAM (1500 words)
All stories are protected under the © Seal of the Copyright Office of the United States. April 27, 2023 and May 01, 2023
Having a strange dream or nightmare, or under the effects of anesthetic drugs?
Tip number one:
Never read about Spanish conquerors before falling from your bike.
AN ACCIDENTAL DREAM
I wasn’t sure why I ended up in the hospital. I remember riding my bike down a steep, straight road, standing up on the main horizontal frame. Either that or I was doing my most daring trick: speeding straight as an arrow and ignoring a stop sign to cross the widest boulevard in town. I only performed that trick at night when there wasn’t any traffic. I had fun taking risks, but I wasn’t stupid.
My entire body hurts. According to the pain level I’m feeling, I would say an eighteen-wheeler ran me over. I can’t move. My body feels numb, including my brain. My body is in shock. My thoughts are not clear at all. I can’t remember my name, but that doesn’t worry me much. I’m alive and complete, I think.
I wonder how many people have died on this bed. I don’t have any experience with this, but I hope it’s not my turn yet. I can barely move but have enough energy to bend my head and see if I still have my four extremities. I just discovered another thing. A hospital is an excellent place to start believing in God because I want to make sure I end up in a peaceful place when I die.
The room is cool and clean, but it could be more comfortable.
I must have lost a million brain cells when I hit my head. I hope I still have some left. I don’t remember my age either. This is so absurd and confusing.
The nurse doesn’t realize I’m back from my comma or sleep. From her appearance, I think she’s Hispanic. She’s young and cute. She’s checking some plastic bags from a metal stand beside the bed. A person wearing a white robe opens the door. I guess he’s the doctor. He talks to the nurse and tries to convince her to kiss him. He now chases the nurse around the bed. Typical. However, they ignore the most important person in the room, the patient. I don’t want to watch a silly romance, so my mind decides to leave the room, and I fall asleep.
I found myself in another world. If this is the real world, I don’t like it either. Somebody is chasing me. It feels unreal like I’m part of a story in a book or like I’m in somebody’s dream—it could be my dream. My confusion increases.
After I fell from my bike, the asphalt road turned into a jungle. And someone who seems to be a Spanish conqueror is chasing me. He doesn’t seem to have good intentions. It appears that, for some reason, he’s trying to kill me. If he’s a Spanish conqueror, I might be an Aztec warrior. I decide to call him Cortez. And if he’s Cortez, I must be Moctezuma. And I like the idea. As soon as I decide to be Moctezuma, my fears disappear. He will not conquer me despite his cannons, soldiers, and guns. Because this is my empire, my jungle, and my dream.
Back at the hospital, the doctor, who has a red beard, wants to know my pain level from one to ten. I say nine because I prefer to be sedated and remain here than be chased by Cortez and his horses. Then, the doctor increases the painkiller dosage, which keeps me unconscious and sends me to dreamland. The liquid runs straight from the plastic bag to my weak and vulnerable brain and immediately gives me more hallucinating images.
As if somebody pressed a button, I transferred to la-la land and found Cortez behind my tail.
If I remember correctly, according to the Spanish conquerors, Moctezuma was killed and stoned by his people on a balcony in his palace. On the other hand, the indigenous accounts claim that Spanish soldiers killed Moctezuma, not Cortez. Now that I remembered that, I feel less worried, but just in case, I pick some coca leaves, place them in my mouth, and keep running to put more distance between Cortez and me. If I’m carrying the effects of the hallucinatory drugs from the hospital bed to my dream, I might also be able to bring the effects of the coca leaves from the jungle to my hospital room.
After a while, I only hear growling, howling, and other animal noises in the jungle. I think I lost Cortez. The chase was in my favor from the beginning. Cortez had no advantage riding his mighty horse in this thick vegetation. I don’t know why Cortez is so persistent in his desire to kill me. We already gave him most of our gold, which is useless to us. In exchange, they gave us cheap trinkets and mirrors, which were meaningless to us. But I wish I could keep this beautiful medallion hanging from my neck. It feels good bouncing on my chest. My heart and the medallion seem to converse while I try to escape from the villain in my dream.
I wonder if my demented mind is confusing reality with the dream. Is the jungle real and the hospital a dream? But it can’t be because if I’m Moctezuma, I can’t know about hospitals and drugs. Can one hallucinate about things that don’t exist? But can you imagine an Aztec warrior riding a bike? I need to discard these absurd thoughts. They’re too bizarre, even for a nightmare.
I think my mind is more alert than my body, even though my mind is working overtime and on drugs.
I must thank Grandma for giving me all those books about the Aztecs and conquistadors. While trying to refresh my memory of Cortez and Moctezuma, another character shows up: “La Malinche.”
I believe that by thinking about my dreams when I am not asleep, I’m feeding more material to my mind to continue dreaming. If I’m not wrong, La Malinche was an indigenous native who acted as an interpreter, advisor, and lover to Cortez. She was also known as Doña Marina.
The chase ended abruptly when I reached the end of the jungle at the shore of the lake. I wasn’t so afraid because I knew it wasn’t the place where I would die. But I wished nobody would change the history because Cortez died before Moctezuma.
Conquerors are never alone. Cortez had many men with him, and I was alone. But I knew that if the fight were between him and me, I would destroy him.
The Empire had prospered for centuries mainly because of the advice of the high priests and wise war strategists, whom the Spanish invaders killed as soon as they arrived. For a foreigner sailing from a strange land, Cortez displayed some master evil trickery.
He captured me and returned to Tenochtitlan, my palace, and my people. Along the way, I kept hearing voices from the hospital, mixing the dream with reality. I could hear the doctor and the nurse. At the same time, I was listening to Cortez leading me to my palace. Cortez was trying to persuade me to talk to my people and convince them to give up our arms to avoid more bloodshed. In the other scene, the doctor is on his knees, offering a ring to the nurse. She finally accepted a kiss from him.
It was hard to concentrate. I was fighting for my life on two fronts, without knowing which one was my real life. If I had a choice, I would have chosen to be left alone.
Jumping from one place to the other was out of this world. It was hard to distinguish between fiction and reality. If I was in pain, I could medicate myself and return to the jungle. If the drugs wore off, I could return for more. I didn’t have any idea how long I had been there. I had no notion of time or space.
I returned chained to my palace and my people. I felt ashamed because they captured me without a fight. La Malinche bowed to Cortez and ignored me. That made me feel miserable and abandoned. When Cortez pushed me to the central balcony of my palace, I knew the end was getting near.
I felt the sharp point of a knife on my left side. On my right side, La Malinche secretly slid a knife into my hand.
Cortez kept putting pressure on his knife. I remained static and unafraid. I knew I would never surrender to his demands. I would never, for any reason, betray my people. I’d rather die.
Dr. Cortez was lying on my bed and bleeding to death over my body. Our blood was getting mixed on the bed sheets.
Marina, the nurse, was in shock, crying inconsolably.
Before my last breath, I thought how good it was to be able to change history in my dreams.
The End
Edmundo Barraza
*All stories are protected under the © Seal of the Copyright Office of the United States. April 27, 2023 and May 01, 2023
Written in Lancaster, CA 01-14-2015
Posted on Blogger 09-29-17
Posted on WordPress 08-04-2019 Reposted 03-11-2023
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