Nightmares (working title) Chapter One

I have nightmares. I know most people at some time in thier lives have nightmares, but mine happen every single time I close my eyes to go to sleep. I haven't had a good night's sleep since I was teenager, but I learned to survive on the bare minimum of rest. It find it really amazing the amount of abuse the human body, as well as the mind and spirit can adjust to and endure when it has to.
Adaptation must be one of the survival tools which put us humans at the top of the evolutionary ladder.
I work from home - end user help desk support for a major corporation whose name I will not mention here - and I make alot of money, mainly because I have nothing else to do but work when I wake from one of these episodes.
Sex for me consists of either internet porn or chat room cyber sex, quick and clean, nobody gets hurt and I don't have to be bothered going out and trying to meet women, facing rejection and jockeying for a position in thier lives when all I really need is to get off with no hassels.
The only person I see on a regular basis is the local take-out delivery guy. I get my groceries delivered but it's a different kid every week. Seems there's a huge turn over in jobs that pay little or nothing. I got money so I tip well, probably one of the highlights of these teenagers working day is getting twenty buck for dragging five bags of food fifteen steps to my door. Enough to get thier bag of weed or take thier girl to a fast food joint for a burger.
Oh yes, the nightmares. We were talking about the nightmares first. Well the first one almost every night - I find it kinda strange that my nightmares have so much more structure than my actual waking life - the first almost always starts out with a real warm and fuzzy feeling, like there's love or happiness in the air. I don't recognize the place as it starts to fade into my unconciousness, but the feeling is unmistakable.
I was in love once in high school, a chick named Leslie and man, she was a beauty, but it's not her in this scene. I don't know who she is really, she's hot as hell but after I wake up I know she could never have compared to Leslie's subtle beauty and grace. But that was years ago and kids stuff we knew we'd eventually grow out of. Well anyway, who ever this woman is, she just sits there smiling as I drone on and on, (and thats exactly what it sounds like in my head too, just a low frequecy buzz) talking about what I slowly realize must be a wedding proposal.
I see it in the first person - like I'm actually looking through my own eyes - me getting down on my knee beside her chair on the immaculate industrial carpeting in this fine restaurant. She's wearing a new red dress which falls light and wispy just above her ankles, very elegant, but the slit up the side shows me a thigh cast in iron and forged for the sole purpose of breaking hearts. Her dark hair cascading over her bronzed shoulders and the contrasting sparkle of her diamond necklace, which rests at the top of her demuerly displayed cleavage, frame her face in such a way as to prevent the stones from stealing all of your attention from the real stars in her show. Her smile is incredibly bright, showing more teeth than anybody could possibly have in thier mouth and her eyes, smouldering with passion and a restraint I can't bear to see her suffer much longer. Between the two it's hard to look at or think of anything else, though her breasts in a close second when only inches seperate us.
There is a hush over the restaurant and somehow through the buzzing which I now realize is actually my voice I know I've just popped the question, and from the look in her eyes, which till now couldn't have gotten any sexier, I know she's has just agreed. As I stand up from my crouch she leaps from the chair and throws her arms around my shoulders, kissing me hard, sending her warm and tangy tongue into my mouth ever so slightly.
When the kiss is over, she stands before me without moving a single muscle, her eyes are closed and she is wearing such a look of peace and quiet satisfaction on her face. What happens next, always, and I mean every single time I see this particular episode unfold before my closed and no doubt rapidly moving eyes, it shakes me to my very core with such a force that I always wake up screaming. Sometimes it takes me days to get back to sleep.