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Dream World

Ronald Brunsky

    “Governor’s mansion...... this is the late night answering service. May I help you?
    “I’m Joseph Peters, the State Prison’s psychologist. You’ve got to put me through to the Governor; Edmund Sloan’s midnight execution must be stopped.”
    “I can’t do that; Mr. Broadhurst has retired for the night.
    “There isn’t much time, it is nearly eleven PM.”
    “I’m sorry Mr. Peters, but he was very specific about any last second attempts to postpone the execution. He said he would talk to no one. Mr. Sloan has exhausted all of his appeals – the sentence will be carried out.”
    “You don’t understand the significance of what I have to say......”
    “I’m sorry......”
    “Please, for the love of God, wake the Governor.”
    “Alright, Mr. Peters, I’ll try, but I can’t promise you.”
    A precious fifteen minutes went by, before the Governor’s voice came over the phone.
    “This had better be good, Peters. Edmund Sloan’s case has been reviewed several times. No new evidence has come forward. What could you possibly, at this late date, introduce that would make me consider a stay of execution?”
    “Governor, please you must hear me out.”
    “You have my ear, but I warn you this had better be good.”
    “It all started about two months ago, when I first started seeing Mr. Sloan and at first everything seemed quite normal. He had accepted his fate, and showed no remorse for the crime he had committed. He kept saying: I had to do it – he just didn’t belong.”
    Then one day we were having our usual session, when my wife and kids blurted into my office. Seeing them made Edmund instantly very uncomfortable, and after they had left, I asked him about it. This is when the unbelievable story that I’m about to tell you began.”
    “Go ahead Peters; I’m interested in hearing where this is going.”
    “I asked him why he was so obviously upset when he saw my family? He hemmed and hawed about telling me more, but ultimately he broke down.
    He said, when I saw your family, and the innocent looks on your children’s faces, I realized that my execution must be stopped.
    He said he would tell me the truth, but knew I wouldn’t believe him. I pleaded with him, that it might have some bearing on his case.
    Eventually, he gained my confidence and proceeded to tell me a story – a story that was so utterly fantastic that at first I just laughed and sent him back to his cell.”
    “Peters, are you going to get to the gist of this story or not?”
    “Well, Edmund continued to tell the same story, every time we met.”
    “And exactly what is this story? You are definitely beginning to try my patience, Peters.”
    “Governor, without slowly bringing you along on the details of how I was convinced, you would surely hang up.”
    “Go on.”
    “I gave him every test possible, to see if he was telling the truth: lie detector, truth serum, hypnosis, he passed everyone with flying colors, but Governor, even after all of that, I still couldn’t believe him.”
    “Ok, ok. Now are you ready to tell me?”
    “I am”
    “I’m listening.”
    “Richard Canning was assumed to have been killed by Edmund Sloan. They had been seen the night before in a violent argument by several witnesses. Am I correct on the facts, Governor?”
    “Yes, as I recall, that is basically what happened, and twelve men and women found him guilty.”
    “But Governor, Edmund doesn’t want to be saved from execution because he is innocent of the crime. He wants the execution to be stopped for our sakes.”
    “What do you mean, for our sakes? You’re starting to make me angry, Peters, will you please get to the point.”
    “Governor, Mr. Canning wasn’t murdered; he was just removed. He didn’t fit, so Edmund Sloan made him disappear. He got rid of Richard Canning just like an author would delete a character from a novel. That’s why there was no murder weapon found or blood stains or even a body, because Mr. Canning just vanished, as if he never existed.
    Richard Canning was a part of Mr. Sloan’s dream. We all are. Our whole world is just that fragile. We begin and end in one night’s sleep.”
    “Peters, I think you’re the one who needs psychiatric help!”
    “Please sir, for God’s sake don’t hang up! You must hear me out.”
    “You mean to tell me that we exist only because Mr. Sloan is dreaming? Do you think I’m crazy or something? Do you know how idiotic that sounds? In other words, our entire history will fit into the space of eight hours, is that right?
    “Well, sort of, you see a dream may take up only a few minutes of your night’s sleep. A few minutes in Edmund Sloan’s world, that is. You see time is relative. The split second it takes to snap your fingers or blink an eye in his world could take eons in ours.
    Governor, the point is you and I and everything we know only exist because of Edmund Sloan. We’re a world that he is currently dreaming about, a place that he has envisioned. All the characters, events and places that make up our world, are mere facets of his sleeping imagination.”
    “Alright Peters, I’ve listened, long enough, to your ridiculous fairy tale, and still you haven’t denied Edmund Sloan’s responsibility for Richard Canning’s demise. Why should I postpone the execution?”
    “You must understand Governor, if we execute Mr. Sloan, we will be merely waking him up, but we will forever end our world.
    I told you earlier that even after the battery of tests I gave him, that I still wasn’t convinced. So, I asked him how he could prove his story.”
    “And......” said the Governor.
    “He told me there was a way. He asked me to take a good look at him, and then venture a guess at his age. So I did. After a lengthy scrutiny, I said...... hmmm, about fifty, I would imagine. Then he said, now look at the newspaper description. The headlines on the front page of the Dailey Voice read: thirty-five year old Edmund Sloan to be executed at midnight.”
    “This is your proof?” said the Governor.
    “You see Governor. We’re all but mere characters in his dream. We have been modeled on the real people, of his own world, that he has interacted with over his lifetime. Although he is really sixty-five years old, individually we all see him differently. We see him as he looked at some point during that period of interaction.
    I know this sounds ridiculous, but I believe him. Governor you must stop the execution.”
    “Peters, I am not only going to NOT stop the execution, but I am also going to ask that you be relieved of your position.”
    With that said, the Governor hung up and immediately called the State Prison to make sure the execution was going ahead on schedule. He then sat down and had a good laugh to himself about the preposterous story Joseph Peters had told him. Returning to his bedroom, he found his wife sitting up in bed.
    “Is everything alright dear?” said Mrs. Broadhurst.
    “Yes, just fine dear, I’ll tell you all about it in the morning,” he said with a chuckle.
    He headed for the bed, and then stopped and started scratching his head, as some disturbing thoughts ran through his mind.
    “Now I remember,” he thought, “I saw Edmund Sloan several years ago when I visited death row. My God, he wasn’t fifty or even thirty-five; he was a young man, couldn’t have been more than twenty-one at the time.”
    Just then the huge grandfather clock in the hallway began to chime.
    “Bong, bong......”

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