Le cauchemar

The other day one of my friends really wanted to see me just to check if I’m still alive. 

            That morning she woke up from a nightmare so realistic that she almost ran late for work. When she got to the office, since I was late again, her fears intensified. It was only when she finally saw me that she was able to breathe a sigh of relief and tell me the details of her dream which went like this:  

It was my birthday gift. A shiny Ford Expedition. Though I’m still not good at driving I wanted to take it out for a spin and I did.
            She sat in the passenger seat as I drove through the Antipolo hills. All of a sudden I couldn’t control the vehicle and slammed into a tree. She suffered some minor concussions and wounds. She turned and saw me drenched in blood as the windshield broke into a million fragments and pierced my flesh. My face was spared but I’ve a cut on my forehead and blood was flowing like torrents.  She gets out of the car and manages to crawl all the way to her boyfriend’s house. When she got there, she uttered: “Dearest, I killed someone. I killed Bembet.”  

Cut to the next scene.

My funeral. My mom was weeping hysterically. Hugging my coffin as my sisters quietly looked on.
            Everyone was there and the only weird thing was the location (which I’m not going to say where). There were people who just came out of curiosity. To look at the corpse of someone they get to watch once in a while on tv. Others kept the Philippine tradition of gambling during wakes. Some joked around, thus dispelling the pervading aura of death. Even my classmates in UP paid their final respects and sent white balloons into the air…

After recounting the elements of Morpheus' soirée, I asked her, “Was there someone special mourning my loss?”

“No one.”

Of all the events that took place in her virtual realm, that was the scariest and most realistic part of it all.