The Minotauress

"Sometimes I think... " How could he say it? "I have these... dreams. I call them the Jig-Jags, 'cos that's how my mind feels. It's like vertigo or something; my brain jigs and jags, and then it's like I'm someone else."

"Dreams, huh?"

"Well, no, it doesn't happen when I'm asleep. It's more like a day dream."

"The Jig-Jags? Sounds like lucid dreaming to me," Ajax said. "Let me guess. When this happens, you see yourself doing something you'd never do in real life."

"Exactly!" Dean excitedly replied. "Like today, I was standing there, and I saw myself grab Daphne by the face and yank her out of the car."

"By the face—I like it," Ajax remarked. "And if you ask me, you should've done it for real, the way the bitch treats you."

Dean scowled.

"It's called non-REM imagery, waking fantasy construction," Ajax went on. "Freud wrote all about it. The strictures of society repress everyone to an extent, but some people get squeezed harder."

"What strictures?" Dean asked. "Society doesn't impose any strictures on me."

"Don't be a dope; of course it does. Everything that's made mankind civilized can be viewed as a stricture. Progress is a stricture. Part of us, in our psyches, will always be cavemen. It's in our genetic code. Raping cavewoman pussy, eating raw meat, and shitting in the woods. Then ‘civility' comes along, and we gotta shit in shiny white bowls and wipe our asses with toilet paper. We don't eat raw meat, we eat a ‘balanced diet' consisting of the four major food groups. When our dicks get hard, we don't drag a bitch by the hair into the nearest cave and stick her; now we gotta date 'em first, hold hands in the park and buy 'em roses. Shit, we gotta take 'em out to dinner before we come in their pies. Cavemen didn't do any of that shit! When they got horny they just spit on their dicks and stuck it in, and if the bitch didn't like it, she'd get her head cracked with a rock. In a sense, the modernization of society wages war with our true primordial selves. Get it?"

"No," Dean said.

"Domestication is one of those strictures, nimrod. Relationships. Pair-bonding." Ajax winked. "Marriage."

"I don't believe it," Dean attested. "You're talking like human love is an aberration but it's not. It's part of how your primordial cavemen evolved," and then, at that precise moment, another uncharacteristic song switched on to the jukebox: "Love Me Tender" by the King.

"See!" Dean clapped at the coincidence.

"First The Beatles, now Elvis."

"What's wrong with Elvis? He was the most monumental vocalist in—"

"He was a fat drug-addicted cracker who never wrote a song in his life and died on a toilet seat."

Dean grit his teeth at such blasphemy. "Let's stick to the point, huh?"

"And the point is, you've got these ‘Jig-Jags,' and I'm telling you why. Non-REM Imagery Syndrome is commonly experienced by people who've undergone a drastic change in their lives. And look at you. You spent the first twenty-five years of your life growing up in a rural environment, then—BAM—you move to a big city. Three years later, you're married and you're damn near having hallucinations. Something ain't right in the gearbox, Dean. And I know what it is: your wife."

"No it's not—"

"Come on, you just told me you had a waking fantasy about being violent to Daphne. She's the common denominator in what's not working in your life. Face it, she treats you like shit—"

"She does not treat me like shit," Dean had to rebel. "She—"

"She walks all over you. She makes you clean the house, cook dinner, wash the dishes. Last year when you fell off the ladder and broke your arm, you had to drive yourself to the damn hospital because she refused to."

"That's only because... she wasn't feeling well."

"Christ almighty!" Ajax railed. "She won't even let you have a dog—"

"Well, they do leave lots of hair on the carpet—"

"At home, all she does is yell at you—"

"Well, I'm kind of lazy, I need yelling at sometimes—"

"—and I'll bet my ass she's cheating on you," Ajax finished his avalanche.

Dean tempered himself. "She is not cheat—"

Ajax shook his head right along with his words. "And all you do is keep making excuses for her. I'm telling you, man. The reason you're having these Jig-Jags, these waking dreams, is because of her. First you move here—drastic enough of a change—then you marry her. Too much change at once, too much shock-repression. She's turned you into something you're not, and now your psyche is rebelling. No offense, pal, but she's turned you into a pussy-whipped putz."

"Thanks," Dean said through the frown.

"Non-REM Imagery Syndrome is no joke, Dean," Ajax cautioned. He sipped his beer and winced. "Next step is Multiple-Personality Disorder. These Jig-Jags are telling you something, paisan. You better listen."

Dean let the foam in the bottom of his glass slide into his mouth. "Fine, Mr. Freud. What are they telling me?"