Lenny's Dreams:The Last Days of the Beetle

Lenny’s dream life had been out of control for a while. It seemed he could manifest anything at all at night, often leading to further manifestation or fulfilment of those dreams during the day. Moving from random images to prophecy, often waking with a brain full of excellent things.
As he went to bed, on the door to his room was a beetle. A mean looking thing, climbing aimlessly up the door frame. Offended by its presence, he spoke to it, moving in for a closer look. He told him there was little point staying here. Nothing to eat, nowhere to go. He had wandered in through the window, not knowing what a baron place Lenny’s flat actually was. He stood and looked at him for a while; the light in his room not quite bright enough to see him properly. He looked around for something to pick him up with, finding an old cinema ticket on the cupboard for ‘Road to Perdition’ starring Tom Hanks. Scooping the folded green card underneath the beetle, not wanting to touch him, he lifted the beetle and it clung to the card while he moved it from one side of the room to the other to find the window and throw him out using the cinema ticket to ease the fall. The beetle disappeared off the card, falling to the floor within a foot of where he’d picked him up. Lenny couldn’t see him. He examined the carpet stepping back and then spotted him at the threshold of the door. The beetle was dead. Lenny looked harder still, bending over and standing back up again to think. Had he trodden on him by accident? This was bad. This was bad. He would have to quickly establish what it meant. Why would he have killed a beetle? It could well signify something. Lenny didn’t know what it could be. He took the lamp from the bed side cabinet and bent down again, focusing its end on the beetle, highlighting it, with the glare of its bulb beaming through circle at the top. He had killed him all right. His underside was exposed, and along the body was a large gruesome split, revealing its insides, glistening in the light of the lamp. Lenny felt sick. He put the lamp back and took the beetle up again in the cinema ticket and walked to the window. He opened it, noticing the beetle twitching. He could still be alive, and even if he was alive he’d soon be dead. He let the cinema ticket go out the window, and imagined it floating down the two storey’s to the street below, turning slightly in the wind before landing. A lucky bird might find it. He went to bed to dream.
The light went out and the indescribable gap between awake and asleep began. Feeling the hours between, without experiencing them. A confusing temporal death, within which, between Lenny’s ears lay an imagination of unparalleled insight and vision. He dreamt of a church dance, the women dancing around with their partners manically. One of those Ceroc evenings, Lenny would naturally want to avoid at all costs. Lenny was sat at the side of the hall, feeling as if everyone in that room wanted him to leave. Not wanting to be rude and show him the door they tolerated him. But he knew he would have to go soon. He didn’t like the atmosphere. No-one would in those circumstances. As he sat there he began to hear the inner voices and thoughts of the people. He saw the future of humanity right there, where everyone can hear everyone else’s thoughts and feelings; changing to regulate our behaviour. There would be no more secrets between us, unable to hide our sordid private thoughts. And as a result we would have no choice but to be more careful what we did in secret. Lenny became overwhelmed by it all and everyone suddenly became aware of it; that he could hear all their mean, unkind thoughts about him. How they did not trust nor like him and wished him to leave.
The room lit up as the experience intensified. He knew they couldn’t see what he could see now. In the light behind the dancers, there were no walls, doors, people. There was a second reality. Creatures of light, climbing and moving around among them all. This world of light; he dared not speak of it. These Christian men and women, would not tolerate talk of another reality; one made of light. Off the radar. One beyond the narrowness of our sight and understanding. Right in front of him, the beetle, larger than a human climbing up across and through the door in front of him, as if the door did not exist at all. The beetle seemed as unaware of Lenny’s reality as the dancers were of the beetles. The dancers began bumping into him, racing forward in all directions, straight through him as if he wasn’t there, their faces coming right up to his and moving past. All the layers had collided into him. He woke and he sat bolt upright in bed, the images of the dream too much for him. The morning light filled the room through the curtains, as he rubbed the dream away from his eyes. He tried to calm himself as he came too, but the dream was clear in his memory. Burnt-in for posterity, not faded at all. A permanent record in his head.
Two days passed. Then he was surprised to see the beetle again. Somehow he’d got back in. He wasn’t dead. He’d come back to life. A mini-miracle! Perhaps in the dim light he had not seen a split in his belly and he’d been alive the whole time? The beetle was clung to the kitchen wall this time. He would have to remove him later, but right now he wanted to drink tea and smoke. Slightly surprised and relieved with his karma restored, he sat down and thought it all through again; a reassessment of the last couple of days.
It was getting close to midnight when he spotted the beetle again, heading toward the silvery kitchen sink. A death trap for a beetle, if ever there was one. He put his large finger next to him, blocking his way. The beetle tried again to fall into the sink and again Lenny fixed his mistake. He would definitely die if he fell in there. Eventually he gave in and walked back the other way, finding the edges of the tiles, where the grouting was. Lenny stood and watched how difficult it was for him to get a grip on the tiles; how tired he was. Perhaps he was dying after all. What could he do for him? Was it his place to have feelings for this mini killing machine? After all it is not a sane man that tries to understand the motivations and feelings of an insect.
The beetle gave up. Lenny could almost see the frustration and exhaustion in him. How he had managed to survive the last two days and then inch his way back up two flights to return to Lenny’s flat he’ll never know. This beetle was determined to die in here. Lenny felt for the little chap. It was a living creature on his last legs. Probably in pain, if they feel any. For some reason he wanted to be here with Lenny in his last days.
He went to bed, leaving him there not knowing what to do for the best. At two in the morning he came back down for a hot drink, and saw him there, legs up in the air, definitely dead this time. Lenny felt quite emotional. Is there nothing more moving and desperate than a dying creature; whatever its size or species? There was no conceivable way of any creature sustaining an injury like the one he’d received, and then climbing two stories of a wall, a window ledge and other stunts in order to return to a place, that he had independently determined was to be his last resting place. What a strange thought. What could it all mean?
Lenny left him there for a while. In the morning he carefully tore off one individual piece of loo roll, and wrapped him up, leaving him where he was found, covering up his body for the sake of his dignity. He was still there the next day, and the day after, finding it unbearable to commit him to the bin. Or to bestow upon him the last rights of a human being. What a beetle sized tragedy.