77: Psycho Killer

A dream circa Late High School:

I'm dropped in medias res, it's a desert road, vaguely familiar because they all look the same. Probably somewhere in the (at the time) somewhat undeveloped north end of Scottsdale. I'm running down the road, it's dark, and I realize suddenly that I'm chasing a guy in a suit with a briefcase. It looks like the "Karma Police" video, but no dashboard obviously, just me chasing some guy and for some reason he's lit up by headlights. I catch him and, without thinking, stab him multiple times with a butcher knife and drag his body behind some shrubs. I hack him into manageable pieces and stuff the pieces into a couple of black garbage bags. I do not panic. All I can think about is the fact that I've just killed somebody and I am not panicking, but this thought is insulated from the immediacy of the actual dream-murder. I know that there is the me that murdered and the me that watched me murder from behind my eyes. I think that the cognitive split between murderer me and observer me means that I am not responsible for my actions. But does my lack of panic, my lack of revulsion, mean that the interior non-murdering me is, if not a murderer, then at least morally complicit in the murder? I'm thinking these things as I walk back up the road and I see police lights flicker from behind me.

The police handcuff me and put me in the back of the squad car. They take me to a friend's house, take the handcuffs off, and make me stand in the kitchen. There are about a dozen cops milling around, and my friend comes downstairs. She's in her pajamas, and she says, "Don't worry, my parents aren't home." Then she goes back upstairs.

The chief of police enters the kitchen and grins at me. He opens the refrigerator and takes out a jar of mayonnaise, a loaf of white bread, a package of Kraft Singles, and an overcooked hamburger patty and tells me to make a Jack-in-the-Box Jumbo Jack sandwich. The ingredients are insufficient to the task, and it's now that I begin to panic. I tell him that I can't do it, and he says nobody is going anywhere until I do.