The other night, after I had laid my head down to sleep, I transitioned into that stage where one loses consciousness before their dreams kick in and then a sign above a lab door appears that reads “Mad Scientist at Work” and I cautiously tip-toe through the portal, to music with an eerie unsteady beat, and before me a Frankenstein-looking-dude puts the final touches on a spine-chilling orange-faced man who wriggles the fingers of his teeny-tiny-little grabby hands that I can somehow tell he isn’t going to keep to himself, and before I know it there are women from everywhere hoping and praying that they won’t be touched by him anyplace or anywhere, then a voice from nowhere declares “Time to vote” and, right then and there, with the speed of quarter horses, they, much to my despair, unexplainably, race to cast a ballot for him, and the monster, in their absence, comes to life, dancing to YMCA in an unrhythmic hair-raising kind of way, moving only his arms as his red tie flapped in the air like it just didn’t care and he started whining like a steel guitar that’s out of tune, in decibels that could be heard on the moon, making me wonder if my eardrums would balloon and burst soon and then he began self-adulating like a fiendish loon and, in the next instant, I’m transported to a field fertilized by cow pies and he commences to tell lies as flies come to enjoy the culinary delight they see and they multiply exponentially and begin to grow exceedingly and look hungrily at me and I’m thinking I’m surely going to die and I try to run but my legs are stunned and feel like they weigh a ton but miraculously, after I yelled “Shoo fly don’t bother me, cuz I’ve got a spray gun,” they chickened out and soon were gone and, as I was bragging to myself about how brave and strong I was, the monster reveling in his victory in his bid for the presidency out boasts me with how good he is at committing treason and forces me, with the help of hordes of people chanting way off key about making America Great Again, to listen to scary bedtime stories he had written about the good that’s going to come from his administration, lavishly unleashing exaggerations that showed no signs of hesitation or cessation. And the most frightening facet of this unworldly experience was that I was cognizant that he was aware that his wicked actions could lead to the downfall of a nation. And when I woke up, before I could say “Thank goodness it was only a dream,” I realized that what had happened in the dream fairly well represented this man and his hope-destroying inclinations. And that understanding alone is more terrifying to me than the scenes that rose from my night visions, leading me to, more than ever, believe that We the People better roll up our sleeves seeing that we’ve got a real fight on our hands to keep this demon from destroying our land. He is truly one nightmare of a man.
Ernie McCray is an activist for love and peace who acts and sings and writes both poetry and prose, a man who rises each day to do whatever he can, no matter how small or grand, to make the world better in some way.
Unapologetically.