Not Ready At All

My dreams swirled and tumbled around me.
Mainly blackness, mists of grey and purple rolling.
I only dreamed colors and shapes.
Never people, places, things.
My subconscious hated nouns.
I could see patterns in the swirls.
And different colors meant different things to my sleeping mind.
But now... Blackness with grey and purple.
Not normal.
But nothing about this night had been normal.
Barney was still talking, somewhere far away.
About his kid.
The stuff I don't want to know about.
So I fell headlong into my dream of blackness.
And soon I couldn't hear anything at all.
The smoky remembrances of grey and purple soon became more colors.
And thicker, heavier, realer.
Blues and silvers, greens and reds.
A psychedelic trip.
I'd never used drugs before.
I bet it looked like this if I did.
The colors came in, ready to engulf me.
Then pulled back and disappeared.
One green shape kept coming back, closer and closer.
A memory.
One I had locked away years ago.
My dad.
Not a dad.
Biological father.
I don't have a dad.
But this memory was him.
Or maybe it was the him I wanted him to be.
As the green blob of my terrible father threatened to swallow me, I awoke.
Barney was hovering over me.
Shaking the bed incessantly.
Wake up, he says.
No.
Fuck you.
The wrinkles around his mouth and eyes started to show.
I never really noticed them before.
But then I never just sat around and studied him.
The worry was in his forehead.
Lines scrunched up as if someone tried to pull all his skin into one place.
Like those stupid dogs with the rolls of skin and fur everywhere.
They look soft, but they ain't.
Rough as sand paper.
The reverse of Barney, as I was starting to see.
He had the gun pulled out.
His left hand was on my chest.
Right hand in the air, pointing towards the door.
I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
They're here, he says.