If you had to be shot...

Since moving to France, I've noticed that I've had many more nightmares than I used to. I've been chased, mugged, stabbed, and most recently, shot. I think my brain is trying to compensate for the lack of exposure to violence here. There's no American news, no bloody video games, no commercials for slasher movies. And there are certainly no guns in France (unless you count the gendarme who patrol the train stations sporting camouflage, big guns and ridiculous hats).

In this last dream, I was standing by a river under a bridge similar to the ponts by Notre Dame or the canal scenes from In Bruges. There was a man with a gun standing above me by the bridge. I knew that he was going to either shoot me or another man, whom he'd referred to as "the Brazilian." I was pretty sure he was going to shoot the Brazilian, so I pulled out my own gun to, I don't know, join in the shooting fun. As soon as the man on the bridge saw my gun I knew I'd made a mistake. I'm not sure if it was because I looked like a threat or because I'd blown his cover, but either way I knew he was probably going to shoot me.

Suddenly there was a large black man, potentially a rapper, decked out in bling (and wearing what my mind keeps showing me to be a basketball jersey but definitely wasn't in the dream), standing several feet away and pointing his gun at me. I didn't try to beg or explain myself, I just realized we were then going to shoot each other. That's apparently how it works when two people with guns meet.

So he shot at me and I shot back, only to realize that no bullets were coming out of my gun. I kept pulling the trigger anyway, which resulted in an anticlimactic clicking sound and some brief flashes of light. I can only assume that these flashes were a result of my brain's anticipation of future technology and the inevitable invention of camera guns. Think about it: you're on that bridge by the river about to kill a motherfucker, and there happens to be a really beautiful sunset behind him. Suddenly you realize that shit, that sunset would make a pretty fucking great picture. Bang. Snap a picture, capture the symbolism, kill the dude. Convenient, right?

Anyway, during all of my bulletless shots the man somehow failed to shoot me, so at this point it occurred to me that I could stop clicking my gun, turn around, and try to run away. However, even if I ran, he would still probably shoot me in the back. I considered this: would I rather be shot in the front, or the back? Having been both shot and stabbed in the back in dreams multiple times, I can honestly tell you it's really unpleasant. Shoot me in the front, man, I don't wanna wake up with that same weird back convulsion I get when I try to dodge a knife in my sleep.

The man finally shot me several times in the stomach, but it neither killed me nor woke me up. I stood there hunched over until he left me alone, then I tried to walk, which was semi-difficult but mostly just uncomfortable. It didn't even hurt that much--in fact, I was really surprised that it hadn't hurt nearly as much as I'd expected. Getting stabbed in the back was WAY worse than getting shot in the stomach.

End Dream.