Once she said. "Don't question how he provides. You live nice. so no questions." Her tone did not allow for any further discussion.
Once with a cruel smile she said, "Persistent curiosity eliminated the cat. Don't be too nosy."
By age six, I started having those dreams. Once I saw Mrs. Nelson, the nice lady who lived down the hall, in my dream. She was in a bed, in a large room with plenty of other people in loose gowns. Ladies with white hats and white dresses hurried from bed to bed, helping those who weren't asleep. Mrs. Nelson was asleep, and had plastic tubes on her arms and into her nose. It was really quite scary. A big machine was pumping every few seconds with a gush of air. By the end of the dream, Dr. Nachman pulled the sheet over her head, and walked away.
I didn't know what this meant, but it scared me. I had the dream several nights in a row. On a Friday, I rang Mrs. Nelson's doorbell, just to see if she were home. She answered, but looked quite normal. Everything appeared normal and all right. Something inside me without speaking, said it was not. The dream said she was going to the hospital.
I had the dream all the next week too.
On a Monday two weeks later, I heard Mrs. Nelson was taken to the hospital. She had been struck by a Buick walking to the store. "She was very sick," my mother told me, but Dr. Nachman was a good surgeon. Two days later she died.
That was the first time I realized, I had seen the future in my dreams. I didn't want to sleep for the next several weeks, but I could not help myself. I didn't want to know the future. It was too scary.
The next dream I remember was of a man, who in the dream was called "Stumpy." Stumpy was in an alley and it was dark. He didn't want to be there. I could tell. Another man, who's voice sounded familiar, said. "Lucky don't like when you skim. Where is the moolah?"
Stumpy stepped forward and handed the man in the shadows a bunch of money. That man took it with his right hand because the other was holding something dark. As Stumpy stepped back from the shadow with his hands up, Stumpy said, "Lucky got his money, let me go. Please Monte."
Two loud bangs made Stumpy jump and buck backward. He fell and blood was coming out of his stomach. He didn't move. The way the gun man walked off looked familiar too. But I didn't make the connection. Maybe I was too scared, or maybe I refused to think straight.
I saw this dream for one month before I read in the papers, Mel "Stumpy" Waxman, a runner for Lucky Luciano was found dead of bullet wounds in an alley off Madison Avenue.
Only 10 years-old, I still didn't put it together. Even after my mother told me I was old enough to know that Dad earned extra money performing hits. I thought he sang like Elvis Presley at Bar Mitzvahs and such. That was why he was never home. He did sing opera along with our old Victrola record player.
I had a dream about my pet dog Roy. He died while I was at school. The dream kept playing. One day when I came home from school, my mother's face told me Roy was dead. We buried him under the clothes line between the brownstones. It was the only dirt in the neighborhood.
One of my classmates, a guy whose father ran numbers in the neighborhood, asked me, "Heard you Pops whacked your dog?"
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"Your dog's dead, right?"
I just nodded. "So?"
"Did your Dad, TheWidowMaker, do the hit?'
I couldn't speak. That's how I found out my father was a hit man for Lucky Luciano.
I was twelve, but I swore that the first opportunity I got, I would leave our house and make it on my own. Something inside me knew it was wrong to do what my father did. I needed to separate from him and his reputation.
Can you imagine a twelve year-old planning to live on his own and leave his family?
It did not happen until I was 18 left for college. I enlisted in ROTC. I knew I could become a doctor and pay back what I Dad had deal out. I could go the Berry Plan, and would not need his money.
I would balance the hurt my father caused, and do it without his help.
I never returned to the house in which I grew up.
My father learned what I did, he banished me from talking to my mother.
My father made me a dead man to my family.
But I survived. I am here to tell you the story.
-- Madison Muttnick M.D.
Karmic Knight grade one
