Wordzzle 74 - Judgment

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the eighteenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

fair warning,
hormones,
journalism,
philanthropist,
burgeoning,
running the bulls,
saturation,
tossed in the towel,
whine,
indelicate details

"I'll give you fair warning," the psychiatrist said. "This will probably end up costing you a lot. Each session, in fact, is too expensive for most people."

"That's okay," I said. "I'm not wealthy enough to be a philanthropist, but I should be able to handle it, at least for a while."

"We should get started, then, to make the most use of your money. What seems to be your main concern right now?"

"I have had a lot of strange dreams. Sometimes of good things happening, but usually of very bad things. I feel that they are trying to tell me something. In fact, sometimes I am actively looking for things in the dreams. Sometimes I am going down corridors full of locked doors, and I try key after key in them but none of them work. Other times I am in a maze of rooms that I can't get out of. And sometimes it's a maze of mirrors, where I keep seeing my own reflection over and over."

"That is odd, but we all have things we hide from ourselves. What about the other dreams, the ones about the disasters?"

"They tend to be about battles being fought, in what is apparently a horrific worldwide war. I hear the whine of bullets and the sound of explosions. Sometimes I see, from somewhere in the air, saturation bombing. Sometimes I even see mushroom clouds. And sometimes I'm just looking at a vast screen, watching the arcs of missiles going across a map. Sometimes I see refugees gathering outside ruined cities, some dying and the rest facing starvation. All I remember, though, is just fragments. I don't know how it got that way, how things had deteriorated so much that something like that could happen."

"What about the dreams with the good endings?"

"In those, the war never happened. The world is almost like an Eden, with burgeoning greenery, plants everywhere, everybody has enough to eat and all the nations are at peace."

"Very interesting. You do know, don't you, that dreams are normally about us and our situations, and shouldn't be regarded as saying something about the world at large, although sometimes current events can be incorporated in them."

"Yes, I figured that. I used to be in the journalism business, but had to get out. I was afraid I was putting the news in my dreams, or at least fears brought on by the news. It didn't stop after I left, though, and years have passed since then. I really feel that they are trying to tell me something, not just about me but about the world. I do feel that I will be a part of it, though. An important part."

"Hmmm. We are all major figures in our own dreams. Perhaps it's simply that."

"I feel that it's more than that. It's been going on for a long time, and though I don't really remember much of any dream, a sense of things has settled in, and I feel that they're trying to tell me something important, about something that will really happen, and about the role I will play in it, or should play in it."

"What is it that you want from me, then?"

"I want you to help me find out what the dreams really mean, but not in terms of dream symbols, unless they can be translated to show what the dreams are saying about the real world. I also want to know what my part is. You are a trained hypnotist. I want to be hypnotized to find out what they mean. I'm sure my subconscious mind knows more about them, and I could probably remember more of them under hypnosis."

"Yes, I could hypnotize you, but we should have a few sessions first, to give me a chance to know more about you and for us to become more comfortable with each other."

"I understand, but we really need to speed this up. I don't know how much time I have. The war might happen soon, or it might be years from now. The dreams don't give me any indication, except that since I seem to be important in some way, it will be sometime in my lifetime. However long that is."

"I guess we could have a preliminary hypnosis session, then. Probably more will come out in later sessions, though, after we've had more time to establish trust. Okay, now look at me, pay attention, I'm going to put you under..."

I opened my eyes. It didn't feel that anything had happened. I looked at my watch, and found that quite a bit of time had passed. "I guess you really did hypnotize me, though I don't really feel much different. Did I say anything interesting? I hope it didn't include too many indelicate details."

I looked over at him, and found he was asleep. I was unable to awaken him, and finally left. I never received a bill from him, and was unable to contact him for future sessions. He never answered the phone, and wouldn't return my messages. At first I thought he had simply tossed in the towel on me and given up, but later I began to think that it was something else.

There were always people, somewhere, who wanted war. Some just wanted to rule over other countries, perhaps even wanted to rule over everything. Others just regarded it as a game, almost a test of manhood, like running the bulls. Sometimes the bulls won, though. Sometimes things didn't go your way, but they never really believed that would happen. Not unless they simply wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. And sometimes everything would look fine, with the world heading toward peace, and a tiny spark would send everything the other way, with clouds of war quickly burgeoning. Sometimes it seemed that people simply had too many hormones.

I had begun to see my place in all this. Although I didn't remember anything from the hypnosis session at first, as time passed more and more of it came to me. I was remembering more of my dreams, too, and remembering other things. I did have a crucial part to play in all this. And there was a plan. In fact, it dated to before I was born. It was not something that would happen right away, though I did have to get started at it. I had years to go, but I had to be at the right place at the right time, and the world had to be ready for what I had to do. Sometimes, the road taken is more important than the road not taken. It all depends on what you want the ending to be.


Mini Challenge:

hard labor,
lurid,
quick fix,
sizable contributions,
trumpet

"90 days hard labor!" the judge said, slamming down his gavel.

"Wow. Wow. What are the charges?"

"Failure to make sizable contributions to my account, and playing your trumpet late at night."

The man looked at him blankly. "I don't own a trumpet."

"You don't? But then, who..." He peered at the papers in front of him, and shuffled through them, looking confused.

"Um, it was me, Dad, I'm practicing for school, remember?"

"What? But, Timmy, but, but... Well, okay, we'll talk about this later." Turning back to the man he said, "If it wasn't the trumpet playing, what are you here for?"

"I was just passing through town, and I was under the impression I got caught speeding."

"You got caught speeding? How? The place is too small to have a police department, and we're too out of the way for state troopers to bother setting speed traps. It's too small to have a judge, too. I'm normally the mayor, when I'm not at my normal job, running the general store and service station. Where's the arresting officer?"

"I didn't get arrested, and the officer didn't stick around. He just told me to come here."

"Hmm. Do you at least have a ticket?"

"Just this," he said, handing the judge a paper.

The judge took it and stared at it. "This isn't a regular ticket. It's just something written on paper. It doesn't even have the officer's name. Rather childlike lettering, too." He stared at it for a few moments, rubbing his chin. "What did this officer look like?"

"I don't know. He kept his hat pulled down low and wore big dark glasses. He was pretty short, though."

"Dang. I knew we shouldn't have gotten Billy that police uniform for his birthday."

"But he was driving a car, with lights and a siren."

"That doesn't mean anything. Everybody around here can drive, as soon as they're tall enough to look over the dashboard, and usually before."

"But the light and siren?"

"There's a junkyard a few miles off. All kinds of things there."

"I'm, um, free to go then?"

"Well, there is the matter of speeding."

"But he wasn't a real police officer! And that's not a real ticket!"

"Doesn't matter, you've pretty much admitted to it."

"Actually, I didn't. I just came here because I thought I had been given a ticket for it, but the person who gave me the ticket was impersonating a policeman and in any case couldn't be relied on to give correct information regarding that. He was just play acting."

"Are you calling my son a liar? Maybe you deserve some hard time after all."

"For speeding?"

"For speeding, reckless driving, wasting the court's time, whatever else I can add on."

"Wow, this is really great!" a woman said. The man turned and looked at her, and saw she was busily writing on a pad of paper.

"Oh, no," the judge groaned. "Not another lurid headline!"

"Yes, but this one will really fit the story," the woman said.

"You have a newspaper?"

"Just a newsletter she mails out every few weeks or so. It's usually full of ordinary things with fantastic headlines."

"Well, I have to make it sound like something people want to read! But I don't have to try very hard with this one! How about 'Judge Throws Book at Imaginary Speeder'?"

The judge groaned. "Look, maybe we can just do a quick fix on this. Mow my yard and we'll call it even."

"'Judge Sentences Crazed Speeder to Quick Yard Work'"

"Alright, alright! Go ahead, you're free to go."

"Um, there is one other thing."

"Oh? Well, what is it?"

"He confiscated my car."


Mega challenge:

fair warning,
hormones,
journalism,
philanthropist,
burgeoning,
running the bulls,
saturation,
tossed in the towel,
whine,
indelicate details

hard labor,
lurid,
quick fix,
sizable contributions,
trumpet

The sign shone luridly through the smoke and fog. It was only a gas station sign, but I couldn't even tell that until I got close. I thought of using the pay phone and trying to find directions, but it wanted a sizable contribution to use it, more than I had with me. It was probably for the best anyway. I felt too exposed at it, even with the dim visibility. It could have been just the general mood of the place, I guess, the overall foreignness of it. I picked a damp newspaper out of the trash and tried to read it in the dim light. It didn't have anything useful in it, except showing how much journalism had slipped since I stopped reading them.

I heard the whine of a car approaching and hid behind the trash bin till it passed. No point asking for trouble. The last incident hadn't worked out well, and I had learned to be a little more cautious. I decided to sit down there for a while and try to get some sleep, even though I really didn't have the time for it.

I had been on the run for days, and I wasn't used to such hard labor. Not anymore. The wound in my side was hurting, too, the one I told the girls I got from running the bulls. I had never done such a thing, but it was a better story than the real one. I had a lot of things like that in my past, with plenty of indelicate details that no one needed to know.

The sound of a trumpet woke me up, but it turned out to be just a kid on a bike with a fancy horn. I started to get up, and a burgeoning pain spread throughout my body, and I fell back on the pavement. I had to get up, though, and finally did, gritting my teeth.

I had to get some money, too. I needed to go out and search for a philanthropist, but the bums along the street had probably passed the saturation level. I wouldn't blend in with them, though, and would stick out like a sore thumb, which could be good or bad.

It felt like almost anyone else would have tossed in the towel, but I knew that I couldn't. Not yet. There would be no quick fix for me, and no quick fix for this. I had been given fair warning before all this started. Quite detailed warnings, in fact. My head was in the clouds, though, and I didn't think of them. Not really. I never thought it could be like this. Never thought it could get this bad. All I could see was the celebrity and the money, or the possibility of it. It was like an injection of hormones. If so, it had pretty much worn off now.

I looked at the ever-present cameraman, and wondered how my partner was doing, wherever she was. I had never known that "The Amazing Race" could be so rough.

The second Great Imagination Award

On Sunday, July 26, 2009, I was given the second Great Imagination Award by Akelamalu on her blog Everything And Nothing. This is also the second time I've won it.



She had written a short story for a Portrait of Words, and wanted readers to leave comments supplying the ending. She then had people vote, in another post, by leaving comments saying which one they liked the best. The ending I wrote received the most votes.

The post below is the one in which the winner was revealed and the award handed out:

Everything And Nothing: Who won....

I made a comment there thanking everyone, which I'll repeat here:

Thanks everybody. And thank you, Akelamalu, for having the contest and for the beautiful award. I am very happy to accept it.


This is my winning entry:

Dolly continued to work at the diner, waiting for Geoff to return. He sent her an occasional letter, which she cherished. She wrote him back, and sent letters much more frequently than she received them. He spoke about the strange places he was visiting, and about how much he missed her. She spoke about how nice it was to hear about such things, places and customs that she never dreamed existed, and told him about life there in the hills and about how much she missed him.

Although he had said he would be back in a short time, months passed and then years, and still she waited. The hill people were starting to feel sorry for her, she knew, but she still kept waiting. She even turned down the men who wanted to date her. As time passed, her brothers and sisters grew up and all got married. Still she waited. Finally a man came in, a stranger, who still looked somehow familiar. Then she realized it was Geoff, years older, his hair streaked with gray.

"I'm sorry it took so long," he said. "I meant to come back earlier, and almost did several times, but I was afraid that if I did I couldn't bear to leave again. I was trying to save up enough money so that I could retire and stay here with you. We could still travel sometimes, but then it would be for fun, and we could go wherever we wanted."

She looked at him, wanting to hug him, wanting to throw her arms around him and never let him go, but somehow reluctant to make any move toward him. She said, softly and with a little sadness, "Did it really have to be so long? Couldn't you have come back at least sometimes? You did get vacations, you know."

He looked back at her, then turned his face to the side. "I'm sorry, I just couldn't. I couldn't bear to come back and then have to leave again. I thought of you almost constantly, though." He turned his head toward her again, fear and pain showing in his eyes. "There isn't someone else, is there? Someone who has taken my place?"

Several seconds of silence passed between them. She almost started to say something, but then stopped. Her face was unreadable.

Then she finally said, "There is someone else, but he has not taken your place. Come in Tommy, and meet your father." A little boy came in, who looked like both of them, and they all hugged each other, tears of happiness running down their faces. He had come home, and he would never leave them again.

A dog without a... toilet paper holder?

We have a tan and white Pekingese, large for that type of dog but still small as dogs go, and a Boston terrier. One day the Pekingese found something out in the yard and started chewing on it. I went closer to see what it was and found it was an old wooden toilet paper holder, painted black with most of the paint gone. It was the part that goes inside the roll of toilet paper, with a spring inside so it could be pushed in to fit into the holes and then pop back out to lock in place.

I thought it might not be a good thing to chew on, so I decided to try to take it away from him. He knew I wanted to get it, though, and kept looking at me while he softly crewed on it. Every time I started to get close he got up and ran to another part of the yard. Finally he was back by the cedar tree, laying down under the edge of it. I slowly got closer to him, talking softly while he eyed the hand I had way out in the air, slowly moving it closer to him. His mouth opened slightly, ready to bark or bite, his eyes looking to the side and upward at my hand. Suddenly I grabbed the toilet paper holder with my other hand, and flung it toward the side of a large bougainvillea bush.

He gave a startled yap and walked over there to try to find it. He nosed around the tall grass there for quite a while, looking disappointed but hopeful, and perhaps a little embarrassed at having fallen for the trick. He didn't find it, though. A while later I looked for it too, but didn't find it either. Over the years since then I've kept an eye out for it as I've cleared the grass away and raked the area, but I've never seen it. Maybe it got raked up with some grass and leaves, and was hidden by them. Or maybe it's still out there somewhere, in a place I haven't looked.

Several days ago I was telling the story again to my mother, and she suddenly looked very interested and said she was thinking about that toilet paper holder a few days ago and wondered what had happened to it.

Dream - The computer in the sky

Around June 7-8, 2009, I dreamed I was sometimes outside or in an open area, and I accessed at least twice some kind of computer or computer program out among the stars. It was night and the scene expanded to some stars and gas clouds/nebulas and/or large galaxies that spread across a significant portion of the sky, and the computer or program or web site was somehow encoded in the information there, in the arrangement of things, which were not quite static, but had a slow movement.

I was smiling and pointing at it, showing it to people standing near me, and I was talking about it. I think my mother was there and maybe my sister, but I don't remember who else. There might have been maybe four or five people in all.

Other times in the dream I was inside a mostly empty dimly-lit building, a medium large building probably, probably not more than two stories and maybe only one. There was some sadness at times, something to do with accessing things on computers, old sites or places I used to go to years ago but didn't much anymore, maybe something about old radio shows, too. A lot more happened but I've forgotten most of it.

Dream - Driving back home and also following the car in a small plane

On November 29, 2008, Saturday morning going into early afternoon, I had a series of dreams. In one of the later ones I was driving back home, and later in the dream was also in a small plane, following the car.

In the dream I was on a freeway, apparently in the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile, driving back home from Nevada. I was in a city, or on the outskirts of one. I think I had already gotten to Arizona and was somewhere in the Phoenix area, somewhere on the north side.

I got to where several sections of freeway were coming together, crossing in a mess of lanes. The road rose up and the car slowed down. I hit the cruise control button a couple of times to give it more power and increase the speed, seemingly reaching down and hitting it from way up in the air outside the car. Indeed, it was like I was watching the whole thing from high above. I wanted to get past some other cars in the right-hand lane, some of which were turning off to the freeway to the right, but some were going or might be going to merge with my lane. I got past them, or some of them. My speed, which had earlier been around 57 or 58, and had been dropping to near 55, now increased to near 60 as I approached the top of the rise in the road. I worried some about getting caught by the police, but it didn't seem important or likely.

Suddenly I saw where booths had been set up in the lanes, with policemen in them. They were there to catch speeders, but in fact people couldn't get past them without slowing way down, whether they were speeders or not, and they seemed to be checking and processing almost everyone. I slowed way down. They were talking to each other and though I think I stopped there for a while, they didn't seem to be concerned with or care about me so I went on, still wondering about the situation and whether they would decide to come after me. I was not alone in the car now. There was at least one other person there, maybe another, too. I'm not sure if they were there before, but it seemed normal.

The road turned left, then, and went into some ornate tunnels. There were many lanes, some going the other way, with high walls going to the ceiling every couple of lanes. The ceiling was not very high, barely enough room for a tall truck.

I was also flying a small plane with someone, watching over my car. After the car went into the tunnel we discussed whether we could follow it, whether it was safe and whether there was room in the tunnel. I finally decided to go and do it, we had to follow the car. Apparently we couldn't be seen by anyone.

We somehow slowly swooped in, the wings somehow getting a little smaller, contracting enough to barely fit inside the tunnel. We got over the car, or almost over the car, and then saw something ahead. It was a tall truck filling the lane to the top. At first it seemed to be the back of the truck, but as we got closer to it, and it got closer to us, I could see that it was somehow coming our way, in the same lane we were in. It seemed very ominous in the dream, but it didn't quite sink in that the truck was going the wrong direction.

The dream scene seemed to flash several times, both at the time we initially saw the truck and as it got closer, and as the truck and the car and the plane got closer in things seemed to move in slow motion, and finally I saw that there was a huge ornate projection to the left that protruded way into the lane just above the cars, going almost to the ceiling. The plane wouldn't be able to get past it, and the truck couldn't either.

Everything was slowing to a stop, it was almost as if time was slowing down, and I slowly woke up. As I woke up or just after, while I was still a little in the dream, I decided that among my other powers I now had the power to shrink the plane to the size of a toy (why not?), and the tiny plane now flew high and to the side among the ornateness of the ceiling, out of danger of being hit by the truck.

Dream - An angel beside me?

Late Tuesday afternoon, December 16, 2008, I fell asleep while sitting in a chair, and had a nightmare about driving while sleeping, unable to stay awake, with a presence in the passenger seat driving for me.

In the dream it was night and I was in Nevada, driving back toward Arizona. It was late, perhaps the middle of the night. Earlier in the dream I had been driving more normally I think, and I think some other things had happened, maybe something in small rooms. Now, though, I was very tired and kept falling asleep. I was driving while sleeping, trying hard to wake up, but my eyes would close almost immediately and my head would fall forward and to the side, and I would droop over to the side.

In a bend of the road where it curved sharply to the left and then back out again, I came across, on the left side, at the innermost part of the bend, two women in a very small open room sitting at a table. The room was an opening in a very large dark wall that went by that section of the road. The wall partly followed the contours of the road, but in straight, slightly angled sections. The road curved in close to the wall here, so I was right by the room where the women were.

As I came up to them, they turned to each other and giggled. They seemed to be giggling at me and my situation. As I drove by, I leaned my head out of the window, my eyes pleading, and spoke to them. Even though I said only a few words to them, asking for help I think, I got the impression that they were already aware of me and had been following my situation, monitoring me in a way, though I'm not sure for what purpose.

I was quickly past them, then, and turned my attention back to driving, trying desperately to wake up. For a while, a thick ridge a couple of feet high ran by the side of the road. I sometimes reached out my hand and hung onto it, my hand rapidly sliding along its rough, lumpy surface in the darkness. I was able to see the wall-like ridge but not much else, and was driving almost totally blind.

At some point, I became aware that someone was in the car with me, on the right, driving. The person shouldn't be there and was not always visible. I thought it must be an angel or a ghost. I guess I was glad it was there but I didn't feel that I could or should trust it to continue driving for me. I didn't know who or what it was or what it was capable of doing and under what conditions, and how long and reliably it would continue to do it. Perhaps it only operated temporarily or in emergencies, and couldn't continue doing it for long periods, especially if I simply gave up control and let it go on unattended.

I thought of how I must have gone around the terrible curves of this section of road in the darkness, not even realizing it, just following one curve after another without realizing where I was, picturing in my mind now a point in the trip in mid Nevada where the curves were. I was afraid I was headed for them again and tried to open my eyes but they kept shutting again. I was going very fast and just getting glimpses of things. It was light outside now, but it was very hard to keep my eyes open for more than a second or two at a time.

I could see some giant forklift-like thing ahead moving slow, evidently some kind of farm machinery. I was coming up very fast on it. I swerved around it at the last second, but it wasn't me doing it, not my current awareness. Though I seemed to be at the wheel sitting up straight with my eyes fixed on the road ahead, I wasn't actually in my body, I was just a dim, dark, foggy, reeling presence behind and to the side, with maybe my hips and legs partly overlapping my body.


I woke up and thought I heard the phone ring, but it evidently didn't. If the phone rang, it was important to answer because my mother was still in the hospital. She was going to have the operation today, Tuesday, to deaden the part of her heart that had been racing. The day before, Monday, they had put in a pacemaker.

Dream - Space aliens are coming to get us

Early on Sunday, December 7, 2008, I had a strange dream in which we were invaded by aliens from outer space.

In the dream, it was night and I was at home. The rest of the family was there, including my father and everyone else, as far I can remember. Some other people were there, too. We were about to be invaded by extraterrestrial aliens. It had happened earlier and somehow we had gotten out of it, or it was perhaps just a preliminary thing, but now they were coming back and it was going to be very difficult, almost impossible to escape them. We were going to be totally controlled by them. They had machines to control our minds, and I think drugs too.

I was loading boxes of stuff from the back yard into the station wagon, which was parked in the side yard by the fence. Other cars were there, too, and the rest of the family was also working at loading things. The other people were, too. We were also loading food. Time seemed to be getting desperately short. We were going to my younger sister's house, because they were expecting us to be here instead and it would give us a little more time until they figured it out. We were going to make our last stand there at her house.

Then we got word they were coming. They came before we had totally left, though I think some of the cars were gone. They were strange figures that seemed to be part of the darkness, that would partially melt into view. They didn't seem to understand about the leaving. Cars could drive away right in front of them and they didn't understand what was happening. They seemed to be just concerned about what was there. I went around to the opposite side yard, toward the back, and hid. It was getting light now. The back yard was much bigger now than in real life and was huge, though earlier it had been the same size. The house was much bigger now, too, and might have even been two story.

There was an electrical line that went to a house evaporative cooler out in the yard, a line that was taken down by someone, perhaps even me, to try to delay the alien takeover. It seemed an important part of blocking the electricity use. I was hoping to sneak out before the aliens got their own stuff set up there, but now I saw that a thick light gray rubbery cable had been attached to it, with shallow light gray rubber collars at each end. The cable went through the air between the two attachment points, sagging some between them.

I went forward into it. It seemed that part of getting away was getting past it for some reason, or maybe I just had to take it down to delay things some more for them, as well as hampering their capabilities, and to increase my chances of escaping. I was a little nervous about doing it. I didn't know if I would get zapped by electricity or how hard it would be to break it loose, and I also worried about being seen.

Surprisingly though, when I pressed against it, it easily came loose at the end toward the house. The line wasn't very long, perhaps six to eight feet. It didn't attach directly to the house but to some intermediate structure. I went past it and eventually got to Scottsdale Road and then to Thomas Road, though I went back and forth from the shop to the Thomas Road area.

The aliens were out and about now, and now looked, in the daylight, like humans, though somewhat on the short side. A lot of them looked something like Keanu Reaves (probably because in real life I had recently been seeing ads for the new "The Day the Earth Stood Still" movie with him in it). I was trying to avoid them and stay out of their reach. If they got too close, especially if they could grab you, they could take you over.

There were various structures by the road and in the median, things like huge tall shelves, frequently with things on them, generally metal things I think. There were also stacks or structures of tall metal boxes. The various things were usually painted white or light gray.

I went back to Thomas Road, going there above the ground. I was partly climbing up things along the way and partly just using them as aids in hovering. I guess I was eight to ten feet up, trying to keep out of the reach of them. There were quite a few of them, but they didn't really seem interested in chasing me. They mainly just tried to get me when they happened to be close, though they did seem to be in the process of slowly tracking me, as well as anyone else not yet taken over.

Then some much taller ones appeared. I became aware that these were the real rulers, the real people in control, the others were just workers. These seemed much more intelligent, to the point that they were even a little bored by the whole thing. They were making their way down to Thomas Road now.

One of them, maybe ten or more feet tall and looking again like Keanu Reaves (I marvelled that he could be so tall and yet only look slightly more heavily built), kept absent-mindedly reaching for me while he talked to someone else, some other alien. I had to get much higher but it was very hard to get high enough. I seemed to lack the power to get that high. He was reaching up, looking up at me now and then, his hand almost able to get my legs, sometimes even slightly brushing my feet. I kept trying to get higher.

Wordzzle 73 - Life on the river

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the seventeenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

riverboat,
procrastinaton,
drank,
demons,
invisible,
candle,
enough,
film stars,
summer job,
computer

The film stars on the riverboat drank heavily, haunted by demons visible and invisible. The movie was supposed to take just a few weeks to film, just a short summer job, but it was dragging on forever. The director kept reshooting scenes, and having new ones written, and then demanding the rewrite of half the script, but it never seemed to be enough. When it came time to shoot the scenes, though, many times he would just sit there, looking like he was afraid to do anything. It was starting to seem like it would never be finished. Even the stars were getting late to show up now, not caring much about it any longer. Procrastination was rampant.

Then the computers and all the electronic equipment got flooded when the riverboat hit a rock. The movie was being shot digitally and all the scenes that were shot were lost. Even the latest versions of the script were lost. All that remained were paper copies that were largely outdated.

The scriptwriter sat on a rock on the river bank in the darkness, frantically trying to write down all he could remember. Beside him, a few candles burned, giving off a dim light. Nearby, the director paced. Every now and then he would say, "Why don't we do this instead..." and the scriptwriter would write down the new suggestion, then try to come up with a way to work it in that seemed halfway believable. From somewhere in the darkness, surrounded by a greater darkness, a hand, or something like a hand, reached up toward the sky.

It began to rain. The candles went out. The scriptwriter began to weep, silently, the tears mixing with the rain. The director continued to pace. "You know, we could work something like this into the script. I can just see it. The riverboat hits a sandbar, and they all have to get off, to lighten the boat and make it easier to get it unstuck, then a big storm comes up..."

The rising water washed over the scriptwriter's feet, and he got up and moved away from it, clutching his soaked pages, when he tripped over a root and fell, then slid into the river. The pages floated away. He floundered around and finally caught a projecting root and pulled himself back on the bank. It came to him then that the pages were gone. He had been writing on the latest printed copy of the script, which meant that that was gone, too. He felt his pockets. Even his pens were gone. All he had left was a strange little idol his cousin had given him, something he had picked up in South America.

He sat on the bank and wept some more, than got up and cautiously made his way back through the darkness. The director was still talking. "They heard the distant sounds of banjo playing, and they went toward it, hoping to find shelter..."

In the darkness something laughed, silently, unheard.


Mini Challenge:

general demeanor,
surprisingly,
masked man,
reach,
standards

The general demeanor of the invisible masked man didn't reach the standards of most people, but he figured, not surprisingly, who could tell?


Mega challenge:

riverboat,
procrastinaton,
drank,
demons,
invisible,
candle,
enough,
film stars,
summer job,
computer

general demeanor,
surprisingly,
masked man,
reach,
standards

I drank some more, and watched the riverboat go by. I hadn't been much for procrastination before, but I seemed to be getting a handle on it. Not too much had happened lately. Calling it lately may have been optimistic, as it had been going on for years.

Film stars walked by, pretending not to be film stars. Some kids went by on skate boards. No summer jobs for them, I guess. A bum walked by, talking animatedly to an invisible friend. I thought of saying something to him, but he seemed far enough gone already.

Then a masked man came by and pointed a gun at me, and demanded all my money. I told him I would have to get back to him. He hesitated, but evidently sensed something, or saw something in my general demeanor, and surprisingly turned around and left. I had plenty of money of course. More than enough for me and anything I wanted to do. I could have created an interesting little situation with the would-be robber, but I couldn't seem to get up much enthusiasm for it. Maybe next time.

I reached for the bottle and poured another drink. There was a time when I had better standards, but it was in the receding past, becoming a blur of memory.

The day was fading into evening. I lit a candle and gazed into it for a while. It didn't tell me anything new. Out in the river, another boat went by, mostly invisible in the darkness. I didn't have any trouble seeing it, of course. There wasn't much I missed, if I cared to take the trouble to notice it. I was caring less and less about taking the trouble, though.

A man came to a table, then, not far away, and started working on something on his laptop computer. I raised my glass in a toast to it, and took a sip. The computer screen turned blue and a cryptic error message appeared. The man cursed, and slammed it closed and threw it in the river. I grinned, and had another drink. The day wasn't a total loss after all. I had managed to do at least one good deed.

At least good as far as demons went.

Red Rover, Red Rover

We moved back to Missouri in late 1965, and moved back to Arizona in the summer of 1966. While we were in Missouri, in the spring or summer, one time the kids in the neighborhood got together and played a game of Red Rover.

The game is played by choosing up sides, which then stand in two opposing lines, holding hands, with two or two and a half feet of space, more or less, between each person. The two sides stand a good distance apart. Then one side, after some discussion about who to pick, calls out to the other side, "Red Rover, Red Rover, send [chosen kid's name] right over," and the chosen one would then leave the opposing line and run across to try to break through the line that was asking for him {or her}. If he broke through, running into the hands that were being held and causing them to separate, his side won, if the line held and didn't break then that side won. Beyond that, I'm not sure now what the rules were. It may be that a score was kept, and it may be that if the person broke through the line, his side could keep sending people over until someone failed to break the line. I don't know anymore.

In the game, the neighborhood kids were of various ages, with two long lines of them. I was near the left end of my line, perhaps two or three kids from the end. I was in the seventh grade and tall for my age, and overweight. I was bigger than all the other kids, much bigger than almost all of them. Nobody tried to break through where I was, which was understandable but a little disappointing. I had been kind of hoping someone would try to break through where I was, but at the same time a little unsure about it, since there was a chance that I could lose.

Then one of the larger kids, somewhat athletic looking but a few inches shorter and much lighter than I was, was called. He looked at me with kind of an evil grin and started running toward me, toward where my right hand held the hand of a much smaller kid. If anyone on the other side could break through where I was, it was him, and he looked like he regarded it as a challenge he might win. As he got closer, though, his assured grin faded somewhat and his eyes looked uncertain, even fearful. He kept running determinedly, though, coming toward us very fast. I was worried, myself, and held very tight to the hand of the little kid beside me, and even closed my eyes briefly at the very last instant.

I hardly felt anything, just a slight bump.

I opened my eyes and looked. My hand still held the hand of the person by me. A wave went down the line, with the people swaying backwards and then forward. Near the other end of the line, it got so bad that one kid had to let go, to stop from falling forward. I didn't see the person who ran at me, though. My hand held, but he wasn't in front of the line, or behind it either.

Then I looked down and saw him, lying on his back on the ground, with his neck under my hand, which was still clasped to the other person's. His whole body was on the other side, with just his head on this side. He was rubbing his throat and moving his head back and forth, looking distressed. The game stopped for a while, to give him time to recover, and the kids gathered closer together, in groups, talking to each other. Perhaps the game even ended. He was eventually alright, though.

Dream - The vampire who loved me

Late in the evening on Tuesday, January 6, 2009, I had a strange dream about a vampire woman who loved me very much.

In the dream, there was something about a large low building. A few people had been there earlier, but most had left. It was dark. Earlier the dream had been about other things, but that part is almost entirely forgotten.

Now, a woman with dark hair stood in the building, wearing a grayish purple dress that went straight across the front with the shoulders bare, and a lighter colored small jacket that was mostly open at the front. She was a vampire and was in love with me. The others had found out who she was and she was afraid that they would try to kill her because she was a vampire. Apparently I hadn't known, either, and may still not have known.

She decided to take a thick round wooden peg, maybe eight inches long, and push it in her chest. I wasn't there but watched as a bodiless dream observer. She was trying to make herself into a sympathetic character and show that she really loved me and wasn't going to do me any harm. I wondered if she was faking it, if she was really shoving it into her heart. There was an earlier version of the scene, where she shoved it in and then pulled out the top of her dress a little and looked and you could see a little blood between her breasts.

Now, she had pushed it in some, looking upset and worried, her lips sometimes trembling a little, then she would shove it in some more. She pulled out the top of her dress and looked, but there was no visible blood, just an little area of thick clear fluid between her breasts, like seepage from an injury. She pushed the stake in some more, until only an inch or two stuck out, her head tilted back a little. She didn't die, though. It seemed she had a few minutes, in spite of the vampire legends. She was strong enough to last that long, maybe even over half an hour. I needed to show up soon, though.

The other people were somehow aware of what was done, or maybe it was just people in general, or the collective unconscious, with almost murmuring thoughts, what will he do, will he save her? There was a sense of great expectation, as people or whatever it was waited to see.

About that time I woke up, either by myself or by my mother, who asked about me feeding the cats, though I think I woke up a little before she came.

I lay there and thought about the dream, and replayed it in my mind, and then seemed to drift back after a while to where I was at least partially back in the dream, and I came to her and found her standing with the stake in her, and seeing the situation I immediately pulled it out, working it back and forth with my fingers until it was loose enough. It replayed a few times, and I wondered if I had obtained a pair of pliers and initially used that to loosen it, though if so it was not shown. In any case, I got it out.

She put her left hand softly over the hole, not trying to stem the flow of blood, as there wasn't any. She stood there quietly, softly looking up at me. I looked at her as if to say, how could you doubt me, how could you think I would do anything else?

Dream - Superman and the two Superboys, and the superhero hideaway in another dimension

On February 21, 2009, I had a dream about Superman and two Superboys, and a superhero hideaway that was created in another dimension.

In the dream, I was with some other people, in the parking lot of a large shopping center. I think some of them were relatives, family members. My mother and father might have been there, not necessarily together, and perhaps a brother or sister. The light was dim, either evening or very early morning. A lot had already happened, but only vague impressions of it remain.

I went across to the other side of the shopping center, past a road going through the parking lot to the shopping center, past the landscaping along it that had small trees, into a smaller area of the shopping center that was surrounded by landscaped areas with small trees. Perhaps trees were even being sold there, maybe even Christmas trees. Some other people were there.

We had been about to leave earlier, but I felt called over to this area, that I had to go there. Maybe I felt I had to check on something or there was something I had to somehow do there before we left.

It seemed then that they were doing some filming there for a new Superman show or movie. I watched, but also became associated with the Superman character. He probably looked more like the one in the new "Superman Returns" movie than any of the others, though he didn't look precisely like him. I think I might have said something to the people there, or at least one or more of them that I was with earlier, or tried to do so or at least thought about it, about the Superman scenes they were filming.

They lifted the Superman actor straight up in a standing position with a bunch of strings attached to him, then he turned so that his body was more face down and flew around a little bit, but the area was criss-crossed with low power lines and they kept getting in the way. He had trouble and kept having to go lower to get under them. Sometimes he was beside them, even sometimes touching them, even sometimes with his hand resting on them. I was concerned, but he seemed to be unaffected by them.

Then the strings weren't attached anymore to the equipment, but just trailed off behind him as he flew, streaming back from his fingers and probably other parts of his body. They were thin and light in color, almost transparent, almost ghost-like. They seemed to be magic somehow, and were helping him fly that way. He flew off over and partly through the trees to the other side of the road that went through the parking lot. Though earlier the shopping center had seemed to be in another state, perhaps Nevada, it now felt like it was in Arizona.

There was a Superboy then, not looking like movie or TV representations of him but probably something like depictions of him in comics in the early 1960s. He was probably mid-to-early teens and was evidently Superman's son. Superboy flew up but had trouble getting past the trees and the parking lines, and had more trouble flying. Superman watched, sympathetic but with a little amusement, hanging in the air. Superboy finally got past the trees, tending to fly low and then back close to the pavement when he got past, maybe ten or fifteen feet above it. He was flying with the pale strings pushed in front of him, in somewhat rumpled streamers, apparently maintained in that position by his will. There was also a smaller Superboy, perhaps around ten or younger, who also then flew up from the same place in the parking lot as the others, and more or less joined them, going to their approximate area.

The teenaged Superboy flew off away from the shopping center, crossing a main road, perhaps twenty or thirty feet in the air now, sometimes more, and headed across relatively undeveloped areas toward another shopping center, approximately where Woolco in Tempe used to be. He was dipping down and flying much lower now, going over some cars and then back up some and over and through another clump of trees in the parking lot, nervously trying to remember to keep the strings up and ahead of him, to help him fly. Superman and the younger Superboy had flown out some distance behind him and to the side. Superman had gotten a little ahead of him now and hung in the air, watching.

They came across Lois Lane, coming out of the shopping center, where she had been shopping or doing some assignment or maybe even worked there. She had had a break-up with Superman some time back, and was still somewhat mad at him, mad enough that she hadn't forgiven him. She looked something like the newest Lois Lane, but also some like the earlier Lois Lanes. He tried to talk to her but she rebuffed him, talking only briefly, basically keeping her nose in the air, though she had to anyway to even look in his direction, since he was probably twenty or thirty feet above her and a similar amount away from her, though sometimes he was closer. She tended to purposely look away from him, though.

Superboy flew off to the side, going across the road again and off to some place else. Superman finally did the same, though the scene repeated a few times and finally ended with him flying off too close to the shopping center, scraping the edge of his hand along the upper edge of the building, leaving a long dark line of damage in the pale stucco, perhaps over a hundred feet long. Then he turned more and went out over the road, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet up, flying under some low power lines but going too low, seeming to have trouble maintaining elevation but also seeming not to care too much, and crashing through the upper part of a stuccoed wall that was either a tall ornamental wall enclosing another area, perhaps another shopping area, or was an actual part of a building, an ornamental edge projecting up. Then he came back and was going down the road between the two areas and past them. It was darker now.

He came to an odd pale elevator set low over the road. The road either was blocked by it or that part of the road ended there or the road went under it. The elevator went to another dimension. It was where superheroes went when they were not out doing things. It was a place of safety where they could be away from the world and no one could get them. Lois Lane followed after him down the road, evidently having second thoughts.

At least a couple of other people were already in the elevator, people from the other dimension, acting as operators for the elevator and escorts to the dimension. They were dressed casually in normal, inexpensive clothes, darkish pants and pale shirts, perhaps with open vests or jackets. Superman got in the elevator with them. Lois Lane came up to the open door of the elevator and wanted to get inside, but they kept turning her down.

The door finally closed and the elevator started going down, but one of the men's fingers got caught in the door, along with some cloth, and the finger was stretched as the elevator went slowly downward. They halted the elevator and finally had to go back up at least part of the way and then open the doors, at least enough to get the finger out. They then went back down. At some point, either when they reopened the doors or at another time, Lois Lane got on.

The other dimension was a strange place, looking like it was an entirely manufactured place, like it was initially lacking everything, maybe even form and substance, but was forced into its present configuration. Things were mostly gray, and the light was pale, almost sourceless. The area was a large space perhaps hundreds or more feet across, with a concrete floor and with walls of what looked like huge heavy pieces of canvas sewed together, that went up maybe fifty feet or so and turned to form a distant ceiling. I got the impression that beyond this area, on the other side of the walls, was basically nothingness, like a formless fog, that what I was looking at was the whole dimension, and that as it was worked on and expanded, it was done by working with the formless possibility that existed there. I was there also, sometimes as Superman and sometimes as a watching presence, and was told, perhaps through explanations to Lois, that the area was still under construction, evidently continual construction, and that the walls got pushed out as the area grew.

The area was mostly covered with rows of widely spaced long tables. It was very thinly populated with people, some workers and a few other superheroes. The tables had shelves underneath them and sometimes a little ways on top of them. The shelves held various strange artifacts, not generally very big. They seemed to be made out of some kind of copper alloy, at least in some cases, though I think some looked a little more like stone or even wood. They seemed to be very old and had a rough, light grayish tan coating on them, though I wasn't sure that they hadn't been made recently and had been created that way.

It seemed sometimes that they had in fact have been of recent creation, at least some of them, though I'm not sure that it was a case of faking something. It may have been more like creating exact copies, indistinguishable from the originals even at the atomic level, and actually at least partly pre-aged, like the aging was really aging done by time that had somehow been placed upon them without them actually having to have existed throughout that time.

I got the impression that some of them were supposed to be from Krypton, or rather made new as objects from Krypton. Some of them appeared to be single-piece machines or parts from machines. A lot of them had strange markings, evidently Kryptonian, though they looked like runes.

Superman, showing them to Lois, picked one up and bit into it, leaving marks on the soft metal. Superman seemed to have lost a lot of his powers here, though it seemed initially that he hadn't. He seemed now though to be only a few times stronger than a man, at most, and could fly a little and was evidently still hard to hurt.

Then Lex Luther was somehow there. It felt like he had been there for at least a little while. He may have been taken there earlier by Superman or one of the other heroes, or he may have made at least part of the way there himself. I got the impression that he had wanted to get into it, thinking that he could get something from it, some kind of power maybe or technology and maybe do something while he was there. I was under the impression though, that someone had to take him the rest of the way, that he couldn't actually get in himself or even come close to it, that all he had done was just get into the general area of the elevator. Once here though, he was helpless, he couldn't do anything and I don't think he was even restrained in any way, he was trapped simply by being here.

He talked in a hard, angry voice to Superman, perhaps from fifteen or so feet away, aware that he couldn't hurt him and intimidated by his power. He got a little closer, perhaps half that distance. I'm not sure whether he moved or Superman gradually made his way in that direction. Superman had been moving along and among the tables with Lois, showing her things. Finally he picked up both Lois and Luther, Luther still complaining, and flew with them to the other side of the area, to where it narrowed to a smaller room that was almost an offshoot, where he landed and set them down.

It felt like the section was newly built and was still unfinished, and not quite as solid as the rest of it. There were a few tables here, and an occasional worker. The canvas walls, not far away, hung a bit loosely, without much tension. Superman sat down at a bench in front of one of the tables, with Lois sitting to his left and Luther sitting several feet to the left of them.

Superman quietly talked to Lois, with periods of silence. The area felt quiet, and seemed to promote silence. Luther, still somewhat angry, still sometimes talked, but in a lower, more subdued voice. Voices tended to be more hushed here anyway, and paler, like they were partially lost in the vast nothingness that lay nearby, just beyond the canvas.

Dream - I meet my grandmother in a hardware store

On January 30, 2009, I had a dream in which I met my grandmother in a hardware store. She had died long ago, and I was very happy to see her, and managed to get a hairpin from her as a keepsake.

In the dream, I was at a shopping center, looking at toilets and toilet repair parts, including hinge pieces. My mother was there, too. She wandered off looking at other things, though we sometimes met up again. It was mainly two big stores with a doorway between them. Both had hardware, but the one on the right was an actual home improvement/hardware store.

After looking for a while in the store on the left, near the doorway to the other store, I went through the doorway and looked some there. There was a high counter near the doorway, back in the store a ways. One or two people were behind it and a bunch of people were in front. There were also a bunch of things on display around the area by and on the counter and on the shelves that formed a somewhat narrow aisle leading to it. I looked at things for a while. A lot of stuff was in boxes, but some little things hung from wire racks.

Suddenly I saw my mother's mother, my grandmother, who died in late 1984. She was in the crowd around the doorway, leaving, trying to work her way through it to the other side. I called out to her and quickly tried to make my way toward her. She turned and looked back at me, head lowered slightly, with a very sad and slightly guilty look on her face. I followed her through to the other side, talking to her, saying how glad I was to see her again after so long, thinking not of the time since her death but the time since I had a significant interaction with her in dreams. She didn't respond, but kept trying to turn away from me. We were in the other store now, having crossed over, and were in a little aisle near the doorway.

She was carrying something like a long hairpin. It had a big square plastic head perhaps half an inch across, a very light purple in color with molded designs like flower petals in it, with two long wires maybe three or four inches long sticking out of one end. The wires looked fairly strong, what was visible of them, and I guess it could have been a very long safety pin. I don't know if I ever actually saw the other end of it, because it was usually being held in someone's hand. However, she wore long hairpins in life, though with more subdued ends on them, so it's more likely to be a hairpin, and I'm not sure what use she would have for a safety pin that large.

I got around to the front of her, facing out now toward the central lane of the store, the one that leads to the doorway. I reached for the hairpin. She gave it up somewhat reluctantly, holding on initially and looking up some at me, but after a second or two she let go. I wanted to keep it to have a remembrance of her. I hugged her. She felt solid, but didn't respond, and continued to look sad. After a while I realized that a slight coldness was radiating from her. I could feel it across my front, seeping into me, though it didn't reach very deep. Eventually I released her and she turned and walked away, still sad, and seemed then to rapidly melt away, in sections, not like a candle melts but more like water evaporating from a hot surface, some parts going faster than others, but all of it quickly gone, and she was quickly gone, in just a second or two.

I took the hairpin home to show my mother, who was now somehow at home, and somehow it did not take long to get there, as if it was just a few rooms away. She was in the living room with my younger sister. They both looked much younger than they are now, and were sitting on the couch, which was along a different wall than it is now, but where a couch used to be decades ago.

I was also carrying a small thing that I had picked up somewhere, maybe four by five or five by six inches, which was a detailed representation of a scene from "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis, with tiny plastic figures on a raised scenic background, with clear plastic forming a rectangular dome over it. The display had a place in the bottom, where the bottom would be when the scene was hanging on a rack, where the top of a cane could be screwed on, at which time it would act as the cane handle for a cane that was just straight without a curved top.

I was saying that I thought it was something my great-uncle used (my mother's father's brother), but my sister immediately spoke up and said it was something they got for my grandfather, meaning my father's father. I frowned, still feeling it was something we had gotten for my great-uncle, but since she seemed so sure I realized I would probably have to accept her version.

I peered at it closely, trying to find a date on it, hoping that the date would help settle which person it was for. I thought that it was a tie-in to a movie that was made, not the more recent ones but something that was done earlier. I looked it over for quite a while, and thought sometimes that I could see a 98 on it. That was a few years later than I had pictured, in fact it was long after either one had died. Even the earlier dates I had pictured were far too late; my great-uncle died in 1960, and my grandfather on my father's side died around 1982-83, though I didn't think of any of it at the time.

Dream - Vanquishing the beast

On Monday, April 21, 2008, I dreamed I was at a place that was partly like a grade school I used to attend, with long rows of buildings, and partly like a mall. I was a Spider-Man-like character, but generally or always dressed in Peter Parker fashion with brown clothes and white shirt. I went up and down a corridor like the grade school had between buildings, but which had stores in the dream. It seemed also to be some kind of school. It was night.

I turned into a broad aisle going through the buildings, and around the middle of the school found some silvery metal horizontal fins set in a square high in a recessed corner. They disturbed me in some way, and I kept going back to look at them. Someone I knew came by, a man, and talked to me a bit, saying something about a meeting in the multipurpose room. I said something brief and quickly turned away, not wanting to talk and not really wanting to be seen. I quickly walked back over to the high square of fins and looked at it some more. I had thought that something was hidden behind it, but it just seemed to be composed of layers of fins.

I had a general sad feeling, then and earlier. I also had some feelings of worry about people, about doing something, and a need to be partly hidden, at least as far as powers and maybe my true nature went.

I went forward then through the aisle under the building, then turned back to a restaurant about halfway down the aisle. A man there remembered me from earlier, out in the countryside, far away where I fought a strange Nessie-like beast and killed it. He had the beast again and it wasn't dead.

A flashback showed that the original beast was killed by me, along with others like it (though the dream originally only featured the one beast), but he found a baby or juvenile one and took it and raised it to adulthood. It was now in the restaurant and was used as an attraction. People rode it, trying to outlast it or beat it in some way. Business was down for some reason.

He wanted me to ride it and try to beat it. He hoped it would attract customers and hopefully save his business. I rode it. It was like a killer whale on land, raised a little up from the ground. There was some doubt about the outcome.

The next day or night, the scene returned to the restaurant and a figure slowly rose straight up from the floor, like it was being created as it rose. It seemed at first to be the beast, but then it became apparent that it was just a suit made from its skin, with broad, light chocolate-colored collars and black otherwise. The figure wearing it seemed at first to be someone else, but was apparently supposed to be me, though I still seemed to be separate from the person, who seemed younger and smaller.

I went deeper again into the restaurant where people were sitting in groups at tables by a broad aisle running deep into the building. They seemed to be mostly mobsters. Another aisle ran to the right. It led eventually to a place deep in the building where people were gathered, watching something. It was some kind of magic figure and the people, some of them, were wizards from Discworld, little old men with long beards and pointed hats. One of them was talking to a much older one, who managed to answer after a pause, mainly just a nod of acknowledgement and agreement and perhaps a few words. It seemed somehow that my father and his father were among them and part of the wizards. The wizards didn't resemble them, but sometimes seemed to be a projection or overlay over them.


The dream had much more earlier in the mall/school, and before that out in the country where near the end of that portion I vanquished the beast. I vanquished the original beast just before or as we were leaving.

The country was somewhat hilly with broad depressed areas and some higher areas with lumpy red dirt walls with rounded holes where large stones had fallen out at some earlier time. It was desert with some vegetation, but seemed to have more moisture than a real desert. There were dirt roads and some kind of gate near the end of one, before a main but probably still dirt road. The gate was at the end of a dirt road that led up from a broad depressed area with another dirt road or two crossing it before getting to the gate. At the other side of the gate was the road that went past and led away. It was daytime.

Some other people were there. We may have been trying to lead them out or may have been at least partly trying to get away from them. If they were threatening, they didn't seem very threatening. I'm not sure what we were originally doing there, but a large part of the dream, perhaps most of it, took place there.

Wordzzle 72 - Horse play

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the sixteenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

corn pone,
delegation,
nectarines,
happiness,
12 going on 13,
prancing horses,
magenta,
butterflies,
fragmentary,
arthritis

I was eating corn pone and nectarines, when magenta prancing horses, accompanied by a cloud of butterflies, came up. They weren't young horses either, maybe 12 going on 13, and some of them seemed hampered by arthritis. Nevertheless, they continued prancing, radiating happiness.

After a time they finished, and one of them, evidently their leader, came toward me. He began to speak, in broken, fragmentary English. It was hard to interpret what he was saying, and I had to ask him to repeat it several times. He kept eyeing my food, too, which made me nervous. I finally gathered that they were a delegation of some kind, on their way to something, though I was never able to determine what. The horse was looking more and more upset and frustrated.

Finally it backed up, its eyes looking strained and a little wild, and rejoined the others. The others gathered around him and he talked to them, evidently about what had happened, though I couldn't hear anything from where I was. Some of them turned toward me, though, giving me hurt looks. Then they all galloped away, to wherever else they were going, I guess.

One of the butterflies came and settled on my shoulder. "You could have at least offered them part of your food."

"I don't have enough for a herd of horses. Divided up that much, there wouldn't even be enough to taste."

"You could have offered the leader something. There would have been enough for him to taste."

"Perhaps, but then he would have eaten it in front of the others. I wouldn't have had anything to offer them."

"Well, I'm here. Are you going to refuse to offer me part of your nectarines, because you're afraid that you can't feed all the butterflies?"

I sighed. "Alright, would you like to have some of my nectarines?"

"Why, thank you!" the butterfly said, and flew off my shoulder and landed on one, and began to eat. Suddenly, the butterfly transformed into a beautiful woman. She snuggled up to me and said, "Now, isn't that much better?"

I drew back a bit, still in shock, and said, "But, how? How did... How was I supposed to know?"

She began to kiss me. "Why, silly, you were told over and over, it came straight from the horse's mouth, you just refused to listen."


Mini Challenge:

lavender cowboy,
over the moon,
preparation,
zebra,
area rug

I was out walking one day and had stopped, making preparations to eat, when a lavender cowboy rode up on a zebra, with an area rug for a saddle. He took off his hat and began singing, "Oh bury me not, on the lone Serengeti..." The zebra rolled its eyes. The cowboy finished the song and started another. "As I walked down the streets of Nairobi, as I walked down Nairobi today..." The zebra looked at me, its eyes pleading. The cowboy finished and started yet another. "I'm back in the Sahara, again, back where an oasis is your friend..." The zebra wept openly, then suddenly turned and galloped off a cliff. I went over and looked. Beyond was an almost vertical, ragged slope, with a distant river at the bottom. I saw no sign of them.

That night, over the moon, I saw a cloud that looked like a horse and rider. The wind carried to me sounds of "Ghost riders in the Olduvai...." accompanied with a mournful wailing. I guess some things are just meant to be.


Mega challenge:

corn pone,
delegation,
nectarines,
happiness,
12 going on 13,
prancing horses,
magenta,
butterflies,
fragmentary,
arthritis

lavender cowboy,
over the moon,
preparation,
zebra,
area rug

A delegation of prancing horses went by. On each horse was a lavender cowboy. On each cowboy's hat was a nectarine, and on each nectarine was a butterfly. Each cowboy also had a magenta leather bag containing corn pone, and they kept reaching into it and getting another piece to eat, occasionally sharing one with their horses. Though it was daytime, the moon shone faintly in the sky, and over the moon a few bright stars could be seen. The wind brought to me fragmentary bits of song. Happiness seemed everywhere.

The zebra, standing beside me, said, "I'm 12 going on 13, but I'm tempted to join them. My arthritis has been better lately."

"I don't have much in the way of preparations," I said, "but I could put this area rug on you for a saddle."

The zebra looked at me doubtfully. "You're not going to sing again, are you?"

"Don't worry, I'll change the songs to make it seem like they're about Africa."

Elongating shadows

Perhaps 25 or 30 years ago, I went back to the grade school I used to attend. Someone was with me, most likely my youngest sister. I don't remember now what the purpose of the visit was. The school had gone through quite a bit of changes since I had been there, especially to the playground, and perhaps the visit was to look at those changes. The school wasn't open at the time. It was either a weekend or during summer vacation, or both.

We were leaving then, slowly walking back in the broad aisle that ran between the buildings. The school was set up in long rows of buildings, with classrooms on each side. Between the buildings were wide aisles, with broad sidewalks by each building and large square blocks of landscaping in the middle, with walks that crossed over to each side. Halfway along the buildings was a large opening, allowing a wide walkway that went from one side of the school to the other.

We were leaving, but were still closer to the back than the front. We walked along, talking, separated by a bit, sometimes as much as 15 feet or so, with me lagging behind. As I walked, I looked at the shadows cast by metal structures, lattice-like, that periodically crossed by overhead from building to building, and at the shadows cast by the objects in the planter areas, and at the shadows of the thick brick pillars that supported the roofs over the sidewalks. It was late afternoon.

I noticed that as the shadow of my head approached the other shadows, frequently just before they contacted each other the shadow of my head would elongate out in a bump, usually on the left side, just before the shadows merged. When they did merge, they rounded into each other, at least for a while.

It seemed much more common if the shadow of my head was about to contact the shadow of something slanted, like a metal bar in the lattice. It was probably more often on the left side of my head because that was the side that tended to be closer to the shadow being crossed.

I thought about why it could be happening, but the most I could come up with was that for some reason the shadows pressing on both sides caused the light between them to become dimmer, but I wasn't sure if that was correct. With something like that happening, I would have just expected the light to become dimmer between the two, not for one shadow to elongate toward the other. It didn't seem to explain, either, why most of the elongating occurred with my head and not the other object. I suppose it could have something to do with the different distances to the pavement.

It all seems very strange, though, and not what I would have expected.

Dream - The small town and the huge Joker-like figure

Maybe four years or so ago, I had a strange dream about traveling to a small town with a dense downtown area with a lot of things to do there, some of it touristy stuff. There also seemed to be some kind of festival going on in which costumes were worn and people were walking around in them, in the streets even, no big crowds though.

There was some kind of movie theater on one side, that had a big plastic flattened 3-D internally lit-up clown face with a big exaggerated smile on it, the face sticking out high above the sidewalk. There was some kind of competing business across the street and down a little ways.

I think one or more of the businesses might have been satanic. I think even part of the people wandering around were controlled by people who ran the town and were sinister in some way and sometimes out to get us.

I was staying at a motel with someone else, maybe my father. It was dark outside, night.

It seemed that the whole town was enclosed in something, some kind of curved ribbed structure where the part between the ribs was some kind of flexible plastic, maybe even clear plastic, that was high up and had lower branches going to and covering side streets. The structure blended into a kind of gray fog and was mostly hidden by it, especially the lower portions.

There was also a gigantic figure sometimes seen leaning over, face and shoulders above the ribbed covering, peering down at us, a clown figure, Joker-like, the mouth open in a big exaggerated smile, the eyes interested. I'm not certain if the figure was actually alive, at least at times it seemed to be a robot.

I think I was there a few days.

Dream - Walking home from the Nevada border, finally riding a three-wheeled motorcycle

Perhaps ten or fifteen years ago, I dreamed of driving home to Arizona from Nevada, and driving back and forth from Arizona to Nevada, and finally walking back home from around the Arizona-Nevada border. I walked along a road through the desert that went through a long section where a lot of road construction was going on. They were building a four-lane divided highway, though it was just dirt now. Then eventually the road became more primitive, one paved lane going each way, with a dirt road/path off to the side. Beyond the road was a fence that was wire on wooden posts.

I walked along the road, spending a lot of time on the other side of the fence, endless walking through a day that turned into night. Tall dead yellow grass covered large areas, especially later in the journey, and shone silver in the moonlight. The grass was especially tall and especially common by the fence.

As I approached the edge of Phoenix I met up with someone, maybe my brother, maybe my father, maybe both. I got on a small three-wheeled motorcycle that was in a small dirt lot with fences around it, more wire strung on wooden poles. The others were riding them, too. I think the motorcycles might have been waiting for us or perhaps they had arranged for them to be there, or perhaps we just took them. I think a problem might have occurred in that some of the motorcycles started going by themselves and following us, chasing us in a haphazard way. We were riding around, going all over the place and doing wheelies sometimes.

I think we had a general plan to make it toward home, but we went in a lot of different directions, going in circles even, probably in part to elude pursuit. I think we did make it home, or at least I did. It seemed that the ending repeated itself several times.

Dream - A team of heroes, and the double spiral of boats under the ground

A few years ago, I had a very long and what seemed like an important dream. I was going to write it down, but I didn't, not for a long time, writing most of it last year and some of it now. In the long time between the dream and the writing, most of it was largely forgotten, but some parts of it remained.

In the dream, I was traveling by foot. Several people were with me at some point, fellow adventurers and heroes. We had many adventures, and many things happened. Some got killed along the way.

At some point, far along in the dream, I went into a large multistory building. I think some kind of party was going on, maybe one with foreign dignitaries. The room was crowded, and people were milling around and dancing. People were also shopping, though perhaps more on other levels. My father and mother were there, along with a lot of other people.

After a while, I started going up and down between floors. I used an odd method of travel. Instead of an elevator, it seemed to be just a large square hole with ropes that moved up and down. Several ropes hung down, and some other people used them, too. I think I volunteered to do something for my father, to go to a different floor and do something so he wouldn't have to. I think part of it was showing off, though.

Initially I was going up, but then I had to go to the bottom floor or basement. I saw a lot of toys in there, some of them Christmas toys I think, including toy horses large enough to ride on. The room had a lot fewer people than the place I came from, hardly any at all. I was doing something important there for someone. It seems I was supposed to meet someone, too, and maybe save someone who was being held there. There was some danger involved.

I went carefully through the area, going one way and then another, going through section after section. I came upon a person or two who helped me, going with me or conducting their own searches. Further on in the room I heard something, some noise or voice, from something hidden by the blocks of displays, or perhaps around a wall. After a short discussion, I went cautiously forward.

I came across someone behind a section, a woman. She was standing there, leaning forward slightly with her arms out a little, hiding behind the section. She was not currently tied up and or restrained in any way, but had been kept down there by someone, someone who had until recently been holding onto her, taking her with him from section to section, deeper into the place. He was still there somewhere nearby, perhaps very close, perhaps not. She had gone with him without much resistance, as she herself had not been certain about us, not knowing us.

She went with us as we went further into the place, though sometimes she was a little distance back and to the side. The light was dimmer here. Sometimes I saw a moving shadow on the walls, sometimes clearly the shadow of a person. I can't at this point say what the outcome was, or if there was an outcome, though I did eventually see an actual person.

Later, at maybe the third floor, I had a premonition of disaster. There was a large window all along the outer wall, and a glass wall and door separated it from the rest of the floor. I think some toys might have been behind the glass partition, but at this point something more important was happening there. The room beyond the glass was dimly lit and full of people, standing, generally facing toward the far left corner of the room.

I went in there a couple of times, but quickly went back out. Each time I went in, people started to turn partly toward me, sardonic distaste on their faces. It seemed to be a secret meeting of some kind, where people were listening to someone talk, and perhaps being given instructions. It felt like an evil place.

Each time I went in I stayed only briefly, and then went back to the other side of the glass partition. A few people were there, in the broad space between the windows and the glass partition, but not many. Someone there was talking to me in a somewhat friendly, matter of fact manner, generally from ten or more feet away. I thought they might really be part of the evil group, though, mid-level leaders probably. I kept feeling that something was about to happen, and was getting more and more anxious.

I finally broke the window to the outside and wrapped my arms around one or two people, members of my group I think, and made a long glide to the ground with super powers, taking them with me. We landed a long way away, down a broad open area lined with buildings. The third floor, distant now and still facing us, then exploded in flames. Someone was trying to kill us.

All the people on that floor, including those behind the glass partition, were evidently killed, though I thought it possible that a few might have escaped by a secret route at the last minute. Some of the people in the room in front of the partition were bad, but some may have been good, and part of my team might have still been there, too. The people who set the explosion were willing to kill them all just to kill us, or perhaps just to kill me, but I think very few of those there were actually aware of what was going to happen. I'm not sure if or how the other people in the building were affected, or what the fate of my mother and father was.

I went back and forth through the streets, then, on foot. Many of the streets were narrow side streets, like alleys. In time some of them got wet and muddy, sunken even. I kept going back through them. Some of them had large sections that were a deep, continuous puddle. Skies were overcast, and there was a feeling of bleakness.

I was being searched for, I'm not sure whether by the authorities or by some evil organization. I was generally alone at this point. Occasionally I came across one or two people, or they came across me. Sometimes they were part of the group that was after me, but I was never captured. It went on for a long time.


Eventually, perhaps in another dream, I was in a large open area, standing on pale, hard ground. One or two people were also there. They were pointing out a narrow hole in the ground that led to another place, perhaps another dimension. One or two ropes led down into the hole, and I had to climb down them to reach the other side. I climbed down them, then, but the rope ended perhaps ten feet above the ground, and I had to let go and drop the rest of the way.

I was in a strange place, then, a little city. I found that I couldn't return, that no one who comes can leave. I was told there was a way, though, that boats have to be arranged in a specific pattern, in a double spiral of lanes going in different directions. Such a thing was done there periodically. The rulers were coming from the surface, now, for a visit, and the spiral was being created as part of the celebration. The rulers would come down in a line of boats that would wind their way down through the spiral and then go back up with the spiral line going back.

There wasn't much time. I ran to the boats, jumping on and jumping from boat to boat. Some people were looking at me strangely. It was probably because of the jumping, but I wasn't really supposed to be there. Only certain people were allowed on the boats. I didn't have a ticket, or the connections it would require to get one.

The boats were moving along slowly, close together in their circular channels. I think I initially tried to stay in the same channel, though perhaps going in the opposite direction of travel, but I soon started going across to the other channels, which were separated by low, thick, white concrete walls, which sometimes had workers on them assisting the boats. Sometimes the workers seemed visibly upset as I jumped to the wall and then to a boat on the other side, but they usually continued working at what they were doing and didn't try to stop me, though sometimes they seemed to call out to someone or notify someone on little phones or radios.

There now seemed to be no way to get to the boats near the rulers, the boats that I knew would be going back out, unless I could somehow manage to jump across the channels to them. It was a more difficult jump, though, with more water and a little taller walls, and more equipment on and by the walls.

Originally the spirals from the inside and outside were supposed to join in one continuous loop, but now the spirals seemed completely separate. They didn't join up at the center, and one channel was always for boats on the inside and one was always for boats that came from the outside and wound around and then went back out again. The inside boats just kept repeating themselves in their travels, and I think that at least at times both the spiral from the inside and the spiral from the outside were going in the same directions, still wound around each other.

I saw the rulers, some distance away to the left, in their stately procession, in the section that was still up on the gentle slope leading downward. They appeared to be some kind of royalty. It seemed earlier that things had been working properly, that just by getting on the boats I could be assured of being part of the cycle that would go above ground and then back under again, though I would have to be sure of being on a part of it that would reach the outside before the cycle stopped. Now, though, there was no way I could get to the outside, unless I could jump to a boat in the line that went there.

I was jumping from boat to boat, trying to get to or near the rulers or at least on the line of boats going with them, the boats that would eventually go back up to the outside. I was somewhat concerned about being able to get too close to them, that guards might intervene before that happened. I finally got on the spiral of boats leading out, a few boats away from the rulers I think. From there, I stayed with the boat until it went through the spiral and back up again, and when it was well along the slope going upward, when the ceiling was much closer but still too far to normally reach, I somehow reached it and broke through it, and went straight through a broad foggy opening and got back to the surface.

Wordzzle 71 - Knight time

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is the fifteenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

sober,
spoilage,
knight,
laugh and the world laughs with you,
peak,
blueberries,
owl,
drugstore,
lampshade,
keyboard

The blueberries are definitely past their peak, he thought, as he picked through the fruits and vegetables. In fact, most of them had passed over the line into spoilage, which was undoubtedly why they had been thrown out. He managed to find a few, though, that hadn't yet molded, as well as a few pounds of wilted grapes. He sniffed them all, then held them up so that they could be better illuminated by the parking lot lights. It was important to stay away from things that had actually fermented, too. He had to stay sober in his line of work.

He moved off to another section of the dumpster, and started looking through things there. This section had various household and office objects that had gotten broken somehow. He was behind a giant supermarket/discount store/drugstore, and sometimes he found things he could use. He guessed a lot of it was floor models or stuff that had fallen off of shelves or had otherwise gotten damaged. For all he knew the employees engaged in fights with them in the back rooms. He was about to give up on finding anything this time when he came upon a computer keyboard with a big crack running through it. He took it out and examined it. Chances were it still worked. His old keyboard was having trouble with a few letters now, so it was worth trying it out.

Suddenly he heard a scream. He quickly went behind the dumpster and changed into his costume, then went running toward the source of the continuing screams. He found a man trying to steal a woman's purse, while the woman gripped it in both hands, refusing to let it go. The man was dressed in a bright purple suit and was wearing a yellow lampshade over his head with large holes cut out for the eyes.

"Well, Mocker, this is sinking rather low, even for you."

The lampshade turned toward him. "Why, if it isn't the Knight-Owl, come to save the day. I figured you'd show up. In fact, that's the only reason I did it. Now. as I always say, laugh and the world laughs with you, die and I still laugh at you," and he suddenly produced an enormous futuristic-looking gun, which began to fire what looked like ping-pong balls. The Knight-Owl knew better than to let any of them hit him, though. They might contain poison gas, or acid, or drugs, or glue, or germs, or expanding spikes, or explosives, or any of a wide variety of possibilities.

The balls just bounced off the walls and pavement like normal ping-pong balls, though. He turned and looked at them bouncing away. Turning back, he said, "Is that all you've got, Mocker?"

"Hey, times are tough! And you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find good help. It's so sad I could just laugh myself to death!" And he began laughing, but it soon degenerated into a series of strange giggles.

"You loser!" the woman yelled, and slammed him in the head with her purse. The Mocker lurched to the side, tried to recover, and then fell on his back. The Knight-Owl walked up to him and began wrapping duct tape around him, pinning his arms and legs to his body. The Mocker was weakly shaking his head in small back and forth movements, but was not offering any resistance.

"Ha-ha-ha, duct tape? Ha-ha, what happened to your electronic handcuffs?"

"The manufacturer went out of business, and I haven't been able to find another one. Not that I could afford it these days anyway."

"Ha-ha, we're just alike, we're finally just alike..."

"In your dreams. Now be quiet while I contact Commissioner Boredom." He took out a cell phone and punched in the number.

"YOU'RE USING A CELL PHONE? A DISPOSABLE CELL PHONE? HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA..."

"SHUT UP! No, not you Commissioner. I have the Mocker captured again. He's all ready to be picked up. What? Are you sure? Well, okay."

He lowered the phone and turned toward the Mocker. "Commissioner Boredom says that the city has had to cut a lot of services, and money is so tight that they've had to release most of the people from their jails. They couldn't afford to house them any longer. He doesn't want you. You're free to go."

"You're letting him go? You LOSER!" The Knight-Owl felt a sudden impact on the side of his head, and then he was laying on the pavement with someone wrapping duct tape around him.

"I can't believe it!" the woman said. "He tried to take my purse and you're just going to let him go! You're both LOSERS!" She finished with the tape, and straightened up and put her hands on her hips and looked down at him with contempt. Then she picked up her purse and hit him again with it, then went over to the Mocker and hit him, too. Then she kicked them both a few times for good measure and walked off in a huff.

"You're just like me, you're just like me, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha..."

"Shut up."

"Say, would you like some coffee?" An artificial flower poked its head out of his coat pocket. The flower head turned toward the Knight-Owl, and then fell off and rolled down the street. "HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA..."

"Shut up."

It was going to be a long night.


Mini Challenge:

economy,
Michael Jackson,
ladder,
clue,
structure

A man in a Michael Jackson mask lay on the sidewalk, and a long ladder lay beside him. People walked around him, paying little attention to him. After a few hours a couple of policemen came upon him, and began to examine the situation.

"I guess he was trying to climb up the side of the building with the ladder, and then it fell over."

"Yeah, that's probably it. I wonder what he thought he was trying to do?" He leaned down and picked up a wallet that was laying beside the man, and looked through it. "Looks like the crowd got here before we did. It's pretty cleaned out. There's not even a driver's license left. Not many clues here."

"Yeah, well, with the economy like it is, I don't blame them."

"There's nothing here that's really worth our time. Let's call the coroner and have them pick him up."

"Do we have to do that? There's always so much paperwork. The coroner has been complaining lately about having too many dead bodies, anyway."

"We still can't leave him here."

"Let's just stuff him in the trash can. The garbage truck will get him eventually."

"Well, I suppose. But what do we do with the ladder?"

"We can just move it over by the building and get it out of the way. Someone is bound to steal it, sooner or later."

"Well, okay, let's get started, then."

They reached down and started to picked him up, when all of a sudden he groaned.

"Hey! He's still alive!"

"Oh no, this really complicates things. Looks like we're going to have that paperwork after all."

The man sat up, holding his head, still groaning.

"Are you okay now? You don't need an ambulance, do you? What were you doing on that ladder, anyway?"

"I wasn't on the ladder."

"You weren't?"

"No, it was in the way and I walked under it. I guess I must have bumped it or something, because I soon heard a strange scraping noise, and when I turned around I saw the top of it sliding across the wall toward me. There wasn't time to do anything."

"But, if you weren't on the ladder, then why is it here?" The policemen both looked up, trying to see if anyone or anything was on top of the building.

Suddenly their pistols were out of their holsters and poking them in the back.

"Alright, put your hands up against the wall there! Push Hard! Pretend you're holding up the structure!" The man then went through all their pockets, taking everything. "Okay! Now stay that way for an hour! Don't turn your heads, don't move! I'll be watching!"

After a while, one of the policeman said, "Do you think he's gone?"

"Probably. We might as well stand here for a while, though. I'm really not looking forward to the paperwork."

"Why don't we just say that a bunch of people came out of an alley and did it."

"That would probably be best."

"We never did get a look at his face. Who was that masked man, anyway?"

"I don't know, but he left us this stupid ladder."


Mega challenge:

sober,
spoilage,
knight,
laugh and the world laughs with you,
peak,
blueberries,
owl,
drugstore,
lampshade,
keyboard

economy,
Michael Jackson,
ladder,
clue,
structure

The knight stood outside the drugstore, in full armor. Ten feet ahead of him were double glass doors. On the right door a sign said "Laugh and the world laughs with you." On the left door a sign said "Cry me a river."

An owl sat on a light pole, watching. Posters of Michael Jackson blew by in the wind.

A man, obviously not sober, walked by, his arms carrying two big paper bags full of groceries. He tripped and fell, and blueberries and grapefruits spilled out and scattered on the sidewalk. He lay still. A man in a white apron came and put the fruit back in the bags, then put them against the wall of the drugstore. He then pulled the man over and propped him against the wall in a sitting position, with his knees up near his chin. He unfolded a newspaper and put it over the man's head, making a little peak, and left him there.

A man smoking a pipe walked slowly by, looking through a large, economy-sized magnifying glass, as if searching for clues. He paused briefly where the bags had earlier fallen, but then went on.

Time passed. The knight continued to stand there, facing the doors. The owl continued to watch. A hook and ladder truck raced by on the street behind the knight, siren wailing. A dog, harnessed to a little red wagon, went slowly by, panting. A teenager sat in the wagon, playing music on a keyboard.

More time passed. Flies gathered around the bags of groceries, buzzing. The man in the white apron came back and picked up the bags and threw them in the dumpster with the other spoilage. The man sitting against the wall slowly fell over to his right and lay there on the sidewalk, still curled up, the newspaper still hiding his head. A lampshade rolled by in strange arcs, showing a complicated internal structure.

Finally the knight walked slowly forward, and slowly stretched out his right arm toward the doors. Abruptly, the signs were taken down and replaced by others. Each sign now had an arrow pointing at the opposite door, and each sign now said "Use other door." The knight stood there, his arm outstretched, frozen, unmoving.

"OH FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE," screamed the owl. "JUST PICK ONE!"