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!"

The Great Imagination Award

On Monday, July 6, 2009, I was given the Great Imagination Award by Akelamalu on her blog Everything And Nothing.



She had written a short story for a Wordzzle, 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: And the winner is.......

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

Thanks everybody for the nice comments, and thank you everyone who voted for me.

And thank you, Akelamalu, for running the contest and for the beautiful award. I am very happy to accept it, and very happy to display it on my blog.


This is my winning entry:

This is my version of the ending: She faked her death. The body looked only slightly like her, but after laying in the sun for a few days it didn't really matter. The passport left with the body was all that was used for identification. She was now diguised as an Iranian, working with the dark skinned man and others to try to find out where the votes of the presidential election were kept and then take digital pictures of all of them and transmit copies to other countries so a recount could be done outside Iran. If the recount showed that the other person actually won, this would turn world opinion more strongly against Iran's leaders and give the protesters in Iran a stronger reason to fight.

The sailing curtains

We were living in Scottsdale, Arizona when it happened, in one of the places that we moved to there. I was probably somewhere around ten to twelve years old. I had just been out front, with some other members of the family. My father was doing something to the lawnmower, getting ready to mow the yard.

I went back inside the house, through the carport door. I think I got something, maybe a drink of water or something to eat, and started to go into the living room. I had only made it into the room a little ways, when the right half of the curtains on the living room window majestically lifted way up in the air and sailed out into the room, then settled on the floor a few feet in front of me.

I stared at it with concerned interest. This was very strange. It didn't seem that curtains should be able to do this. I thought about it but I couldn't figure out why it should do something like that.

I finally started picking it up, big pale folds of it, and going through it to see if I could find anything that might help explain it. Everything seemed normal, but then I came across a small, round, metal sprinkler head, one that was intended to be screwed into a hose. It had a deep cut in it. I came to realize that my father had run over it with the lawnmower, and it had been hit by a blade and flung through the window, hitting the curtain. When I went and looked at the window, I found a hole in the screen, confirming it.

I suppose I should have been scared, but I wasn't. There was just a sense of wonder about it, and the whole thing had a strange, dreamlike quality.

Dream - The Cadillac and the mysterious valley

Perhaps fifteen or more years ago, I dreamed of driving the 1970 Cadillac, a gold four-door sedan with a white vinyl top. I was going through the desert on a lonely road and eventually ended up in California, though the original destination may have been Nevada, at least in some versions of the dream.

While still in Arizona, the road eventually led through a large, long, open air building with picnic tables, way out in the desert, far from anything. I had some kind of car trouble there, I think, or perhaps simply stopped there to take care of some suspected problems, or perhaps just to check to see if there were any.

I opened the hood and looked everything over. Something did have to be fixed on it and eventually I had it partially taken apart. As I worked, the engine got bigger and became tall and huge, like it was from a car from the 1930s, and had a lot of space around it. I think there was some problem with gaskets. The water pump gasket may have been leaking a little, but I think there were also some oil leaks. There was something to do with the radiator and hoses. too. Eventually I got it all back together, though perhaps without fixing anything. It could still be driven, though.

I think I also met somebody there, perhaps more than one person. I wasn't expecting to, they just happened to show up. The place was pretty well filled up with them before I left. They were having a picnic of some kind, using the picnic tables there. It was apparently some kind of celebration for them. It wasn't just a family, it was a large group of families, like some kind of reunion or work picnic.

I had the same basic dream more than once, maybe several times.

In more than one dream I ended up in California somewhere in a National Forest of some kind, a large bowl-shaped valley covered in pine trees. There was something in the middle, some kind of building. I think some kind of evil scientists worked there. I think it was run by somebody who was at least at times an enemy, though the people there seemed to be friendly, at least sometimes. I even worked among them for a while. I remember more than one car being involved at times, one or two station wagons I think. I also seemed to be playing more than one role sometimes, and sometimes another person or two were there with me, family members I think. My mother was probably one of them.

I remember stopping, perhaps because of caution or perhaps being stopped by car trouble, partway down into the valley. I ended up staying in the building for a while, perhaps several days or even longer. There was some worry about being able to leave. I think I had to leave, it was time and it was dangerous to stay, something was going to happen or might happen. I didn't have enough money to buy enough gas to get back home, though.

Dream - Being Batman

On Saturday, April 26, 2008, I had a dream about crooked cops, and changing to Batman to fight them.

In the dream, I drove around, in Arizona going toward Nevada. I was stopped by cops, or perhaps some other people, who were checking for something. It seemed some kind of road work was going on. There was a small, narrow, raised strip to drive over.

There was a cop in a booth, but he was not paying much attention. I could have gone on, but I stopped anyway. The cop seemed bored and somewhat amused. He finally said I had to take the car over to someplace else. I may have started to drive it, but I ended up carrying it, a new 1996 Oldsmobile, dark gray-blue. The cop seemed amused.

More people joined us. The situation became more suspicious, but I kept going along with it. I finally got to a building where I was to store the car, possibly for weeks or longer.

I felt that something was wrong, that something would happen to the car, that they planned to take it. They turned much more threatening. It seemed that I might not make it out alive now. I think they were initially planning to let me go, but I had been asking too many questions, been too persistent about it.

I was back in the car now. I was worried that the new car would be damaged. I also worried that it would be taken apart and sold. The cop was in the back seat with a gun. Others were outside.

Suddenly I fought back, becoming in the process or being replaced by Batman. I pulled the guy in back over the seat, possibly into the dashboard, possibly into the window. I think I also hit him with the armored side of my glove. I pulled a person at the side window through the partly open window into the car, breaking the glass. I then drove the car slowly forward, apparently to hit another person and confuse or get out of the way of others with guns. I hit a car in front, intentionally. It was part of a big parking lot of cars, maybe junked or maybe just parked. The hood of the car was badly dented in the collision.

I watched, as Batman, with grim amusement. It doesn't seem important at all, let the insurance company pay for it.

Dream - Tomorrowland

On Wednesday morning, April 23, 2008, I had a dream about seeing a place called Tomorrow or Tomorrowland, and then getting robbed, or at least I initially thought I was.

In the dream, I was driving. It was dark, and I was going to Nevada, or already there and somewhere out in the Reno-Carson City-Fernley area or something like that.

Then it was daylight, and I was going toward Fallon from the direction of work, but I thought of it in the dream as a small unnamed town. I was going too fast and the speed limit dropped abruptly. There was a person on a bicycle nearby. A cop was parked facing the road not far in front of me. I braked sharply and got below 25 mph, but the speed kept creeping upward and got up to 30 a time or two. It was worrisome, but the cop didn't do anything.

I parked somewhere in town and walked around. A person who was my lab partner was there. Maybe he came with me. He was going to work there again for a while. I was, too. I guess he was going to work for however long he was there.

I left him at a building with some other people for a while and walked around. I thought I would have to find a place to stay again for the time I was there. I didn't want to have to stay in a place with other people again and wondered if I would find a separate place on the other side of the main road. Both places I had in mind were places from other dreams.

I wandered back to try to find my former lab partner. He was still at the building or had returned to it, still with some other people. I think he had gone off with them for a while.

There was a nearby building, two or three story, that was made of dark brick-like blocks. I thought I saw something along the side of it, a way up. We started walking along by it, looking. There was just a faint representation of a stairway on the wall, though, like something carved in relief, though initially it had seemed like more. I believe it was faintly labeled "tomorrow." We couldn't get up that way. I turned and looked at him, uncertainly.

We went back around the front and went inside. It seemed he was only going to stay a couple of weeks. I thought maybe I could just rent a room for that time, maybe even in this building, which was apparently at least in part a hotel, also part a restaurant and part something else.

We went along one side of the inside. A lot of other people were there. There was some exhibit, perhaps upstairs, called Tomorrow or Tomorrowland or something like that.

We were going to visit it, but then a woman came and said somebody had attacked her and shoved her out of a line and against a wall. It had apparently happened some time ago, perhaps weeks ago. She was looking for the man, trying to find him. It wasn't clear what she intended to do with him, but it seemed that she wanted to get him into some kind of trouble.

She peered closely in my direction, briefly looking at me and then was satisfied that it wasn't me, which was a bit of a relief because I knew I wasn't the one. She talked mostly to my lab partner.

We didn't go toward the Tomorrow section then, and went somewhere else in the building. A long line of people wrapped around the inside, going from the back toward the front. We were waiting to get into the restaurant section now, probably in line with the others. I was wearing a long, light gray lightweight coat, almost like a trench coat but simpler and plainer.

Someone went past me and bumped into me hard and struggled for a moment to get past, then did and ended up going partly the other way, toward the side and back, heading out of the building in that direction.

I suddenly felt for my billfold and couldn't find it. I cried out that he had stolen my wallet, that man had stolen my wallet. I made some halfhearted, uncertain attempts to go after him. I was uncertain I could even catch him now. I kept feeling for my wallet. I couldn't understand how he had even gotten it because I had such a long coat on, and I finally felt it there, still in my back pocket. It was so thin that I had missed it before. Usually it was a lot thicker, having lots of cash and various papers. Now it seemed almost empty.

Dream - With my grandmother, on the bridge

On Friday morning, June 19, 2009, I dreamed about my family taking a trip in a car to some kind of tourist destination, and sometime after arriving there I took my grandmother for a sight-seeing walk on a tall concrete bridge, during which she became ill and had trouble breathing.

In the dream, the family was traveling in a car out to some place far from town. My father was driving. My two sisters were still little, making it probably in the late 1960s, though the car seemed newer, possibly the 1973 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser, though I'm not sure it was initially as big as that. It was a station wagon, though, a big one, and later in the dream it was thought of as the Oldsmobile. With that and the age I seemed to be, sometime in the 1970s seems most logical.

We were going up though a series of hills to gradually higher ground. The road here was rock-hard dirt, reddish brown, carved out of much steeper hills, frequently with steep cliffs of hard dirt at the sides, the remnants of the former hills. Sometimes these were fairly thick and other times only a few feet, but still rising high, maybe ten feet or more. The dirt was too hard and stiff to break or fall. The road was a broad two lanes, and didn't have normal markings, but seemed to have broken black lines on the outside edges of the lanes and in the middle. There was also a hard dirt shoulder, looking much the same as the rest of it, a light reddish brown. Between the cut-out peaks, sharp drop-offs sometimes ran along the road, especially as the road got higher. Besides going up and down, the road also had curves in it.

My father was driving very fast, an almost frantic look on his face, as he kept his eyes fixed on what lay ahead. I was sitting in the front passenger seat, and occasionally looked over at him. The driving fast concerned me. I wasn't sure how well the tires would stick to this kind of surface, but he kept whizzing around the corners anyway. Traffic was fairly light, but there were some other cars around, in front and behind us, and sometimes one would go past in the other direction. One time my mother, from the back seat, asked him why he was going so fast, but I'm not sure what he said, or if he said anything about it.

We were getting close to our destination now. We went around a big broad turn and ahead was the entrance, past a big cut-out peak. On the way to the peak the right side of the road was mostly open, with some low narrow projections along with outright gaps. One extended projection ran like a low thin wall, maybe a couple of feet high and thirty feet long, and there were also occasional thin projecting peaks maybe two or three feet high, along with big gaps. I could see the rounded, sharply sloping ground beyond, maybe with a slope of as much as 70 percent in places.

My father was talking to my mother now about something, his head partly turned, only half looking at what he was doing. I watched as the car drifted to the right onto the shoulder, toward the projections at the edge. It seemed to go on for a disturbingly long time, as I waited for him to notice or perhaps for someone else to notice and say something. Finally someone did say something, "Watch out!" I'm not sure who it was, it could have even been me, though it really doesn't seem so. It was late now in the process, and we were well onto the shoulder, maybe a foot or two from the far edge of it and the projections or the drop-off.

My father turned back to the front to look at what was happening. His eyes got big and his face settled back into his neck a bit, with his mouth in kind of a teeth-gritted grin of fear and concentration. He seemed unable to pull us back on the road, though. I'm not sure why. It seemed that he couldn't control the car well enough, or felt that he couldn't, and we continued to drift off to the side, hitting the low narrow wall of hard dirt, going about a third over it. I could feel the car grinding against it and hear the sound it made, and pieces and chunks were breaking off, sheered off by the front of the car, and the big pieces and what was left grinding irregularly against the bottom.

Then we were past it in an open section, with a few small thin projecting peaks, the car still going to the right, the two right wheels apparently on the slope, the car in danger of completely sliding off and falling, probably tumbling, down the slope to whatever awaited at the bottom, however far that might be. Not far ahead and approaching fast, was a large piece of hill left over from the cut-out. It was probably fifteen to twenty feet across at the base, though the side facing us wasn't flat, but severely rounded, especially the side toward the road. It was probably twenty to thirty feet high, narrowing sharply as it rose. It looked like we were going to smack right into it and then go off the road completely, probably to our deaths, if the initial impact didn't kill us first. Only seconds remained, at most.

I closed my eyes and tried desperately to think of a way out. I may have made some broken prayers initially, but then I remembered hearing about someone who had the ability to get out of bad situations by saying or thinking "anomaly" over and over, while thinking of a desired different outcome. I tried it, just having time to say anomaly a few times, probably in my head, but having trouble, in the immediacy of the situation, coming up with clear alternatives. Did I want us to be somewhere else entirely? But we wanted to be here to go to this place. I finally came up with the thought that I wanted everything to turn out alright, and that no one get hurt.

I felt the Oldsmobile sliding sideways, and knew that my father had purposefully done it, to try to minimize the crash and improve the chances of getting back on the road. Most of the car was off the road and on the slope, coming up sideways against the tall hill, the wheels grinding and spinning against the dirt and pieces of dirt, the front wheels still on the road. A low ridge of dirt, perhaps a foot high, though maybe a little taller before we ran over it, was under the car from side to side. I could see it all in my mind, from a position up in the air a bit and forty or fifty feet back the way we had come.

Finally we climbed back up onto the road, and we drove leisurely through the opening in the hill, toward the tall gates. The whole process had taken only a few seconds, though it seemed to stretch out in time while it happened.


Then we went inside and were walking around looking at things. The place was a tourist attraction of some kind, evidently celebrating the geology of the area, perhaps other things too. I peeked in at the eating place, a fairly large one. It had a stack of TV dinner packages along a wall, on a wooden shelf structure that was basically just some slats. They were apparently a kind that didn't need refrigeration. I had checked in earlier and then come back, and I saw a lot of the dinners were gone now. They were relatively expensive TV dinners, deluxe ones, and some were large, family size ones. One of the large ones was lasagna, the package extolling how good it was. There wasn't a lot of selection, though. There were just a were basic types. Other, non-TV dinner types of food were available, some of it being displayed behind a long glass counter to the right of the shelves of TV dinners, and some more on a high shelf that ran along the wall behind the counter.

I didn't think there would be time to eat now, it was getting too late. If we waited it would be dark and too late to see anything today. Most of the others had gone off, at least some to restrooms. The girls showed back up now. The oldest was probably about eight or nine and the younger one maybe five or six. My father may have gone in the restaurant to eat something, I'm not sure. I would have liked to go the restroom, too, and I also had been conscious of the need to wash my hands, since I had gone to a restroom earlier in the trip and I hadn't been able to wash my hands there. But it was really too late now, we had to get outside while it was still light.

The girls and I went out the back and saw the low sunlight on fields of yellow-green grass a few inches high. The land was rolling somewhat, and was at a little bit of a sideways slant. A ways beyond, it folded into a slight depression and then rose up again on the other side. Parts of it were in shadow, and there seemed only a few minutes of sunlight left. There was something beyond the far rise, I felt, maybe amusement park rides, maybe something else. The girls ran out into the grass, heading for it. I guessed the adults would have to catch up with them later, though I did wonder a bit about how hard it might be for everybody to find each other again. It didn't really seem like it would be a big problem, though our parents might be a little bothered.


I found myself walking, then, with my grandmother, my mother's mother, who had come with us. We were on a tall concrete bridge that curved up high above things. I think some other family members might possibly have been with us initially, but if so it was eventually just us and the other tourists. It wasn't a big crowd of people, though. In fact it was fairly thin, and mostly younger people, teens and twenties. It was night now, and we walked leisurely along. I think there was a tour guide or two also, talking about things, but I don't think we were officially on a tour, we just happened to be moving along approximately with it. The bridge was meant for traffic, and though some cars or trucks could theoretically come by at any time, there weren't any right now. If something did come we would have to move to the side to let it by. Sometimes we walked along closer to the left side, but we probably more often walked by the right side.

The bridge was covered and had walls. In some places the walls had large openings, long blank sections with not much more than a concrete railing and a low concrete wall. Other places were entirely walled, sometimes with large windows showing a wall of red rock streaked with yellow, rock that had been cut through to make the bridge, and in some places the rock went from top to bottom, replacing the wall entirely, and without any covering. Several feet beyond the wall on the right, perhaps as much as ten or twenty in some cases, was the other half of the bridge, with its own set of lanes.

Some of the windows were separated into four or more panes, with the rock directly against the window. Some had lots of smaller panes, with some of the panes having black material of some kind on the other side instead of the rock, evidently for an artistic effect, but I felt that behind the black material was more of the rock.

Other things were also on display. Some places had plaques, sometimes on broad short posts. There were also some paintings in fancy frames, and maybe an occasional small suit of armor or some other little item.

One or two times I saw on the left side, through square holes in the floor maybe a couple a feet across, another bridge underneath this one. The other bridge was smaller, and was especially for pedestrians. It had a brick or simulated brick floor, and brick on the walls. I could see happy people down there talking to each other. There seemed to be more people down there right now than up here.

As we slowly walked along, I talked to my grandmother, showing her things and trying to explain some about them, though I didn't really know much so it was mostly a matter of pointing out things, and remarking on them. She seemed interested in it, and sometimes said something too. As we went on, though, it became harder to get her attention, like she was a bit distracted, and while I was pointing out some more of the windows in the wall that had the rock and dark material behind them, she seemed to be looking more further ahead and just slightly toward the wall. We were entering a rather long section of these windows now. As we went along, I became more concerned about her, and came to the conclusion that she was wearing out, and she was too distracted by her condition to be able pay a lot of attention to what I was showing her. I finally reached down and picked her up in my arms and carried her. I went forward, walking faster now.

Some doors appeared to the left that were exits, and several people who worked at the resort quickly came, apparently from multiple directions and possibly hidden doors but not from the exits themselves, and were telling everyone that they had to get off the bridge. Evidently it was because of some traffic that was going to come by, a series of large street sweepers I think, that cleaned the bridge on certain nights. The people were rushing to the doors and opening them and going through. I saw that beyond each door was an enclosed curving lane a few feet wide that went sharply downward. All the people went down them, evidently to the other bridge below, though perhaps some of the people continued down all the way to the ground. I didn't like the exits, though. Maybe I thought they didn't lead where I needed to go, as they either went to an unfamiliar bridge or to the ground, to an unfamiliar area full of people walking around and far from the building where I needed to go.

After pausing briefly while I watched what was happening, I started walking again, hoping to find something better. Past the exits, the light dimmed a little. The displays continued for a short distance, but then ended, replaced by bare concrete walls. I walked on down the empty corridor, carrying my grandmother, alone.

As I continued on, the bridge became slanted downward a little as it headed for the other side, and the light grew more dim. I didn't see any more exits. I was starting to think I should have taken one of the ones back there after all. My grandmother didn't weigh much, it was like carrying a child, but my arms were getting tired. I hoped I could get off the bridge when it reached the bottom, but I was afraid it would start to curve up again and curve away from the building.

The bridge was getting a lot lower now, approaching the end, when the road suddenly forked, leading off in two different directions. The one on the right was fairly broad and started to curve upward again. The one on the left, a smaller one, continued downward into even dimmer light, with a lower ceiling. The opening was perhaps wide enough for two cars to pass if they weren't very big and didn't mind getting really close to each other.

Not far from where the road branched, what looked like a massive steel screw was embedded in the left branch, against the right wall of it and going up to the ceiling, or close to it. Later on, it was long enough that it did go through the ceiling. It took up maybe four or five feet of space, but still left enough room for a car to pass. I was under the impression now that some of the big street cleaning trucks might have come through there, though some might have come from the other branch. I wasn't sure if they went through by the screw, though I thought they did. It might be a tight squeeze for a big street cleaning truck, but perhaps slightly smaller models used this branch. I was also under the impression, somehow, that the giant screw was part of the equipment that was used to cut through the rock and build the bridge, though I didn't know if it was actually one of the ones that did it or was meant as a representation of one, just showing that this type of machine was used. I also wasn't sure if it was intended to be something permanent or was just temporarily left there for some reason. Although I had at first pictured it as drilling through the concrete floor, there didn't seem to be any actual evidence of this. The floor just seemed to end at it.

I paused there, at the fork in the road, uncertain what to do. My grandmother seemed to be having trouble breathing, and I had to get her to some help fast. I didn't know if the opening on the left, with the screw, actually had an opening at the bottom or if it just continued along, like the other seemed to. I could try walking all the way back to the exits the other people had used, but that would take me a long way out of my way, not only walking back to them but because they didn't seem to go directly to where I wanted to go, leaving me outside the building somewhere.

A short, young, very slightly pudgy man came toward me from the right and a little ahead. I don't know where he came from. He said it was alright, to go ahead and take the opening, indicating the left one. He said that he had noticed earlier that I seemed to be in some trouble and he had called ahead and they had prepared things, evidently meaning that a way out had been prepared, though it could have been more than that.

I went ahead down the opening, passing the massive screw, peering at it. It seemed to be solidly in the concrete floor, like the floor was cast in place around it. The scratched lines in the concrete, though, put there for better grip, smoothly went right up to the screw, with no evidence of any alteration in them, no unevenness or suddenly changing to go in a circle around it, just coming directly up to it and stopping and then starting again on the other side, like it was in fact tightly in a hole that had been drilled through the concrete, but without any chipped edges or any other evidence of drilling. The screw was tight against the concrete everywhere, too, which would be hard to achieve by drilling because the threads of the screw would have chewed up material, leaving gaps in the area between the threads, unless it really did just screw right into it instead of drilling through. However it was put there, it seemed to be permanent.

I edged on past it and went down into the increasing darkness. The path narrowed some as it went down, but there wasn't a great deal of distance to go, perhaps a hundred feet or so. I reached the bottom and the path turned to the right, but there was a door at the left, maybe two or more of them. I went through one into a small concrete room, illuminated with a pale white light from somewhere above. A series of other small concrete rooms were to the right, and maybe some also to the left, and doubling or tripling up on each other, with doors that led through them and deeper into them, becoming almost maze-like. I could see it in my mind, and pictured what could happen, seeing me or someone else going into the rooms, cautiously going deeper into them, looking ahead attentively as each door was slowly opened and passed through.

After a brief pause, while I grimaced and took in the situation, I went forward out a door opposite to the one I had come in through, in a direction away from the road and toward the building.

I was outside, then, close to the building. A few people were around, but I didn't see anybody that could help me, no emergency people or security people, or any immediately noticeable way of summoning them. My grandmother hadn't said anything for a long time, not since we had been high up on the bridge walking along, and I wasn't sure if she was still actually conscious, though her eyes were open. I went toward the building, hoping to run into a security person or someone who could help.

At the corner of the building I started to go down a covered sidewalk, when I saw an opening in a slanted inset area for a restroom. I started to go in the restroom, hoping to find someone there who could help or some method of summoning help, and maybe a couch or something to set my grandmother on, as this was a fairly deluxe place, when I backed up and looked at the sign again. It was a dark, brass-like two-part plaque mounted high on the wall above the doorway, with "RESTROOM" on the bottom part and who it was for on the top, and I didn't see earlier whether it was a men's or women's and wanted to check. I hoped it was a men's. It turned out to be a women's. I glanced briefly around but didn't see a men's restroom and wasn't sure where it might be or how close it might be. I was tired and time seemed to be running out swiftly. I might have only minutes. I thought, oh well, this will have to do, and walked in.

I glanced briefly at the scene. The room had a line of stalls on both sides. The ones on the right were larger and there were more of them, and sloped outward in a curve at the bottom, I guess as an artistic effect. A few women were outside the stalls, but all were dressed, for which I was relieved. The restroom was very large, with a lot of open space. Not too far away was a sofa-like chair and I considered setting her in that, but I felt that I had to say something first, something about what was happening and why I was there.

I said loudly that I had a problem here, that I needed some help, and the women started coming forward, some coming out of the stalls. I found that I had what looked like a large padded kitchen chair by me to the left and slightly ahead. One or two of the women were pushing at it, moving it a little closer. I set my grandmother down in it. My arms were on the verge of giving out. I was saying, or maybe it was someone else saying it, to call somebody. Some women were talking into cell phones and I think one of them pulled something high on the wall to the right. The place became increasingly crowded with people, some of them already in the restroom and some coming in from the outside. Some men were also included in the group now.

Then Rick Bauer, a doctor from the TV soap opera Guiding Light, came in, and was checking my grandmother with his stethoscope, and talking. He was saying that she was going to be alright, that they needed to get some oxygen in here for her and she would be alright, though I was under the impression that he was still going to take her to the hospital. Some short men, apparently Latinos, came in with a white two-tiered cart full of what were apparently medical supplies, though I wasn't sure if they had any oxygen with them. It looked like it was still going to have to be called for, and Rick was already talking into his cell phone.

Wordzzle 70 - Sunflower fields

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 fourteenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

Florida,
spit,
child bride,
operatic,
busy,
holding pattern,
sunflowers,
ginger jars,
office,
superintendent

The sunflowers swayed in the wind. Bees flew in busy holding patterns around them. Old ginger jars and empty Florida orange juice cartons lay on the ground, scattered among the grass and the sunflower stalks. Somewhere a woman in a high operatic voice was singing a country song, something about being a child bride.

Beyond the sunflowers, a ramshackle wooden house sat, badly in need of paint. A boy riding by on a bike threw a newspaper, which bounced off the house and landed among the sunflowers.

An old man came out and picked up the newspaper and looked at the headlines, then leaned over and tried to spit in one of the ginger jars, but accidentally hit a bee instead. The bee fell to the ground and lay still. The old man leaned over further, peering at it with one eye. Then the other bees attacked him, swarming around him and stinging him, and he was waving the newspaper at them and dancing and yelling and acting very agitated. He ran back and forth and around the yard and finally ran back inside, slamming the door behind him, shutting the bees in with him. Through the window he could still be seen, dancing around and waving the newspaper and shouting.

In an office somewhere a superintendent looked at his large screen TV and shook his head. "I'll never understand these music videos," he said, sighing. "But if you think this will help sell the song, then go ahead"


Mini Challenge:

music to my ears,
plot,
powerful,
braggart,
super model

"I beat them all," said the braggart. "Over and over again. Their cries of frustration were music to my ears. Super models flocked around me, and I enjoyed their attentions, while remaining aware that they did that with anyone who was powerful, and it was not about me personally." He paused, looking thoughtful. "Those were the days, and it seemed like they would never end. They did, though, and faster than expected. I underestimated my enemies, and they gathered together and plotted against me. It's all gone now, everything. All I have is memories." He laid his head in his arms and began to sob uncontrollably.

"Billy," his mother said. "So your team lost one game. It's not the end of the world."


Mega challenge:

Florida,
spit,
child bride,
operatic,
busy,
holding pattern,
sunflowers,
ginger jars,
office,
superintendent

music to my ears,
plot,
powerful,
braggart,
super model

The superintendent opened his office door and was met by sunflowers. A wall of them blocked his path, a wall that extended into a field of them. He leaned back and looked at the name on the door again, just to be sure. It was his name alright. He turned back to the sunflowers and stared at them, then started to slowly push his way through. What happened to his desk and his computer? What happened to his file cabinets? For that matter, what happened to the walls and floor? And wasn't his office on the third story?

Suddenly overcome by a sense of dread, he turned to go back, but found the office building gone. In its place stood an old farmhouse. He stared at it open-mouthed. Then, moving in a daze, he slowly went toward it, and slowly put he hand out to the wall, unbelievingly, almost afraid to touch it.

"Watch where you're going," said one of the sunflowers. "You're about to step on her."

He paused, his head turned slightly to the side. A sunflower talked? Somehow that didn't seem normal. Then he slowly looked down. The skinny lower legs of a woman were sticking out from under the building. He jumped back.

"I'd take her shoes," said the sunflower. "That's what I'd do."

"Oh I couldn't. That would be robbing a dead person. What would I do with them anyway?"

"Wear them, of course."

"They're women's shoes and they're too small anyway."

"It doesn't matter. They stretch to fit anyone. You're going to need them later, trust me. Better get busy, you haven't got very long."

He gingerly reached down and started to take them off. They seemed to be made of orange peels, though remarkably tough ones. He turned one over and looked at the sole. It had Florida stamped on it. "What are these, anyway?"

"They're the orangy slippers, of course. Now you'd really better hurry up."

Getting both slippers off, he started to straighten up and back away from the body, when it suddenly said, "I saw that."

"Pay no attention," said the sunflower. "That's just residual magic. A house fell on her. You don't really think she's still alive, do you?"

He stared at the body, uncertain. "If she's really alive I can't just leave her like that."

"Well, go ahead and try to pull her out if you must, though it's not going to do much good with the house on top of her like that. I wouldn't bother, myself. I'm sure you're going to regret it."

He reached down and carefully took hold of her ankles and began to pull back on them. Nothing happened. He pulled harder, then harder, putting his whole back into it. Still nothing happened. Suddenly the feet and legs curled up, going around his hands like a snake. He screeched and let go, falling back and sitting on the ground. The legs and feet continued to curl up, and disappeared under the house.

"Yep, that's a sure sign of death. At least around here."

The man stared at the place the legs had disappeared into, a strained look on his face. Then he buried his face in his hands, then suddenly jerked them away from his face as he remembered what they had been touching. "How do I get back?" he said in a small tense voice.

"Well, you could go and see the powerful and operatic Wizard of Awes. He's supposed to be able to do a lot of things."

"Operatic?"

"Well, not technically operatic, but he does go in for a lot of special effects. He's a bit of a braggart, but don't worry. He seldom actually smites anyone."

He considered this for a while. Finally he said, "How do I get there?"

"You see that glittery line over there, a couple of hundred feet to your right, partly hidden by the sunflowers? That's the road that leads to Awes."

"Why is it glittery?"

"Because it's made with brick that have pieces of broken ginger jars sticking out of them. It's the Ginger Brick Road."

"They expect people to walk on that?"

"Sure, people who want to get to Awes, and who have good sturdy shoes. It keeps out the riffraff. At least the shoeless riffraff."

"Why don't they just walk through the sunflowers beside it?"

There was a long pause, while the sunflower seemed to stare at him through invisible eyes. Finally it said, in a somewhat strangled voice, "Because not everyone here is an uncouth as you are."

The man looked at the glittery line of road that led off to the city of Awes. This was all starting to seem a little too familiar.

"Look, why don't I skip all this and just put the shoes on and click the heels together while saying there's no place like home."

There was another long pause, and he could again feel the sunflower's unseen eyes upon him. "I guess you could," it said slowly, "but why would you?"

"To get home, of course."

"Why, um, do you think it would get you home?" it said slowly and carefully, like it was dealing with a crazy man.

"Because that's how it's done."

"It is? Well, if you, er, say so, though I've never heard of such a thing. I really wouldn't count on it."

"If the shoes aren't for that, then what are they for?"

"For walking on the road, of course. They're magic, and the road can't hurt them."

He looked out toward the road again, a somewhat stricken look on his face. "Isn't there anyway we could get the Wizard to come here?"

"It's never been done, but I have this emergency signal watch that was left here by a young red-haired guy. You might try that." A leaf held the watch out to him and he took it. He stood there fiddling with it awhile, then it abruptly starting emitting a zee-zee-zee sound. There was a flash and a man in late middle age appeared before him, holding the hand of a child. They were both dressed entirely in yellow.

"Well, what is it?" the Wizard said. "We were just about to watch the parade."

"There's always a parade," the little girl said. "At least this is something different."

"Who's this, your daughter?"

"Why, no, this is my lovely wife..."

"You have a child bride?"

"She's not a child, she's older than you are. She's just really, really, short." He winced as she bent down and viciously bit his knee.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that! It must be nice to be short! Much better than being tall!"

The woman straightened, smiling and showing somewhat ragged looking teeth, with some missing.

"What happened to her teeth?"

"I'm afraid it's a rather common affliction in the Lemonade City of Awes," he said. "Particularly for those who don't brush their teeth religiously." The woman opened her mouth and started to turn toward his knee again. "Not that there's anything wrong with it! You are lovely anyway! Even more lovely because of it! I wish my teeth were like that!"

"Look, I'm trapped here. I don't have time for all this. I need to get back to the office."

"Well, why didn't you say so. Here, take these magic beans. Put them in your mouth and cover them with spit, then plant them and step back."

The man took them and stared at them doubtfully. "What happens then?"

"No one knows. We were hoping to find out."

The man looked up, desperation on his face. "What is this, some kind of plot? I've got to get back!"

The Wizard stared at him, his head tilted back a bit, a slight look of fear in his eyes. "Well, you could put a magic bean in each ear, then tilt your body forward with your arms sticking straight out to the sides, and go round and round the farmhouse, like a winged monkey in a holding pattern, while saying over and over 'I gave at the office.'"

The man stared coldly at him, his eyes narrowed, not saying anything.

"Really. That's how it's done." The Wizard looked uncomfortable. "Really."

"Why am I saying I gave at the office? That's something a person at home would say."

"I don't know. That's just how it is. Really."

The man's eyes lowered, and a feeling of resignation crept over him. He looked at the beans in his hand. Well, I've got nothing to lose but more of my dignity, he thought. "I'm really going to be back?"

"Really."

"That's music to my ears," the sunflower murmured. "I've never seen a crazier person."

The man started to put the beans in his ears.

"Er, could you turn the watch off before you go?" the Wizard said. "It's most annoying."

The man stared at the watch he was holding. He had forgotten it was still sending out the signal. He fiddled with it, but it wouldn't turn off.

"If you can't turn it off, at least take it with you," the Wizard said.

"Or you could stay here," the woman said, grinning broken-toothed at him. "I have a twin sister who's still single. She's almost as pretty as I am. We used to be super models."

"A twin sister? Twin super models? A pretty twin... marry..." He realized he was babbling. "Sorry, I'm, um, already married."

"Not here you aren't. Don't worry, your wife back there will never know."

He stared at her, his eyes big. "I've really got to get back."

He put the beans in his ears and, still holding the watch, stuck his arms out to the sides and leaned forward and went round and round the farmhouse, saying I gave at the office, I gave at the office. Suddenly, he was falling into darkness, falling, falling....

The Wizard walked over and picked up the beans and the watch. He held the watch in his hands, looking at it intently, and fiddled with it for a while. "I sure wish there was some way we could turn this off," he sighed.

The man landed on his side on the carpeted floor of a darkened room. The zee-zee sound was still going on. He desperately clawed his way up the dresser and turned off the alarm. "I've got to get to the office!" he murmured. "I'm late."

"Get back in bed, you idiot," his wife said. "It's Saturday! And by the way, you were talking in your sleep. What's this about marrying pretty twin super models?"

The shoe salesman's cigarette

We moved away from a small town in Missouri in the early summer of 1960, heading for other states and eventually settling on Arizona. We went back almost every year for a visit, usually staying for around a month in August, while my father went back to Arizona to work. We also moved back there for a while in late 1965, leaving again tn the summer of 1966. On one of these times, probably in 1961-63, when I would have been around 8 to 10 years old, my mother took me into a shoe store to buy me some new shoes.

The shoe salesman was a young man who smoked, as was common in those days, and he smoked a cigarette while waiting on us. He talked to my mother quite a bit, too, mostly about shoes, I think, what shoes he had and what might be available, even about what other stores in other towns might have, and also perhaps some about the town and some of the people there. My mother kept asking him questions, about the shoes and other things. I'm not sure now about everything that was talked about, and I don't think I paid a lot of attention at the time.

Finally, after what seemed like a long time, we had decided on what shoes to by and went to the cash register to pay for them. The cash register was at the end of a long glass display case that ran along the right side of the room, at a place where the display case turned and faced the front. The cash register was on the left side of the short section of display case there. The shoe salesman walked up on the inside side of the display case, and we walked around the outside.

As he came up to the cash register, he put his cigarette down in an ashtray on the counter, about in the middle of the short section of counter there. As he rang up the sale, he continued to talk to my mother, and she continued to ask him questions.

I started blowing on the cigarette, trying to see if I could put it out, more out of boredom than anything else. Blowing on it caused it to briefly glow much brighter, and burn more of the cigarette, but then it would go back to normal again. I kept blowing on it, and it gradually got dimmer. It was taking a long time, though. The shoe salesman glanced at me once or twice, but usually looked toward my mother, who he kept talking to. I think at least once he picked up the cigarette and inhaled on it briefly, then put it back down. I kept blowing on it, though, when it was in the ashtray. and eventually, finally, I put it out. My mother and the shoe salesman continued to talk for a little while, and then my mother and I left.

After we got out of the store, my mother scolded me, leaning toward me and saying in a low voice, "I'm so embarrassed! You blew out that nice man's cigarette! And after he was so nice to us!"

Dream - Low purple clouds and mutant creatures

Long ago, perhaps in the mid to late 1970s, I had a dream of very low purple clouds, perhaps low enough to touch, with heavy black outlines. The sky was covered with them, but light still came through somehow, either through them or through breaks in them. The clouds seemed unnatural. It was very ominous and worrisome.

Sometimes I went out and looked at them, and sometimes I looked at them from inside, through the windows of my house. My mother was there, and sometimes I talked to her about them while I looked out the window. Other things also went on in the dream, though I don't remember what now, but I kept worrying about the clouds and going to check on them.

Later on I walked down a sidewalk, a little tensely, heading east, still worrying about the clouds. It seemed to be somewhere around the middle of the day, perhaps the middle of the afternoon. The clouds were a little higher when I started out, and got much higher for much of the time, becoming a purplish gray overcast.

I'm not sure what destination I had in mind, or if I really had one. A few possibilities did go through my mind, places I might go or should go, but I wasn't really heading for them, just going in their general direction.

One of the things I should do was see my father, who was at work several miles away to the southeast. In some versions of the scene I think I did contact him or even go to him, but in other versions I didn't. He was expected to come home later that day, but I felt it was important to contact him first, to warn him about the clouds. I did come to feel that he knew about the situation, that he had been told somehow by someone, but I still worried. I also came to see in my mind, several times, him driving home, sometimes not far away now, with someone with him, perhaps my mother or perhaps someone else. It was later in the afternoon, though, when that happened, almost like I was temporarily ahead in time. It's possible, too, that the part about my father was actually part of a different dream, one that I had a decade or two later, but it's hard to know for sure now.

I continued to walk along the sidewalk, heading east. The clouds were lower now, though still high, and it was no later than the middle of the afternoon.

Strange, mutant creatures began to follow me, generally from a distance. Sometimes I walked by some of them, too, and sometimes I saw some a hundred feet or so away off to the side.

The earlier ones tended to be more human in appearance, though rather brutish, like ogres or even cavemen. The very first ones were probably bald, though with a slight stubble of hair on their heads and faces. A little later some of them had mops of dark hair, and sometimes hair like what might be produced by putting a bowl over their heads and cutting off everything under it. As time went on, stranger and stranger ones showed up.

There were not large numbers of them, and they tended to be in ones or twos or threes. The numbers increased over time, and I started to see large groups of them, standing in broad lines facing toward me. They generally had frowns on their faces and sometimes slight smiles. They seemed to have an interest in me, though a mild and somewhat confused one, like they weren't sure yet what to do. I felt that they were directed by someone, though, someone far away. Someone who had sent them after me, but who had not yet told them what to do when they found me.

As I walked, I came increasingly into a more developed area, part of a town. After a while, I was walking along a line of extremely strange and warped looking creatures. They seemed to radiate a kind of vague, amused malevolence. The clouds were much lower now, not far overhead.

I eventually came to a low, dark building, perhaps a restaurant, facing me on a cross street. I went in. Looking outside, I saw lots of the bizarre creatures gathering together on the sidewalk, forming a long line that was sometimes two or three creatures deep. They were not overly tall, tending to be mostly somewhere in the three to five foot area, though an occasional one was taller. Some of them had big shoulders and short necks, sometimes no necks at all. Some of them had very long arms, frequently with short legs. Many of them had very wide mouths, cartoonishly wide. They murmured among themselves, making strange growly sounds. Some of them were looking toward the building, and some were even looking vaguely in my direction, though generally in an unfocused way. They milled around out there, waiting, growing in numbers. It was scary.

Dream - Low purple clouds and disaster

Long ago, perhaps in the mid 1980s, I had a dream of very low purple clouds, low enough at times to touch. There were flashes and tornados in the clouds, I think even a disastrously large tornado or two. I think maybe a UFO or two as well. Most of the time I watched the clouds from the ground, but I think I also flew above them at times. The clouds were very threatening and seemed like a psychic phenomenon of some kind, and could somehow bring about or carry with them something that could bring about the end of the world.

Dream - My grandmother is younger and admires herself in the mirror

In mid December 2005, I had a dream in which my grandmother, looking much younger, came to visit and admired herself in the mirror, then light bulbs started burning out.

In the dream, my grandmother, who died in late 1984, suddenly arrived at my house without explanation. She looked decades younger, and stood straight and had mostly dark hair. My mother insisted that my grandmother, her mother, would leave by tomorrow.

At some point, my grandmother went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, which is very large and very wide, and admired herself. She now had dark hair with red tints. The hair became much longer, perhaps a couple of feet long, and she took the end of it and held it with one hand, admiring it in the mirror and smiling. I stood nearby, in the hallway I think, watching. I think my mother was sometimes to my right, and sometimes in the kitchen or living room.

All of a sudden light bulbs started burning out, lots of them, and it was getting dark inside. It was late in the day and would probably get dark outside soon. I searched for more bulbs in a long, wide shelf in the kitchen cupboard, but all I found was plastic pipe fittings and joints and decorative bulbs and fixtures.

Dream - I was Art Bell, and flying

On May 28, 2007, I dreamed I was Art Bell, a late-night radio talk show host who is now largely retired but occasionally guest-hosts, and I was flying and eventually chased by a small dinosaur.

In the dream, I was Art Bell, in the dark in the back yard of what was apparently my grandmother's house in Arizona. I was out near the alley behind a long desk that roughly faced toward the house but was at an angle to it. Some other people were there, but they went back inside the house. My chair started spinning around rapidly, and then started sailing rapidly backward through the air. I didn't mind either situation, as I thought that either one might help to have an out-of-body experience.

Soon after, it was daylight, though not very bright, and I was going over and among some brick or brownstone buildings. I went through a wall, but it was difficult and slowed me down considerably and was not very pleasant. A little later, I went up through the ceiling of another building and this was a little easier, though the part I went through was thinner and less massive a structure than the wall had been.

After a while, I was at what was apparently a place like the north end of an elementary school I used to attend, and going around the end of the building toward the playground. I was also watching separately from the air from a little distance away. The area was apparently some kind of government or military testing area, and I was worried that the Art Bell figure didn't know that and might be discovered. I watched and waited to see what might happen.

A tall black person in some kind of military uniform came and was looking at the door, which faced the street, that the Art Bell figure had just come from. The military figure looked similar to some movie or TV star, but I can't remember who. The military had some kind of secret program that involved the paranormal, and I was afraid that they might be able to detect the Art Bell figure even though he was supposedly invisible due to just being in an astral body at the time. The military figure was looking suspiciously at the door and he had some device that he was moving to different parts of the door and frame.

Finally he came around the building to the playground/yard area, and Art Bell was in the air perhaps 10 feet high and maybe 10-15 feet away. The military figure didn't seem able to see Art Bell, but seemed to feel that there was something there somewhere and he had some device that he was looking at. A dog was also now with him that seemed to be interested in something that was approximately where Art Bell was.

Art Bell was now holding what seemed to be a camera with a long leather strap, though later the strap turned, at times, to a much longer string. He attempted to use the strap/string to hook the device the man was holding, but eventually got the dog with it instead. He swung the dog on the string in long arcs back and forth while the man stood there, looking interested but confused, as he apparently just saw the dog going back and forth in the air, without seeing Art Bell or even the string.

Art Bell eventually let the dog go and started trying to get away. He went some north but mostly west, flying high over areas of low, somewhat dry-looking grass or bare ground and large, low buildings with yards that may have sometimes been paved. Low walls and small roads ran through the area, separating things, and the walls frequently connected to and surrounded the buildings. After a while the buildings ended and a large area of grass followed, which ended abruptly in a stretch of bare ground. Shortly afterward, he came to a very tall block wall that he barely made it to the top of, as he was having difficulty flying high at that point. He rested briefly at the wall and then went over it.

On the other side was a desert area with a series of other walls forming long pens containing genetic experiments with animals, including the restoration of long extinct animals, including dinosaurs, though frequently with modifications. I, as Art Bell, soared high above them. They were generally large and vicious animals, frequently on two legs or able to stand on two legs. They looked at me and some of them leaped high, several times their height, to try and bite me. One animal, standing on two legs, had a head that was very broad but flattened top-to-bottom and front-to-back, and seemed to be mostly a broad empty mouth with some somewhat widely spaced sharp teeth well back in it. It leaped so high that I felt its hot breath on me, around my stomach slightly below the belt. It was in a very localized area, though, not like one would expect from something that was huge. I came to realize that the animals were in fact very small, generally around a foot and a half high, and I was not nearly as high above the ground as I thought.

Eventually I came to a Tyrannosaurus rex, or something like one. It was significantly taller and much more massive than the others, perhaps somewhere around three or four feet high, though the size seemed to vary a bit with time. The general shape of it was right, but it seemed to be composed of various sections of different, usually very bright colors, and had a rubber/plastic look. Some areas were flesh colored, including its arms, which were human-like and had somewhat oversized human-like hands. I think some of the other colors were blue-purple and red. It leaped at me, and managed to come down outside its fence and started trying to track me. I was flying lower by then and was having trouble getting much altitude.

I came to some structure that was basically a miniature rectangular metal building similar to the Eiffel Tower in construction. I was trying to do something with the string/strap and somehow got it entangled with some fence or miniature telephone wires and it became, with the wires, wrapped several times, at different heights, around the building. The T. rex caught up with me and I managed to pull it part way up the building with the string, but it was too entangled with the string and the wires, and pulling on the string eventually caused the string and wires to pull it tight against the building. Finally I abandoned it, apparently breaking the string and taking the camera with me.

I flew on and found an open area and landed. It was desert, sand scattered with various cacti and other desert plants. As I went along, walking, the desert area gradually became part of a very large room in a building. There were various small appliances and other things, including large tables with chairs. I saw a small refrigerator/freezer with an old-fashioned look. It was perhaps three or four feet high and the doors, one on top for a small freezer and another, larger door below it for the refrigerator section, had a somewhat rounded appearance. I opened both of the refrigerator doors, in an attempt to confuse the T. rex when it arrived. I did after a while see it looking around the open doors with a somewhat malicious, interested, hungry look. It still seemed to be looking in my general direction, though, and not in the refrigerator.

Some people started to fill the room and sit at the tables. They were generally very young people, sometimes even grade-school age. I had the feeling that they were the product of genetic experiments trying to make very smart, very psychic children. They were looking around and seemed to be aware that I was there, or that someone was there, even if they couldn't quite see me, though some may have been able to. One of them asked who the guest was today, like this was something normal, like they normally got a different invisible guest every day.

I woke up shortly after that. I was sleeping sitting up in front of the computer, listening to Art Bell on the radio. The news had come on at 3:00 AM, between segments of the replay of the show. I apparently fell asleep around 15 or 20 minutes till 3:00, perhaps even 25 till. It was very early Monday morning.

Wordzzle 69 - The spill

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 thirteenth time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

Chorus line,
clam chowder,
apples,
jack-in-the-box,
puddles,
Iran,
quarry,
housekeeping,
speed,
letter

The clam chowder, imported from Iran, lay in puddles on the floor. The jack-in-the-box, bobbing for apples, paused and looked at it, then went back to bobbing. The chorus line of small mechanical dolls continued their practice session, pointedly ignoring what had happened. A small mechanical maid rolled up and looked at the mess. She clucked at it and shook her head, then began cleaning it up with great speed.

"I work and I work and my housekeeping is never done," she said. "In fact, it is getting sabotaged. I will track down who did this, and when I find my quarry, which I'm sure will be the mechanical butler, I will give him a good talking to. Then I will report him to the Master, in a detailed, emotional letter of great length. And it will be an actual letter, a beautiful handwritten one. No one here answers my emails."


Mini Challenge:

motorcycle,
grandiose,
summer,
flying off the handle,
blue jays

It was summer, and the motorcycle went along in grandiose fashion, with black paint and red and yellow flames and white skulls on it, and blue jays perched on the handle. The exhaust was roaring and rumbling, and the rider went along with a big satisfied smile on his face, his hair and beard blowing in the wind. As he went by a pretty girl, he turned his head and winked, then hit a pothole which sent him tumbling into the bushes and the blue jays flying off the handle.

Hovering in the air, the blue jays looked at the sad situation. "I'll never understand his taste in women," one of them finally said. "She didn't even have any feathers."


Mega challenge:

Chorus line,
clam chowder,
apples,
jack-in-the-box,
puddles,
Iran,
quarry,
housekeeping,
speed,
letter

motorcycle,
grandiose,
summer,
flying off the handle,
blue jays

The jack-in-the-box was missing, and no one knew where he was. He had been gone since the beginning of summer, and many grandiose theories circulated. Some thought he had been caught stealing apples, and had to go on the lam. Some thought his head had popped out of the box much faster than the speed limit, and he was now in jail. Some said it had something to do with the clam chowder, which was also missing. Others insisted he was in Iran as a spy, doing who knows what. One of the mechanical chorus line insisted that he was in a rock quarry carving statues with speedy impacts of his head, but that was so far-fetched not even the rest of the chorus line believed it.

The motorcycle owner heard the murmuring, he could hardly avoid it, but was more concerned about what to do about the housekeeping, since the mechanical maid had quit. Those things were expensive, and he didn't know they could just walk off like that. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to her letter. He was trying to save up some money now, too, to repaint the motorcycle. Maybe he could find a used maid somewhere. He had tried to get the mechanical butler to do all the housekeeping, but it had started flying off the handle, going on and on about something or other. He was never able to make much sense of it and finally gave up.

Brooding, he picked up one of the apples and began to eat it. He had found them a few days ago in a bucket of water. He had no idea why someone would do that. He had had to take them all out and then empty the bucket. There always seemed to be something. He needed to get away from this, he couldn't think anymore about things right now. He finished the apple and started to throw the core on the floor, then hesitated, and finally tossed it in the trash instead. He then went out to the garage.

He looked sadly at his motorcycle, covered with scratches and dents. At least it still ran. The blue jays were suspicious of it, though, since the accident.

He picked up his helmet and looked at it, wondering if he should wear it. He certainly could have used it last time. He finally began to put it on, but then found he couldn't get his head in it. There was something already inside.

Frowning, he turned it over. There was some kind of box in it. Somebody had stuck a box in his helmet. He stared at it for a moment, baffled. He put his fingers in beside it, then, and tried to pull it out, but it was in really tight and he could only get his fingers in a little ways. Shifting position, he moved the helmet under one arm and started slowly working the box back and forth slightly, slowly moving it out. Suddenly it came loose and flipped over and the head of the jack-in-the-box shot toward him. "B-BLAAAHHH!" the motorcycle owner screamed, stumbling back and falling into some oil puddles.

"Boy, that mechanical maid sure does hold a grudge," said the jack-in-the-box. "I'll never understand how she found out it was me."

The One Lovely Blog Award

On Tuesday, June 23, 2009, I was given the One Lovely Blog Award from Akelamalu on her blog Everything And Nothing.



This is the first blog award I have received, and I really appreciate it. Thank you, Akelamalu!

The rules for the award, as taken from Akelamalu's blog, are:

1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.
2. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you have newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

I have given a link to her blog in the first sentence of this post, but here is a link to the specific post that gave the award. It also has the names and links of the people she gave the award to and the person she got it from, as well as a set for another award she received. You may want to check out the blogs she linked to in the post.

Everything And Nothing: Lovely Blog.....

As for my own set of 15 blogs, I'm afraid I am not going to find many that haven't already received the award, as I don't actually visit a large number of blogs. Most of the ones lately have been ones who participated in the Wordzzle story writing exercises, and I think most of them either have already received the award or will soon receive it from other people. I'll keep it in mind, but I'll have to put it off until a possible future date.

The New Product

This is a story that I did for a message board, on a thread normally concerned with comically constructing new words and definitions. They were at that time doing exercises where someone gave a short list of words and the others each wrote a story containing those words. Then someone else would supply a list of words and the process would start all over again.

The story is changed slightly here in that it is broken up into three paragraphs instead of being contained in just one.

This is another of my stories from my post number 1000 for that message board. The other stories were separate from this one, with their own lists of words. The list of words for this story: firm, salability, highroad, echo, vanish.

This story is dated 9:23 PM, December 1, 2006, Arizona time (MST).


THE NEW PRODUCT

He had tried to take the highroad, convinced in the salability of his product. His commitment to it was firm.

All he heard, though, was the sound of his own voice, and the echo of it around him, fading slowly in the distance. And thus, hearing no opposition (or, perhaps, refusing to hear it), he remained convinced that he was on the right track.

Alas, his new stain remover removed the cloth as well, and his dreams, like the stains, would soon vanish.

Dream - The man whose head opened on a hinge and whose brain fell out

Long ago, probably around 1962-64, I had a dream about a man whose head opened on a hinge and whose brain fell out. I would have been around 9 to 11 years old. It could have been slightly earlier, but not much.

In the dream, there was a house with large and numerous windows. It was night and the house was lit up inside and filled with people. I think a party of some kind might have been going on. I believe I was originally inside the house, but then my consciousness or viewpoint moved outside and I saw someone looking in.

He was a slim young man with dark hair, and was perhaps ten feet from the windows at the longer side of the room, cautiously approaching them, leaning forward slightly, looking in. After a while, he walked around the corner of the house and looked in from that side, just a few feet from the windows now. He didn't seem to be dangerous, just curious about what was happening and enjoying watching it. There was a peacefulness about it, mixed with alertness, and he seemed happy.

The top of his head opened up on a hinge from the back, then, exposing his brain. Then his brain came out of his head. In some versions of the scene, which repeated itself for a while, it lifted up some and then fell out, and in other versions it sometimes hung in the air above and behind him a little, connected to the inside of his head by a bent plastic-looking gray cord.

He kept looking in the windows, his mouth open in a smile and his teeth hidden behind his lips. He seemed not to be greatly disturbed by what had happened, though it did have some effect. It bothered me, though, and I worried about it.

In real life around that time, there was some trouble with someone looking in people's windows at night, and that probably influenced the dream.