My head under me, trapped in darkness

The following incident probably happened in 1966. I was in the seventh grade, during a time when we had moved back to Missouri for less than a year.

I was tall for my age, overweight and non-athletic. I had watched smaller, thinner kids do backward rolling somersaults. They had rolled backward directly over their heads, quickly and without any problems. I wanted to be able to do it, but I wanted to try it at home, where they couldn't see my attempts.

So, one night at home I decided to try it. My mother kept telling me not to do it, that I was too heavy. I insisted on trying, though. I tried over and over, but the best I could do was to roll backwards over one shoulder. I couldn't seem to roll directly over my head. It was too uncomfortable to go directly over my head, and I kept going to one side instead.

I finally made a more determined attempt at it, to do it despite the discomfort. And I managed to do it. The results, however, were not what I had anticipated.

I was in darkness, and my chin was pressed firmly against my chest. My head felt like it was folded face-first underneath my chest, with the back of my neck severely stretched. It was a very uncomfortable position, and I couldn't seem to breathe. I felt that the front of my neck was so severely bent that it was blocking the airflow. I couldn't move, though, and had no awareness of my body much beyond my head and neck.

Perhaps six feet away, I heard my mother and my younger brother talking, but they seemed unaware of what had happened to me. I kept hoping that one of them would notice what had happened, and straighten my body up so that I could breathe again. Nobody came and helped, though, and they kept on talking. I was afraid that I might die there while they continued talking, unaware.

It seemed like such a tragic situation, for someone to die when it could easily have been prevented by some people nearby, if they had only turned to look, if they had only known. How terrible they would feel when they finally realized that something was wrong. I felt sad for them, thinking of how they would feel and of how it would bother them all the rest of their lives.

It seemed terribly tragic that such a thing should happen, that someone should die in this way. That it didn't have to happen.


Suddenly, I raised my head and got up off the floor. Everything was normal again.

I didn't try any more somersaults, though. I was saddened that other people could do it and I could not, but I didn't want to risk repeating what had happened. It wasn't worth dying over, or having a broken neck.

It was definitely one of those times when I should have listened to my mother.

Dream - Getting strange powers, running from people as a woman

On Thursday, May 15, 2008, I dreamed of me, or someone else, getting strange powers from something, some experiment or radiation or potion. It seems it was accidental in some way. The government was involved somehow. I could fade into walls and go out the other side, and was in a small store like a convenience mart.

Then it switched to someone else also getting the powers, a woman. She was sent to the store and something happened, her powers started manifesting and she ran into trouble, becoming dizzy and was falling into shelves. Someone was sympathetic, maybe the manager. The police were going to be called, though.

A couple of people went into a small side extension at the front and she followed, afraid they were going to do something. One of them had gotten a rifle or shotgun, she fought back and I think injured or killed him. She tried initially to fade into/melt into one of the walls, to try to escape, but it was a slow process. She went instead then to the back where there was a small recessed room with a man behind a desk or table, and behind him and raised up somewhat was a window with large Venetian blinds. The glass was very thick and heavy duty, and the man was some kind of clerk/guard for large amounts of money that were transferred through the window at certain times to an armored truck. I/she went to the window and started melting through the glass. It was slow but faster than the wall.

On the other side it was dark and a man was laying on his back on a raised platform, sleeping. He was holding a rifle. I was afraid he would be disturbed and wasn't sure how deeply he was sleeping or if he was actually sleeping. He did stir somewhat. I, as the woman, went to him and took the rifle barrel in both hands and carefully bent it back upon itself and then bent the end back to the original direction, pressing the sections close together. He did seem to be waking up more, seemingly aware that something was going on, but he wouldn't be able to fire at me. I left, flying away, and heard him behind me alerting people on a handheld radio.

I went into some place that was a hospital, some kind of mental ward. There were quite a few people in the halls, mental patients. They seemed friendly and tied to hide me. The people after me got to the hospital and I was going quickly down the hallway among the people. I got to a large room that had rows and aisles of big shelves, used for storage. Someone came in after me with a gun. I think that someone else intervened, and some kind of brief struggle occurred. The person after me was shot and killed, and there was a person who was an upper level supervisor for him who intervened on my behalf, who looked like the leader on the old Mission Impossible TV show. I looked for him then but he was gone.

I was talking to someone who came in, trying to find him or evidence that he had been there to show the person. I saw what looked like an irregular slightly oval scrap of paper with what appeared to be his picture on one side, like an ID badge, but closer examination showed that it was slightly curved, and made of something like thin soft light gray cardboard, almost like a scrap of an old fruit peel, like an orange or avocado. I thought then it was like some kind of prize or coupon that had to be redeemed. I found a thin tabloid newspaper with want ads and a hole in the page and thought for a minute that it might have come from there, but then I wasn't so sure. I had to leave, then. They were going to give me safe escort out.

I was on some kind of trolley-like car on a cable carrying other people. It was still dark. We were heading toward a bridge or overpass crossing the road. We had passed similar things on the way. I was informed by someone then, someone managed to get to me, perhaps it was myself as Stephen, and warned me that it was some kind of a trick, that some of the people weren't going along with the rescue and were planning to ambush me. I got up on top of the car. I seemed to be somewhat birdlike now with at least some feathers. I saw people situated at various points, in dark clothes with high powered rifles, dark figures and weapons shining in the moonlight.

I flew away, trying to take some cover with an overpass. They saw me and were firing. I think I was hit once, maybe in the leg. I flew around and to a small arched concrete section and started shaking it, rocking it back and forth a little and getting the attached roadways shaking, hoping to create a distraction. I saw the person who was shot and killed in the storage area earlier, but here he was, still alive. Apparently he hadn't been killed after all. He was lying on his back a little ways away, bandaged and held down with chains, smiling evilly at me. They were still shooting at me. I shook the arched section more and more violently, finally detaching it entirely at the ends and rapidly moving it up and down several feet, like a seesaw, shaking the man and the overpass and everything in the area.

Dream - Traveling, carrying engines, and the building in the grasslands with the old woman and the folding luggage

Sunday, May 25, 2008, sometime after midnight, I had a dream about traveling, and walking and carrying engines, and near the end having some strange folding luggage demonstrated to me by some old women in an isolated building in a grasslands.

In the dream, I was traveling back and forth to Nevada. I stopped at various places along the way for food, etc. I was driving a little car. I think I switched cars at some point. The second car was also small, though they weren't exactly the same size, and one was definitely a little larger. One of them was a much darker color, also.

I think I met my father at some point, maybe around Las Vegas somewhere, maybe somewhere else.

At some point I was going back to Arizona, going east. I started walking rather than driving. I think I had left my father not long before. It was daylight. I had a very small car and was going along a small curved lane that left the road and then curved back to meet it a short distance later. Cars were parked at places along the lane and by the main road. There was some building nearby, perhaps a rest stop. I started carrying the car on my back. I was initially carrying the whole car on my back/shoulders, but then just the engine, an aluminum four cylinder. Then I decided I should try to carry two engines on my back and not just one. I was a little doubtful, myself, at the prospect. It proved much harder to carry two engines at once. Not only was the weight burdensome, the engines took up too much room and it was hard to keep them both in place.

I walked along a road in the dark through a vast grassland. The grass was pale and dead, about a foot or so high. Occasionally I ran into mountains or other obstacles. It was similar to a way I had taken in other dreams. I was going back to Arizona but I was initially going east a long distance before intending at some point to turn south.

Going east, at some point I went through or past a building where an old woman was, a building with a big room off to the side with long tables with equipment on them, a place I had been in other dreams.

Continuing east, at some point I came to a large shopping mall. I went through it and I think I was looking for some place to get some food at while I was there. I came to the end of the mall and an entrance that faced south. I was going to go out the entrance into the parking lot and then turned east again. I was concerned and feelingly somewhat guilty about the mall, that going through it had delayed me too much.

Then the dream seemed to replay itself a little bit, and at some point before the mall the CIS Manager at the place I used to work had joined me, a man with gray-white hair and beard. Someone was with him, but I'm not sure who. Perhaps it was the short person who worked on various things in the computer department. I think I had phoned the CIS Manager from the mall or from an earlier place I had stopped.

Now we were at the end of the mall and about to leave it, when I realized that I only had one engine on my back. I must have dropped the second one somewhere along the way. I had to go back and retrace my steps to try to find it.

I was kind of sick at heart at the prospect. It was going to delay things quite a bit, and the CIS Manager and the other person would have to wait while I did it. There didn't seem to be any way out of it, though. I assured them that I would hurry, but they seemed kind of surprised and disturbed at what was happening.

I left the engine I had been carrying there at the mall and went back the way I had come, moving fast now without the weight of the engine. I didn't know how far I would have to go, maybe all the way back to when I put the engines on my shoulders.

I traveled back past the pale dead grass shining in the darkness. At some point I tried calling people with some kind of handheld device, it seemed only partially a phone. I think I got it from the CIS Manager. I might have started calling before I even left the mall. It was hard to make good contact, and the time of contact seemed to be limited. Someone on the other side was asking how to contact the people I left behind, and I said that I didn't know, maybe by the phone booth I used at the mall. I gave them the number for it, or what I thought was the number. I think it was mostly composed of 2's. I had to repeat myself, it seemed that they weren't understanding me or somehow weren't getting what I was saying. I think I talked to them more than once, but part of the time they might have called me rather than me calling them.

I ran into my mother along the way, who came after me from Arizona in a car. She was much younger than she is now. We drove around in a town or city somewhere in Arizona for a while, but at some point we were going north on a two lane unmarked road away from the city, with mostly undeveloped land around. Some kid on a bicycle came in from the right and went more or less along or by the road. I was a little worried about him, that he might get in the way of the car, but when I got to where he was he had moved far off to the side. We got to a traffic signal (I think) at a road crossing ours. Our road might even have ended at that point, meeting the other road at a slight angle or at least widening at the intersection. We turned to go east. I didn't know how far back on my path we had gotten.

We got to a place I had passed on my journey earlier, a building with a large room to the right side of the smaller front one, a building that had an old woman that looked similar to the woman landlord who (along with her husband) I rented an apartment from in Fallon. There was also a second woman who might have been a little younger than the first. She had hair that was dark gray and the first woman had light gray hair.

I had a very simple digital camera, and the first woman was interested in it and wanted to see it. I finally held it out to her on a long thin chain. I was standing in the first room, in the doorway to the large one. They were in the large one, and the floor there was lower by a few feet. I banged the camera a little on some things as I held it out toward her, including directly banging the part that held the lens. I worried a little about the camera getting damaged a little, but at the same time it seemed to be pretty sturdy and it didn't get banged very hard. They seemed more impressed by the utter simplicity and lack of options on my camera than about anything else. Their cameras were very large and very complicated. They seemed to be looking for a button on my camera that made copies, but my camera had only the simplest of controls, just enough to take pictures.

While this was happening, they were also wanting to know how to move a neoprene rubber panel from a camera or camera case to another one. It didn't seem possible to me, but I didn't say anything.

Then, while I watched, a thing that consisted of carpeted panels with sewn edges with a strip over them and sewn down was set down on a very long table that ran by in front of the door. The second woman activated a handheld device and the panels folded up, making a boxlike structure that was apparently a piece of luggage of some kind. I said that would have been scary twenty years ago, and after a brief pause the first woman agreed.

I left then through the first room and then had to go back. I had forgotten to pick up the keys on a long thin chain that I had given them to look at. A little girl was on a table that ran along the wall. The table was on both sides of the door, with a gap for the doorway, and had various objects on it, a lot of them odd devices or machines. The little girl had apparently been hiding among them and had come out after I had gone. She was to the left of the doorway.

The first woman was where she was when I left, and was surprised to see me back again. If the second woman was around, she was probably somewhere to the right and didn't say anything. I don't remember noticing her and she might not have been there.

I got my keys back and then left again through the first room. I'm not sure I ever got the camera back or even remembered it, the keys seem to have replaced the camera.

Someone was also coming out with me, a few steps behind me and a little to my right, coming to the front room from the side somewhere. It was a woman who was much younger than the other women. I don't know who she was. I was somewhat worried at first, first I think about who it was and whether they might try to do something to me, and then when I saw who it was, whether she was scared of me or if I worried her in some way, and then I was worried that the people after me would get her in the process. I tried to warn her as we came out of the building and onto a small paved courtyard with a low wall acting as a planter. It was daylight now, and as we walked I put out my right arm back toward her, trying to wave her back and saying something to her as a warning.

I went to the street, and it had cars and vehicles parked on both sides now, leaving enough room for a car to pass between them. There was some delivery van-type vehicle, maybe more than one, and a person or two was walking around. I found something, some type of coin maybe, on the sidewalk I think, and was talking about it to someone. It was an old coin, very odd and apparently valuable, though it had more importance than just money. It was not overwhelmingly important, though.

I was moving on, looking I think for where the car was parked with my mother in it, but I don't think I found it and I think she might have left to go somewhere, maybe without the car. I don't think she had gone too terribly far, though it might have been over a mile. I was just starting to go into the street, looking for my car, with some concern about the people there, when the dream ended.

Wordzzle 83 - Exit, laughing

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 my entry number 27, for Wordzzle week 83.


Ten Word Challenge:

family,
cheese cake,
20 years ago,
refrigerator,
laugh and the world laughs with you,
bath brush,
zombies,
African violets,
butterflies,
holding hands

"Laugh and the world laughs with you, unless you're a zombie."

"What do they do then?"

"Generally scream and run away, or try to kill me or both."

"That sounds pretty bad."

"Yes. And it doesn't seem to matter what I do. One time I even asked a lady very nicely if I could borrow her bath brush. She screamed and fainted and slid under the water. I had to drag her out. Then when she woke up and saw that we were holding hands, she fainted again. I tried bringing her cheese cake and African violets to make amends. It didn't make any difference."

"Why cheese cake?"

"I knew she liked it and it reminds me of, um, brains. Being soft and squishy. And delicious. Not that I'd eat hers, you understand. Or anyone else's. Really."

"Hmph. How did you know she likes cheese cake?"

"I've, um, known her from before. Before I became... zombified"

"I see."

"It was 20 years ago, and she's not getting any younger. I felt I had to do something pretty soon. You don't age after you're a zombie, but you do, um, ripen a bit."

"Yes."

"Well, I guess I've said all I need to say. I just needed someone to talk to, to listen to me. Someone I could get some opinions from, you know, pick their brains for a while. That's a zombie joke. Sorry. I'm afraid I do have to do something to you before I leave, though."

"I have a family who depends on me and who loves me very much."

"Relax, Doc. I'm just going to put the gag back. Can't have you screaming or yelling for help after I'm gone. I'm sure you'll eventually work your way out of the duct tape. If not, well, the janitor will discover you sooner or later.

"I really can't spend any more time here. I've got her waiting out in the car. In the trunk. With lots of duct tape. She's still alive, of course. I couldn't bear to kill her.

"I have to finish gathering the ingredients for the zombie potion. I have some of the ingredients stored in her refrigerator already, behind things. Then I'll force her to drink it. It's a little bitter, but not too bad. You get some butterflies in your stomach, and then you drift away. Things seem kind of dreamlike for a while, maybe for years, but then they slowly sharpen up again. You're never the same as before, though, never the same.

"Well, I really must get going. Perhaps I'll stop back and let you meet her in a few years, after things have, um, settled down. Perhaps you'll even want to join us. No? Well, think about it. Eternal life and all that. Well, life of a sort. As long as an angry villager doesn't set you ablaze or blow you to pieces. I can wait till your children are grown, and then you and your wife can join us. Still no? Well, you'll have plenty of time to think about it. Don't wait too long, though. It's better being young, even if you're a zombie. I'll check back every few years, anyway.

"It's been a fun talk. Fun for me, at least. You look like something's eating you. Sorry. Another zombie joke. You know what they say, leave 'em laughing.

"You're not laughing now, but you will later. Trust me."


Mini Challenge:

monsters in the closet,
roughly,
bowling,
menu,
Pennsylvania

The monsters in the closet were getting restless. I knew I shouldn't have taken them bowling. Now they wanted to get out and do things all the time. They had a great time at the bowling alley, gnawing on the balls and then rolling themselves down the lane to knock the pins over. The owner didn't want us back, which was just as well because none of the bowling shoes fit them. I couldn't take them back there, but any other place would probably be a one-time event, too. I could just see taking them out to dinner, and them peering intently at the menu and then eating it. I thought about stuffing them in a box and mailing them somewhere far away, maybe Pennsylvania (the Liberty Bell's already cracked, they can't blame it on them), but it would probably be deemed a suspicious package, with it vibrating and jumping around. They'd probably gnaw through it at some point, too.

The closet door shook, and I could hear a strange sound, like something being repeated over and over again. The door shook again and then flew open, and they were all around me, jostling me roughly and chanting, "Bowling alley! Bowling alley!"

"I'm sorry, boys, they won't let us in anymore."

"No! Go out! Go out!"

They started marching around me, randomly throwing themselves at me. "Go out! Go out! Go out!"

I found myself repeating them, "Go out, go out, go out..."

I became aware that I was alone. Or rather, not quite alone. From somewhere I felt their eyes looking out, watching. I picked a plate up off the table and bit off a section, then chewed it up and swallowed it. It wasn't bad at all. I giggled for a bit, then slowly composed myself. I needed to look a little more normal, this time.

I turned and headed for the door, then, grinning in spite of myself. Time to go bowling.


Mega challenge:

family,
cheese cake,
20 years ago,
refrigerator,
laugh and the world laughs with you,
bath brush,
zombies,
African violets,
butterflies,
holding hands

monsters in the closet,
roughly,
bowling,
menu,
Pennsylvania

I went to the grave and dug it up again. The family was still there, as they had been 20 years ago, and in all the times I had checked in between. They showed a surprisingly low amount of deterioration. I had long ago determined that they weren't vampires, simply by holding a small mirror up to each one and checking to see if there was a reflection. There always was. They seemed unlikely to be zombies, either, as none of them moved unless I moved them. Their eyes still looked at me, though. Not accusingly, but more like they were measuring me up. Like they were waiting. Although this was Pennsylvania and not Transylvania, I'm not sure how important location was to these things. Something sure seemed to be going on here.

I stared at them. Could something still inhabit them, some semblance of soul, perhaps? By any normal measure, they should be as dead as a stone. They felt somewhat higher, though, somewhere on the line from bowling balls to bath brushes to butterflies. If butterflies could be said to have a dark side, that is.

I continued to stare at them. I had been out here so many times. If I put them back, I knew I would be out here again, digging them up. I just couldn't stand the thought anymore. I was just too weary of it.

I finally put them all in the car. I handled them a little more roughly than I should have, and more roughly than I had intended to, but no one complained. I still felt guilty, though, and apologized for it. I felt a certain amount of understanding from them, but not necessarily forgiveness.

When I arrived at the house, I took them inside but still wasn't sure what to do with them. I finally put them in chairs around the kitchen table. I thought about arranging them so they were holding hands, but I couldn't stand the thought. It would seem like they were united against me.

I sat down at the table and stared at them. They stared back, like they were waiting for me to speak. I wasn't sure what to say in a situation like this, and I wasn't sure that words could really make it all better.

I got up and paced for a bit, while they sat there, waiting. I would probably have to do something with them, put them someplace else. I wasn't sure I wanted them watching me, and it might be awkward having company over. Not that I had much company these days.

I supposed that I could store them somewhere. They were too big for the refrigerator, and they weren't in any case something I wanted to find next to the cheese cake. I could put them in the closet. That's where I had them in the old days, before they were buried. But although I could never really forget about them, it was always a jolt to find them there, always a reminder, my own personal monsters in the closet. That's why I finally buried them in the first place.

It might be better to actually have them in the open. Maybe I could put them on the couch, next to the window with the African violets. That sounded more cheery. I could keep an eye on them there. And they could keep an eye on me.

I sat back down again and stared at them. They waited, expectantly. It was past dinner time, and I should probably offer them something. I wasn't sure I had anything they would eat, though. I couldn't think of anything on the menu I would like myself.

I almost felt like laughing, but the thought of it brought on some sadness. Laugh and the world laughs with you, but if no one laughs you can die on stage. Die too many times and it's all over.

Although I had tried to bury the dead, I had forgotten that we had all died, and so I couldn't escape the feeling that we were somehow linked. The memories from the old days also lent a kind of life-in-death to them, and perhaps also to me.

I picked one up and looked at it. It's eyes stared back at me, waiting. I put my hand in its back and made the mouth and the eyes move, and made the voice speak.

"You sure took long enough."

I looked at the others. They seemed to nod in agreement, and from an unseen audience came the sound of ancient laughter.

Sick in the South Seas

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 a user gave a short list of words and other users then wrote a story containing those words. The story is changed slightly here in that it is broken up into several paragraphs instead of being contained in just one.

This is another of my stories from my post number 1000 for that message board. The list of words for this story: parrot, appendicitis, monsoon, implant, crater.

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


SICK IN THE SOUTH SEAS

A south sea island is a bad place to get sick. Doctors can be hard to find when you need one. Especially if you really, really need one. My stomach was really hurting by the time I found him. He looked a little questionable, but by that time I felt I had no choice.

He told me to sit on the table, which I did. He poked at my stomach for awhile while I gritted my teeth and tried to break holes in the table with my fingers.

He finally said that I had appendicitis, but that I was in luck. He had some new treatment for it that he had invented himself. It was some device that he would put in my abdomen, plus some mysterious injections of some kind. Everything would be taken care of, he said, without the need for major surgery.

He began to gather his instruments, his needles, mysterious vials of liquid, and the device he was going to implant. His parrot, on a nearby table, looked at me intently. Too intently.

The doctor brought everything over and began to work. I wished he'd given me some anesthesia, but that didn't seem to be part of his mysterious injections.

Finally, he was done and stepped back. Way back. "We should know shortly," he said, "if it's going to work." If it's going to work?

Suddenly, my appendix exploded, leaving a huge crater. Blood and gore rained down all over, like some nightmarish monsoon.

The doctor stood there, covered in blood, tears streaming silently down his face. Finally he spoke, murmuring, "It worked, it worked."

The parrot hopped over and peered into the gaping wound, then stuck in a claw and said, "Does it hurt here?"

Dream - The computer message board, and what lay beyond

On Friday, December 12, 2008, probably around 1:00-3:30 AM, I had a dream about seeing an odd message on a message board, and then my mind going through it, through the computer and through the system to the computers on the other side.

In the dream, I was looking at a message board that had a white screen, with the messages in a box centered in the screen. I came across a thread, a set of messages, that was different. The box was different and was missing some columns, and the very top edge of it was cut off by a line separating it from a site/message board logo/title area at the top of the screen. Looking at the thread's only message, I deduced that it must be the first message from a new user, although the column showing the post count was missing and some things must have been left off when the user created the post, causing some glitches in the software.

I think I was going to reply to it, commenting on the situation rather than the message contents, but I ran into some trouble of some kind. I tried to go back to the original message, maybe just hitting the Back key on the browser to do so, and the screen came up showing the box for the thread but with a default colored background in the box, with the box having blue and gray diagonal smears across it instead of just the normal blank white background, and no thread contents.

I think I tried to hit the Back key again and seemed to get physically lost in the computer system on the other side, seeing and being physically present at a big aluminum cast or machined cooling fin array mixed with other things. It was so large that it seemed industrial, roomsize, but it may have just been because of my perspective. I was getting worried about things falling further apart, and I seemed to be falling further into darkness and the deeper innards of the massive computer system on the other side.

Falling deeper into it, I saw a tall refrigerator-size panel that said "Cray" on it. Evidently they used Cray supercomputers. I pressed the Esc key on my keyboard, maybe a few times. I was essentially operating blind on my keyboard, though sometimes I could see a little of it, or get a sense of it. I think I may have come back briefly to the computer screen showing the default background in the thread box, and then I was in a darkened room with various things and equipment in it, and a little boy was standing in approximately the center, apparently in front of a camera and pulling up and holding in front of him a big piece of cloth or perhaps very large sweatshirt, with just his head sticking up over it. The cloth/sweatshirt had printed on it the thread box, though apparently an empty messageless one, but without the colored background. This seemed to be a last-ditch attempt to provide a proper image, since the equipment itself seemed unable to do it.

Then I was back at my computer, which was on a table, perhaps a card table, in a large room that seemed more industrial, like possibly a garage, maybe even a commercial garage. My brother had come in and I called him over to see what they were doing, laughing a bit about it. I think the image on my screen still showed the colored background. Evidently the picture on the cloth hadn't made its way through yet, but I wanted to show my brother the little boy holding up the cloth anyway, and I drew my brother back into the computer system with me to show it to him. The little boy was there as before, finishing pulling up the cloth with the image, trying to straighten or smooth out the edges. I think someone was off somewhere in a darker area several feet to the side this time, to his left and a little to the front, maybe a girl around the same age, and they were talking a little bit about what was happening.

Dream - Finding an old schoolmate, Sally Field [not really]

On Tuesday morning, November 18, 2008, I had a dream in which I happened to find Sally Field, the actress, who in the dream was an old schoolmate, but who in real life I've never met.

In the dream, I went into a large building that seemed to contain a theater and some small shops. I think I was looking for something or someone. I had been looking in other buildings before this one, and a lot had already happened, but I no longer remember what.

The theater building had a lobby-like area inside, and an aisle that ran along the front, acting as an extension of the lobby, with small stores along on the side near the outer wall. Maybe some on the other side too, but I think they were mostly along the outer wall. I think they also had a large dining area off to the left somewhere.

After entering the building, perhaps ten or twelve feet to the left, I saw Sally Field, looking much younger than she does now, more like someone in her thirties. She was wearing a light blue gown of somewhat shiny material that came down off her shoulders in big soft folds that were secured to a seam at the waist. The skirt portion then went down almost to her ankles, widening slightly as it went. She looked beautiful.

She seemed surprised and happy to see me, and came to me and kissed me briefly on the lips.

I'm afraid I didn't really do much in the way of kissing her back. I mostly just stood there. Perhaps I was a little surprised, too.

She was there, it seems, for some kind of minor school reunion. It was evidently just an informal thing, with a few people from school getting together, though I was under the impression that they had rented part of the dining area for it. She had greeted me like that because she remembered me from school, and I dimly remembered her. In real life, of course, I did not attend school with her, and in real life she is probably about six years older than I am, but in the dream the situation was different.

We talked for a while, and walked back a bit in the direction from which she had come. A few other people were scattered around the area, but not many. Some may have been part of the reunion, but most seemed to have no connection with it and were there for other things. Although she was very happy at first, this seemed to be slowly fading, and she now seemed to want to get away from me, and for me to go away. She didn't really talk much about it, talking mostly of other things, and when I asked her why and if anything was wrong, her answers weren't very informative. She didn't seem mad, more matter of fact about it and even joking a little about it or the situation.

She went into a little gift shop and tried to hide, not very successfully, behind a circular wire rack full of little gifts, most of which were white. Almost all the gifts in the shop were colored white. I saw her from the other side of the rack, looking at her through the small holes between the gifts. We talked about the situation as she stayed on the other side of the rack from me, moving to keep the rack between me and her. She was no longer wearing the gown. At some point she had changed to just be wearing everyday clothes, with no apparent transition, unless she had somehow changed before I found her in the gift shop. Very little time had elapsed, though, and she may have even still been wearing the gown when I found her behind the rack of gifts. In any case, she was now wearing something like jeans and maybe a pale pullover sweater with something over it, an open jacket or open vest, probably also of jeans material.

She seemed a little sad now but also determined, but in a minor way, as if it was almost some kind of game, like she was going through the motions of something that she didn't really believe in. She still joked a little bit and talked about the situation in an offhand manner. She was still trying to get me to leave, but wouldn't say why. Some of what she was saying didn't really make sense, as it didn't relate at all to the discussion. I was worried that something else was going on, that something else was happening that she was afraid to tell. I was afraid that she was actually under the control of someone, that something had either been done to her mind to make her obey someone, to make her want to obey someone, or that someone was holding something over her, was threatening her in some way to make her obey, and that she dared not disobey him. She did seem to hint of someone else, someone who didn't like her doing certain things.

It didn't bother me that she might be interested romantically in someone other than me. I had not seen her for many years and had not expected to see her now. I was just afraid that she was in some kind of trouble.

She made a break for it and went perhaps eight or ten feet back toward the front of the store and got up on a tall counter that ran along part of the wall. The counter was covered in little white gifts and she seemed to be trying to hide among them. The gifts were much too small to hide her, and I was in any case watching her as she ran. I went up to her. She continued to talk to me, in a matter of fact way, slightly jokingly at times, lying on her stomach among the gifts. We continued our discussion, and she did not try to further escape. I tried to move some of the gifts away from her some, concerned that they might be damaged by her partially laying on them, though she seemed to have avoided laying on most of them, having pushed them away from under her as she was laying down. They were mostly little stuffed figures or animals with big pale ribbons, maybe some with little silk flowers also.

I finally got up on the counter with her to help her get up. I'm not sure what was going to happen after that, whether I could convince her to tell me what was really happening, and whether I would then be able to help her.

Dream - Breaking through to other dimensions, fighting evil things with love

On Sunday morning, November 16, 2008, I dreamed I used a little car to break through to another dimension, then we went to another dimension and used directed energy to fight evil things with love.

In the dream, after some traveling and discussion, I ended up in a house or a building, at a dimly lit room on one end, like a bedroom. My father and I think my mother were there. If not my mother then someone else, because there were at least two people.

I started talking about how I had discovered it, I had finally figured out how to do it, how to get the energy.

I left the room, flying or gliding swiftly forward, a foot or two off the floor, heading toward the other side of the house, showing them how it was done and hopefully showing them how they could do it, too. I raised up some as I approached the wall and went through a window-like opening in it, going into the next room. It felt like I was going through into another dimension.

Going through the other room, the situation changed to where I was now in a car going along a road that was raised off the floor, hanging in the air. The road and the car were small and toy-like, like they were representations of what was happening. The road went into a downward slope as it crossed the room, then rose smoothly as it approached the far wall, turning up near the wall into an almost vertical rise.

I distantly heard my father talking in the other room, discussing the situation with the other person. "Do you think he's going to make it? It doesn't look like he's going to make it."

I watched the little car, with me in it, rising on the little road, almost pointed straight up, near the wall and almost halfway up it. It was slowing down, but it felt like time itself was slowing down, that the process was becoming suspended in time, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the car to break on through, with a sudden burst of bright energy and movement break on through the barrier holding it back, and break through dimensions and go through the wall into the next room.

Not sure what was happening but a little disturbed by the delay, I went over to the car. I felt that it should be able to do it, that I should have the power, but I didn't want to wait any longer. I felt that I had to break into the scene and do something.

I grabbed the car and pulled up on it, and it went up and slightly toward me, bright light pouring now from around it, a bright area in the middle with long thick rays reaching out, lighting up that side of dark room.

I turned back to the others, happy. "See? See?" I went back to them, and from the other side of the room and one by one, I pointed my finger at their heads and then their bodies. A stream of large drops, slightly glowing, shot out from my finger, getting them wet. I was giving them some of the energy I had, in the hope that they would then be able to have the power to do some of what I could do, and to give them some knowledge of the power and how to obtain it. They blinked, their eyes taking on new understanding and awareness, a new knowledge of the world and what lay behind it.


Then we went somewhere else, to some other dimension I think, to some place that seemed like a large ship. It was dark and dimly lit. We met some person who was very strange, not entirely human, and seemed to want to attack us. I said that we couldn't fight him, that it would make it worse, that we had to use love on him, that it was the only way.

We each reached out one or more arms, hands aligned with the arms, fingers pointing at him, and shot love toward him. He paused and straightened up, leaning back some, looking a little surprised. We kept it up and he started to change, some of the dark evil falling away from him. He became much more normal in appearance and stood there with a look of wonder on his face, and no longer wanted to hurt us. We left him puzzling over his new situation and moved on.

Near a railing, where the ship curved around, we came across another figure. This one was less massive and more human looking, and was taller and thinner, several inches taller than we were. We started doing the same thing to him, but he seemed to be resisting it better than the other one. I got worried and and jabbed my fingers, of my left hand I think, near his chest and then near his face, twisting my hand around as I did so, sending not love but a forceful, penetrating beam of invisible energy. It didn't work and seemingly made him madder and maybe even more powerful.

He leaned back slightly more and his face took on a more determined grimace. His right hand changed into something like a fat tube of what I felt was some kind of ointment, though I don't know what was in it. It looked like a very fat toothpaste tube, complete with a short cap. The other hand changed into something else, maybe something like pliers with large, rounded, flat, dark jaws filled with large triangular teeth. Teeth that, like pliers' teeth, were part of the jaws, but unlike most pliers' teeth didn't have sharp edges, and seemed more to grip firmly without tearing or cutting into what was being gripped.

Regretting my weakness in choosing to attack it, I again poured love into him, urging the others to do so. He fought against it, standing his ground and waving his hands around a little in a threatening manner, but finally we were able to win. He calmed down and started to change, losing his evilness, as the love took effect.

We turned then and went quickly down a hallway, into the interior of the ship. Something else was happening. At the far end of the hall was the open door of an elevator, and a figure ran to it and was tumbling into it, falling on the floor of it and twisting around to face upward and somewhat toward us. Two or three large dogs were also rushing into the elevator, black or dark brown on top with lighter brown underneath. One of them turned its head back and looked at me, seeming upset and worried and a little scared, but not really fearful, partially changing into a light brown-skinned man, or something approaching a man, as the elevator doors started to close.

Wordzzle 82 - Shadow people

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 my entry number 26, for Wordzzle week 82.


Ten Word Challenge:

Tibetan sky,
symbols,
won’t you come home Bill Baily,
shadow figures,
brain cortex,
practice makes perfect,
life,
start of school,
lavender,
chow down

Under the arch, in its shadow, figures could be seen. They had been there for quite a while now, and he felt they were watching him. His brain cortex didn't work as well as it used to, but some things were fairly obvious.

He wondered when they were going to make their move . Maybe they were waiting for him to move first. If so, they were in for a long wait.

Finally, they began to walk toward him. Eventually they were standing there, looking down at him where he lay on the bench. He looked up at them, in their lavender suits, symbols of the smug elite.

"Won’t you come home Bill Baily?" one of them said.

"I've got better things to do, boys. It's the start of school today."

"But she's fixed your favorite, Tibetan Sky. She's sure she's got it right this time."

"The last few tasted funny. Burned my mouth, too."

"She misread the recipe. It said 'Adds life' and she thought it said 'Add lye.' She doesn't do that anymore."

"I guess practice makes perfect. Time to chow down, then."

He got up off the bench, sighing. He hated this complicated code word routine. At least he had something to do now. It looked like it was going to be an interesting mission, too.


Mini Challenge:

mental hospital,
falling leaves,
apple cider,
packing crates,
clues

The bum sat among the apple cider packing crates, half covered by falling leaves, and watched the world go by. He had a bottle with him, but it wasn't apple cider. He used to tell people that he had been in a mental hospital, and was put out on the street. He had hoped it would lead to more donations, but people shied away from him. Now he just held out his hand, when he had the energy and when he remembered. He left few clues about where he was from, or what he had been. Sometimes he talked about the military and fighting the enemy, so some thought he must have been in a war, but no one was sure which one. He wasn't a young man anymore, and there were several to choose from.

Suddenly a black limousine pulled up, and men dressed in dark suits and dark glasses got out. One talked briefly into a radio, while two others headed for him and gently pulled him to his feet.

"You've got to stop slipping away from us like this, sir."

"You almost lost me this time, didn't you?" he laughed. "One day I'll work out the proper 'strategery,' and then I'll really be gone..."


Mega challenge:

Tibetan sky,
symbols,
won’t you come home Bill Baily,
shadow figures,
brain cortex,
practice makes perfect,
life,
start of school,
lavender,
chow down

mental hospital,
falling leaves,
apple cider,
packing crates,
clues

"Isn't there something you can do to get rid of those shadow figures?" she said.

"Oh, they're not so bad. They just like to watch. Sometimes they like to touch, too. That's when it really gets creepy."

She winced and jerked back from them a bit.

"But why are they here? I never see them anywhere but here."

"I didn't see them until I'd been here for a while. I think they're kind of shy. That's probably why they're not normally seen other places. That, and people just don't pay attention. Probably some people don't have their brain cortices wired right either, and couldn't see them anyway."

"I feel like my brain cortex is being seriously altered."

"Well, there you go! Maybe you'll start to see them more places, then."

"Oh great. I'd really rather just see them here. Or, rather, not see them here."

"But you are seeing them. And you know what they say, practice makes perfect."

"I don't think I need this kind of practice."

"Would you rather they be there watching you, and you not know it?"

"No! That is, I'd rather they not be there at all. But if they are there, I suppose I'd rather see them. Now I'm going to wonder if they're there if I don't see them."

"Just remember, no matter what you do or where you are, God is always watching."

"That really makes me feel good."

There was silence for a time.

"I feel like I should commit myself to a mental hospital for just having this conversation," she finally said.

"If you did, I'd have to join you."

"Do you really mean that?"

"Well, I'd at least visit you there."

"Thanks a lot!"

Some shadows of falling leaves fell across the table where they sat.

"Are they really people, or just shadows of people?" she said.

"They do seem to cling to surfaces. I've even seen them on packing crates, going over the top and down the side. But if they are just shadows, I don't know what the light source would be. I don't see them when it's completely dark, though. That doesn't necessarily mean they're not there."

"So you're saying they could still be there and I wouldn't know it. I think I'll sleep with a light on from now on." She shuddered. "I wish we had something stronger than this apple cider."

"Another thing to think about is, if they're just shadows, where are they really? Where is the invisible person that makes the visible shadow?"

"Now you're saying that if we see them we still don't know where they are!"

"I'm just speculating. I really don't know. There aren't many clues to go by."

"I don't know if I can ever get to sleep again. I dread the thought of going home and being alone."

"You could try singing to them. 'Won’t you come home Bill Baily, won’t you come home.'"

"No! I don't want them to come with me! I'm afraid I'll be alone and they'll be there!"

"But then you wouldn't be alone. If you don't like that song, we could try another. 'Under the Tibetan sky, shadow people spy...'"

"Stop that! I said I don't want them! Besides, you're a lousy singer."

"I'm hurt. I guess practice makes perfect, though, so I better start practicing."

"Practice somewhere else. Not now! Don't leave me!"

"I'm not. Think of this as like the start of school. Everything is new to you, but after a while, it all seems normal and routine."

"I'm not sure it will ever seem routine."

"You'd be surprised."

"You don't understand. This can't be right. Maybe they're here to eat us, or eat our souls, or, or, something."

"Now that you mention it, I have been a little tired, lately. Maybe they've already chowed down."

"See? See? You've got to get rid of them!"

"Well, you know, life exists by feeding on other life. That's just, um, life."

"But we don't have to volunteer!" She picked up the apple cider bottle and refilled her glass, her hand shaking a bit. She took a sip and then another.

"This stuff isn't strong enough to help. Even the apple on the label is lavender instead of red. I need something with alcohol in it."

"Alcohol won't help. They'll be there whether you're drunk or not. Wouldn't you really rather be fully aware of it?"

"Not really." She wrung her hands together, looking miserable.


The figures stared at the shadows of a man and woman sitting at a table.

"Look what she's doing with her hands. She's put them together and keeps moving them over and over. Do you think it's a symbol for something?"

"I don't know," another of the figures said. "I just wish they'd go away."

The Weed Forest

This is, as they say, based on a true story. Most of it, in fact, is true. I'm afraid the only really disturbing things I found, though, were a few dead birds.

This story is dated 3:34 PM, June 8, 2003, Arizona time (MST).


THE WEED FOREST

My sister's back yard was full of weeds.

Weeds two, three, or four feet high.

Or even higher.

Densely packed.

She had let it go on for too long.

I began to pull weeds.

Sometimes handfuls, sometimes just a single weed, depending on the difficulty.

Pulling them out of the dry earth.

I spent days at it.

And nights.

One time, I found a body.

A body hidden in the weeds.

A dead body.

My body.

Finders keepers.

Dream - A massive engine being revved higher and higher

On Monday morning, December 29, 2008, I dreamed about a massive engine being revved higher and higher, with Jeffry from Guiding Light shifting the gears.

In the dream, I was in a small town-type place. A lot happened there, but most of it is forgotten.

Eventually, near some houses in a neighborhood, someone activated a room sized engine and transmission. It was literally in a room, but one without a ceiling. Someone else was called to shift the gears to control the engine. It was someone who looked like the Jeffry character on the TV soap opera Guiding Light, and may in fact have been that character. I think he had also been in the dream earlier. He seemed a little surprised at the size of the task given him, but seemed to believe he could handle it. Indeed, the reason the maker of the device chose him was that he had a lot of prior experience in things like this, and was famous for it.

A long, jointed, slightly bent metal bar, perhaps ten feet long, stuck out of the device at an angle, reaching high into the air. It was used to shift gears. Jeffry reached up and grasped it. The maker of the device was running the engine, making it go faster and faster, and Jeffry would shift to another gear every little bit. No clutch was used, it was just forced into the next gear. Jeffry seemed to know what he was doing, to know just when and how to jam it into the next gear. I was impressed, and somewhat in awe.

The maker kept revving the engine higher and higher, with a kind of maniacal delight on his face. Jeffry got into the spirit too, jamming it into the next gear with tense excitement. The sound of the engine kept getting higher, a kind of massive, deep, highness, and I was getting concerned about the safety of it. Huge chunks of it were flying off, sometimes hundreds of feet. The maker kept winding up the engine, higher and higher, and Jeffry kept shifting the gears. I didn't know how many gears it had, but there seemed to be an awful lot of them.

Dream - In a large building, going through things left by my grandmother

On Saturday, January 3, 2009, I dreamed I was accessing iWon.com after a long time away, then wandering around a huge building that was apparently left to us by my grandmother, seeing dusty piles of old stuff there.

I was sleeping in bed. I dreamed I was in a small room, smaller than a bathroom, that had an opening to each side to much larger rooms. They were very large, especially the one to my left. The one to my right might have been as big, but my awareness was on it much less and I'm not really sure. It did seem to have a lot more in it. The one on the left was pretty sparsely furnished. I was sitting in a chair between the two large doorways, facing the interior of the small room, using a computer that was resting on a deep shelf that ran between the walls. There was another computer, at least one, somewhere in the room to the left. I seemed to be somewhat younger than in real life, perhaps in my late thirties, and slimmer.

I decided to try to access iWon.com. I had not been there in years. I wondered if it would still know me. Of course I wasn't even at my normal computer, so there wouldn't even be a cookie for it to look at.

At first the screen changed to a cloudy coarse gray, white at the edges, then it changed to an irregular globe of the world, done in soft inflatable plastic, with red continents bulging out of a white ocean. It was facing the wrong direction, though, and America wasn't showing. Then it slowly started to turn around, and as America came into view the screen abruptly changed, I think starting to rush toward the surface of the continent and then suddenly fading to something else. I was finally at the site then, and was looking at things. I was also looking at the message boards, I believe.

A woman came in from the room to my left, looking concerned. I was naked, I had been intending to take a shower earlier I believe, and someone was coming now, about something related to her work I think, and she didn't want him to see me naked. I was sitting sideways with relation to the door, and had a big foam rubber bed pillow, I guess I had been sitting on it or had it behind me, and took it and put it beside me. I was sitting in a large but somewhat utilitarian office chair. It could roll and swivel and it had arms on it, but the arms were open structures. I hoped the pillow would hide a lot of my body, so that I wouldn't immediately appear naked unless really looked at. Looking in the room, I could see her talking to him over near the far wall. They were both bent over a little looking at some object on a low table.

Then I was in a huge square building across the street. It was three or four stories. The whole surrounding area didn't have much in it, and I think the street between the buildings might have been dirt. The whole land around was mostly dirt, but the road had lots of tire tracks in it, distinguishing it from the other dirt. I had the feeling the big building was something left to us, that it used to belong to my grandmother, and was passed on to us after she died. It was huge inside, with huge and mostly open rooms. It was dusty and somewhat musty smelling. Old things were stored there, generally in groups and piles. There were a lot of them.

I was walking around the place going to different stories in it, looking at and through some of the groups of stuff. Someone was with me part of the time, perhaps the woman from before, perhaps someone else.

In one of the groups of things, I found an old cardboard 8-track tower, still partly covered in the clear plastic wrap it came in. I remembered years ago being given it as a gift, perhaps at Christmas. I had left the plastic around it so that it would better contain the tapes, without them falling out of the tall slot that ran along the front of it. I was going to take the tapes out at the top or bottom, where I had made openings in the plastic. I think I had gotten a Neal Diamond tape at that time, at least the tower was somehow associated with it.

Now the tower had been on its side, with stuff haphazardly piled on and around it, the cardboard bent and twisted, and the clear plastic partly torn away. I fiddled with it for a bit. I wondered if I should go ahead and just take the plastic off, there didn't seem to be much I could do with it now. The cardboard of the tower was so bent and twisted it was going to be hard to do anything with it, too. It seemed that the tapes would just want to fall out the front of it, that the cardboard would just try to twist back and shove them out. I wasn't sure if I could straighten it enough to work. It seemed a shame.

The whole thing felt kind of sad, going through the old things, seeing them there. Not all were in bad shape, a lot of stuff was just a little dusty. Earlier, in a different pile, I saw some low shelves that looked pretty good, standing upright, just a little dusty and cobwebby. It was sad though, to think of how things had been in the old days, and weren't any longer.

I was still naked, or at least naked from the waist down, I'm not sure. I didn't seem to have bothered to get dressed yet, and it was starting to disturb me a little.

I was in a big room on an upper story, then, at least three stories up. Someone came, a man, and opened the door. He saw that I was naked and was going to come back another time, but I said to stay. I came out and walked around a bit and we talked. At some point I looked different than I had earlier, like a different person, thin and somewhat shorter, with a kind of middle-aged look.

I went out to the side of the building. There was a small balcony out there. I'm not sure I actually went out on it, but I was looking at it, maybe from a window, maybe from the doorway. The balcony had a railing with closely spaced wooden poles or slats. Looking out from where I was, perhaps in the doorway or perhaps out on the balcony some, I saw another large building across the street, set well back from the road, and to the left a cross street went by. There were occasional other buildings around, but not many. Around the buildings were large yards of dirt with scattered areas of low grass. The area had a mostly empty feel. Not many people or cars were around.

In front of me, far down on the ground by the road, I saw a couple of people standing, turned toward each other and apparently talking, looking small in the distance. I wondered if they could see well enough to see I was naked, though they wouldn't actually be able to really see much below my waist, if that far, because of things in the way. If they had even looked up, that is, and I'm not sure they had. I turned away from the balcony and went back in, though, not wanting them to know I was naked and not wanting to take the chance that they might, even if they couldn't actually see anything significant.

Inside, there was a stairway that came up from the floor, ending toward the left, away from me. There was a railing all the way around the rectangular opening, with lathed wooden poles supporting it. A woman and a girl were on the stairs, with the woman being farther up. The woman was probably in her forties and the girl was probably in her late teens, perhaps close to twenty. They were both dark-haired, though the woman's hair had a slightly faded look, like it might have grayed a little. The woman's hair was pulled back, but the girl's wasn't.

The man who had come up earlier went toward them and was trying to distract them and to some extent get between them and me, though he went past that point and to the other side, and was trying to get them to come back later. They went down a step or two but then stopped, while he continued talking to them. Their eyes were lowered a little and they had a bit of a sly little smile on their faces, like they had seen something and were aware of the situation, and were not only not bothered by it but were in no great hurry to leave.

Dream - Writing exercises that affected reality, and the way station to another world

On Tuesday, December 30, 2008, around 1:00-3:30 AM, I dreamed I was with a group of people who were doing increasingly negative writing exercises that seemed to affect reality, and then I went out into the night to a way station to another world.

In the dream, I was in a group that had writing exercises about end-of-the-world scenarios. Life was getting rougher and seemed to be heading toward such a thing. In the weeks ahead it seemed likely to go drastically more downhill, to really desperate times.

The exercises didn't start out as really end-of-the-world things. They were different ways things could go wrong, such as one thing or another going wrong that had a major effect on the economy, or some major disease causing an epidemic, or some war starting somewhere. People were supposed to come up with things on their own, to choose something that could have a major negative effect if it happened and then write about it. Then a new assignment would be given, to find something else, something worse, and write about that. And so the students wrote about more and more grave scenarios and outcomes, heading toward those that were more and more apocalyptic, heading toward those that would essentially destroy the fabric of civilization and perhaps send us back to some kind of dark ages or even worse.

Then the people were told to do one final exercise, writing about a possible end of the world (not that everyone would necessarily die, though that was possible, but that civilization would collapse and we would retreat, those who were left, into some kind of dark ages). The writing seemed in some way to have the ability to influence what would happen, and it seemed to have already had some kind of influence. It could not totally control what would happen. Everyone was, after all, writing their own version of things. But it seemed to have some kind of influence, pushing things in certain directions, and certain elements written about might actually happen.

Then I had to go out for some reason. It was dark and dangerous and I really didn't want to do it. I think one or two others were also going, maybe even all of them, though we were not together as a group and did not all leave at the same time. I was going north down Scottsdale Road toward McDowell. I may have initially been in a car, or maybe someone else was, but now I was on foot. A lot of other people were on foot, too. I was in the right hand lane. Cars were slowly going by on the other lanes. Initially I had had my left arm stretched out, my hand stretched toward and lightly touching a car going along beside me, perhaps partly going through an open side window of the car. In the car was someone I knew, perhaps from the group, though it could have been a family member, perhaps my father.

Ahead a little ways, a cop had stopped a car and was writing someone a ticket, evidently for speeding. On the sidewalk, closer to me, some toughs were occasionally hassling some people. They didn't seem concerned about the police stopping them. I went cautiously ahead, not wanting to get too close to the sidewalk. I thought the cop, when I got there, could provide some protection by his presence, but I wasn't entirely sure about him either. It seemed unlikely he would give me a ticket though, at least if I moved slow. I had no doubt if I walked too fast I was in danger of getting one.

I crossed McDowell with a lot of other people, moving slowly. The Don't Walk sign was flashing or perhaps was past that point, shining steadily. I went forward anyway, not wishing to take the chance of remaining behind. A short woman in late middle age and evidently without much money was in the middle of the crosswalk, moving very slowly. I hurried past her and many other people, though I tried not to move too fast, still concerned about getting a ticket. I saw a policeman on the other side of the street. It began to occur to me that he could give me a ticket for crossing against the sign, maybe even against the light. I hurried even more, trying to get to the other side and out of the crosswalk, but he was involved with some other people and didn't take any notice of me.

Across the street, I went into some small business that was right on the corner. It was well lit inside and some other people were going in there too. I think a policeman came in at some point too, but I don't know if it was the one I had seen earlier. The people were generally moving on deeper into the building, to other rooms. I thought they would continue and eventually come out somewhere else.

I thought this was someplace to get supplies, but it was also a place of safety. It was not the final destination, though, at least not for some people. For others, perhaps most, it was just a way station along the way to someplace else, to a destination that was a lot better place than where we had come from. It led to a better, mostly empty world, currently bathed in soft daylight, like early morning, a kind of frontier where people could start over. It was a happy place, with much hope in it.

Almost everyone that came in went on through to the back, eventually, I believe, going on to the other world. I think even the policeman did. The building that I was in, though, was the place I had been intending to be going. I'm not sure whether I, personally, would be going any farther than that.


In real life, the radio was on, tuned to Coast to Coast AM. The host was talking with someone about various apocalyptic scenarios, and that probably heavily influenced the dream. Then in a replay of the first hour, probably at 2:00, they were talking about something else, perhaps the economy.

Wordzzle 81 - Under the sun

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 my entry number 25, for Wordzzle week 81.


Ten Word Challenge:

dangerous,
engine,
sullenly,
bespoke,
evergreen,
bauble,
medicine,
freight,
destined,
tinsel

An evergreen, left over from last Christmas and brown and brittle now, rolled along in the wind, leaving strings of tinsel and an occasional bauble in its wake. The wind blew sand over train tracks, rusted and twisted and half buried. Once trains came through here, carrying their freight and passengers, but no more. The sun sat sullenly in the morning sky, with a heat that bespoke of the greater heat to come, and of days that were destined to be much like this one.

An old narrow road ran through the barren land, totally empty of traffic. Beside the road was a solitary wooden building, with a couple of dilapidated gas pumps out front. On the building was a sign saying "Engines of all types repaired here." There seemed to be no customers today.

Inside the building, an old man sat, surrounded by electric fans and medicine bottles, listening to the radio. It spoke of the drought, and how it had reached dangerous levels, and of more deaths. The old man shook his head and spat on the floor. "I told them what would happen if they elected them fellers."


Mini Challenge:

carbon,
feelers,
outright,
ballet,
fizzing

The frenetic alien's fizzing feelers, black as carbon, danced a fantastic ballet across the floor, but one of the judges fainted outright and it was only awarded 8.5 out of 10.


Mega challenge:

dangerous,
engine,
sullenly,
bespoke,
evergreen,
bauble,
medicine,
freight,
destined,
tinsel

carbon,
feelers,
outright,
ballet,
fizzing

The freight train roared by, an evergreen tree at the controls. He could swear it turned and looked at him just as it passed. He gripped the steering wheel tighter and gritted his teeth. It was happening again.

The train finally passed, and he pushed on the gas, wanting to get out of there quickly. The engine made a strange clucking sound and a bunch of feathers flew out, some settling on the windshield. The car drifted forward for a while, and gradually slowed to a stop. He got out and began to walk. He heard a fizzing sound behind him, then a keening. He paused, but didn't look back, and began walking again, faster.

Ahead of him, in the distance, he saw what appeared to be large sauropod dinosaurs attempting to do a ballet, and doing it badly. He supposed that it should be wonderful that they should try it at all, but he didn't feel that appreciative right now.

There was a chance that they might be dangerous, but he continued walking toward them. By the time he got there, they would probably have either changed to something else or outright disappeared.

A medicine man suddenly rose out of the sand beside the road, and came toward him. The medicine man walked all around him, staring at him, then took a bauble on a string out of a small leather bag and held it out in front of him and circled him again. Then he took the man's hand and put the bauble in it, pressing his hand against the man's palm and wrapping his fingers around it. A sort of rigid handshaking exercise went on for a moment, and then the medicine man's hand suddenly broke off. He stared at his wrist for a moment, examining it in wonder, then he changed into dust and sank to the ground, and was blown away by the wind.

The severed hand then seemed to turn to carbon, like a piece of wood that has been burned into charcoal, then it changed to a large black beetle and began to crawl up his arm, its feelers waving frantically. He grabbed it and threw it away. The beetle changed into a bird that turned around and swooped back at him, then exploded in a burst of feathers that turned into strands of tinsel, that wriggled and writhed as they fell to the ground, finally burrowing into the sand and out of sight.

The man slowly sank down onto the pavement and sat there, hands at the sides of his head. An eye formed in the pavement and stared at him sullenly. He stared back and after a while it blinked a few times, and slowly faded away.

Why was this happening? What did this mean? Were these signs and omens? If so, what did they signify? Nothing, it seemed. Oddness bespoke of more oddness, and nothing else. Was that all his life was destined to be from now on, just more of this? It sure looked like it. Not having anything better to do, he began to weep, and continued at it for some time.

After a while, he became aware of someone sitting beside him. He raised his head and saw a ghostly figure, dressed in cowboy clothes.

"Who are you?"

"I am the ghost of movies past, and present, and future."

"Sounds like a big job."

"I get around."

"Why is this happening?"

"Your movie, your reality, is being intruded upon by things from other places and other possibilities."

"My movie?"

"You're a character in a movie. In this movie."

"I don't feel like I'm a character in a movie."

"They usually don't. It destroys the illusion."

There was silence for a time.

"Can anything be done?"

"Technically yes, but in reality almost certainly not. It won't get any better, and will probably get worse, until the end."

"Until the end."

"Yes."

"What will the end be?"

"Total destruction. Your world, your movie, will cease to exist."

"What will become of me?"

"You will also cease to exist."

That sounded as bad as anything could be. "Will nothing of me remain?"

"Something always remains, even if its only a memory, or a memory of a memory."

"That doesn't sound like much."

"No, it doesn't."

"Are the memories conscious? Do they know what they are? What they were?"

"Sometimes, though it may not always be enough for full understanding."

There was more silence.

"And yet you are a ghost, and much more than just a memory. You seem to be able to travel around and do things, and know what you're doing."

"Yes, but such things are rare."

"I don't want to be just a memory. I want to be a person. I want to be me."

"There are some that are greater than me, but they are relatively few. Some can even assume all the appearances of reality, but they are fewer still. The more difficult it is, the fewer make it there. Most do not even try, or do not try very much. They accept their fate, and sink into it."

"I don't want that. I want to be me."

"We have to take what we can, from the possibilities that are open to us. The more we try, though, the more the possibilities may open up. Take my hand."

The ghost held out his hand and the man took it. It felt solid, despite its appearance.

"I can't promise that you will be a ghost like me. Or even a ghost at all. We can try, though. It largely depends on your determination."

The ground shook.

"It won't be long now," the ghost said.


The boy sat in front of the computer, frowning. "I can't get the movie to play anymore. It keeps saying the file is corrupted."

"Just delete it and download another copy," his friend said. "That always works for me."

Finding my grandmother

When my grandmother got older she liked to walk a lot, and apparently walked all over the neighborhood, even stopping in at a store sometimes and buying something. As the years passed, though, she eventually reached a state where she became increasingly confused and frequently became lost. There was also a concern that she might wander onto a major road. My mother tried to look in on her now and then, and then go looking for her if she wasn't there, but my mother had a lot of things to do and couldn't stay with her constantly.

One day after work, probably somewhere around 1980-82 (my grandmother passed on in late '84), I drove home past the street where I live, and almost but not quite to the street where my grandmother lived. I had a feeling, and had had it for some time, that she would be out walking right now. I decided that she would be on this particular street, and turned onto the street and drove down a few houses until I found her sitting on a fence in front of a house, sweating.

She seemed happy to see me and asked if someone had called me. (I believe there was a woman looking out of the house at her, or maybe it was a neighboring house. This may or may not have had anything to do with what my grandmother said. I don't know if the woman had said anything to her.) I said no, and my grandmother looked at me kind of strangely, perhaps wondering how I found her or why I should even be looking.

I helped her into the car, a 1970 Cadillac I had owned for a long time, and took her back to my house. The house was empty for the moment, as my mother was on an errand somewhere. I gave my grandmother a glass of water, which she thanked me for, and my mother came home a little later. She was surprised to see us both there, and I explained what had happened.

My grandmother stayed a few more minutes, perhaps even half an hour, but soon wanted to go back to her own house. She became a little anxious if she stayed away too long, and so my mother took her back.

Dream - The young blond policewoman

On Sunday, March 1, 2009, I dreamed I parked my car in a large parking lot, and a young, slim, tall, blondish policewoman, her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail and wearing dark glasses, parked a couple of places away from me, on the passenger side. She was looking over at me, and got out of the car and came toward me holding a ticket book. She bent down, looking in at me, and rapped sharply on the passenger side door.

I wearily and suspiciously reached across the car to open it. The window mechanism no longer worked, but it seemed she wanted the door opened anyway. I didn't know what this was about, but I was afraid that it was some kind of a setup, that somebody had put her up to it.

It turned out that it wasn't quite that way, though. She wasn't there to try to give me a ticket or reprimand me about something, instead she was friendly and had been sent by someone, some family member I think, to find me and give me a message. I think I woke up before I found out what the message was, though.

Some more happened earlier that I don't remember, though I think I had been in my house with some members of my family.

Dream - Flying in an old black pickup truck

On Sunday, January 18, 2009, I had a dream about flying in an old black pickup truck with several other people.

In the dream, I was at the radiator shop. It was night. Several people were there with me. I think some of them were relatives, but not all of them. I'm not sure what we were originally doing there, late at night. I don't think it was radiator work. We seemed to be having some kind of get-together and were discussing things. There was a little bit of tension involved, some anxiousness, and a feeling that time was short, that we had to get things figured out soon. I think we might have been eating there also, and one or two of the rooms may have been set up for sleeping. For some reason I seemed not to have any pants on, and this was starting to increasingly bother me.

I went out the front and around to the side entrance, gliding through the air I think. In the dream the side entrance went directly to a large bathroom, but my younger brother, who had not been there earlier, arrived and got there first. He went in and closed the door. I didn't linger. As I saw him going in I continued forward, going toward the alley as if that had been my destination. I was already a ways out, maybe ten or fifteen feet, from the side of the building so it didn't necessarily seem as if I had been going to the bathroom. I'm not sure he even saw me, though he looked s little somewhat in my direction.

Out by the alley it was much darker. The area around the shop had been brightly lit. After drifting around out by the alley for a while, I went back. My brother was just getting out of the bathroom, and went around toward the front. I went and got inside an old black pickup truck that was parked on the pavement beside the shop. I still didn't want it to look like I was trying to get in the bathroom. I was also becoming more bothered by my lack of pants and didn't really want my brother to see me this way. The truck was out a ways from the wall, maybe enough to park a small car beside it. It was pointed toward the alley, away from the street. I'm not sure it was there on my way by the first time, but it was now.

I sat there in the truck considering what to do. I finally decided that I would have to go home and use the bathroom there. Several people came out from the shop, rushed out really, and got in. They were apparently employees, though some of them may have been used for something other than radiator work. I didn't really know any of them, though I guess I knew enough to know they weren't strangers.

Both side windows were down, and I reached out and grabbed the window sills on both sides of the truck, and, gathering my strength, pulled the truck up into the air with me. I flew up and toward the back a little, but the overhead lines got in the way as I tried to go up. I went back down at least some and then back up a bit and tried to go south down Scottsdale Road and then go up higher again, but lines were still in the way. I turned and crossed the road and tried to get up again, and lines were still in the way. There were band after band of them, some bands going across diagonally. Some of the bands had wires that weren't very thick, like they were used for some purpose other than telephone or power. I was thinking perhaps cable. (In reality a lot of those are thick, and some telephone lines are thin, but I didn't think of that in the dream.) When I got past one set of wires there was another set going some way or the other, a little ways higher.

I went back across the road to the shop. I had to get up somehow, there had to be some way, I couldn't just give up. I pulled up on the truck again, spiraling upward, the nose of the truck pointed straight up. I wandered around in the path I was taking, trying to get past the wires, the truck still pointed up, and ended up slightly south near the neighborhood street, trying to work my way around the lines there also. There seemed to always be more going some direction or other.

Finally I was past the last bit, a set of regular heavy black lines, but then I saw more above that, a layer that seemed to cover everything. It looked like little sections of thin grating two to four inches long and an inch to an inch and a half wide, turned this way and that. There seemed to be no way around it, but I felt that we couldn't be stopped, we couldn't allow ourselves to be stopped now.

I had kind of a feeling, and, still wondering if something might happen, if I might get zapped, I reached up with my hand and pushed at them. They separated, moving aside, and with my fingers sticking out past them I pushed at them with my hand, moving it back and forth and to the side, moving them around. They were just a layer of debris of some sort, things that had floated up from the wires and associated devices below, floating on the surface of the water.

I moved the truck up through them, taking it up nose first and then leveling off with it floating half in the water. Water was rushing out of the truck, pouring out. The back of the truck, a dark metal boxlike structure, stayed tilted back, like the bed of a dump truck. A man was still in it. I pulled on it, trying to right it. The man said no, to leave him. I objected and kept trying, but he insisted, saying that he would be alright, so I prepared to leave him floating there with the boxlike bed of the truck, and fly on toward home with the others.


Much more happened earlier at the shop, but I wrote down the dream the following night and had forgotten the earlier part by that time, though some remained for a few hours after the dream.

Dream - I am in a TV reality show

On Saturday morning, January 17, 2009, I had a dream about being in a contest. It was part of a game for TV, some kind of reality thing. A total of at least three people, and maybe four or even five, were in it.

At first we were staying at a place in a neighborhood, at some house, apparently between McDowell and Thomas Roads, maybe between Oak Street and Thomas. We were going through the streets completing the first part of the game, trying to find or do something and get to the goal first, which was some house in the neighborhood. I think we had to bring what was found there, though identifying which house may have been part of the goal. Cameramen were around, recording everything.

Then it was the next day I think, at night, We were doing the third and last part, going through rooms in a big, low building. It was being filmed live. We occasionally went past the host, to at least within a few feet of him. He was standing watching in a hallway or something like that, turning as necessary to keep track of us, though we were not aways together.

We found some small things with wax paper wrappers around them. They were fairly flat and around an inch by an inch and a half, and seemed to be some kind of chewing or bubble gum. The wrappers had printing on them and we thought part of it was a clue to how to complete the game. Somewhere in the jostling and running back and forth I had lost my glasses, and was holding the wrapper and looking at it in different directions in different lights, trying to read it. Though I could read the letters, the light never seemed to be bright enough to easily do so.

Then I was told that the game was over. I had to be told it, I didn't realize it had happened. I thought, "Well, it's over, then, and I didn't win, that's that." I left without my glasses.

I was picked up by my mother and her sister, my aunt. My aunt was in the car in the parking lot, waiting. We were apparently around McKellips and Scottsdale Roads, maybe a little farther south.

I went back the next day and had them look for my glasses. It was not where the game was held, but in a different place on the northeast side of McKellips and Scottsdale Roads. It seemed I was supposed to be there anyway. They were filming a kind of postscript follow-up to the show, and the host was going to have a short interview with me. I'm not sure I actually knew about that part before I got there, but they were expecting me. I think they had already done some of the other contestants.

The room was relatively small, living room size, and the host was sitting on a tall stool in the middle of it, with a cameraman or two around him. When I mentioned my glasses, he sent some people to check to see if someone had found them, and to look for them if they hadn't been.

When he was done with the interview, he referred me to a woman standing on the other side of a counter back toward the door. I went to her and she sent someone off to look. I guess they were basically asking around or maybe going through a lost and found section. The person came back then, and I think they might have found the glasses and given them to me but they needed to be fixed, I think something was wrong with an earpiece, or maybe something other than the glasses needed to be fixed. Could it have been my watch? My billfold? Maybe two things? Whatever it was, it had to be dropped off at a place near McKellips and then I had to go back to get it, and I think something else at a nearby place.


Somewhere in there, maybe earlier, I was going through a big department store at the northeast corner of McKellips and Scottsdale Roads, through door after door, starting from the east side. I eventually got to a big center section with rows of seats and some vending machines, where I couldn't find a door that went forward.

At the southwest corner of the room was a window opening with a woman behind a small counter, apparently both selling tickets and acting as a monitor to keep people out. Apparently the section where she was also opened as a door.

On the north side the room opened up into a big viewing section, like for movies or theater, with lots of more rows of seats, some of them in elevated roundish platforms, vaguely lima bean shaped, suspended above the floor at different heights. The seats were pointed toward the north, and the floor in that section had a gradual downward slant. I think the rows of seats in the room itself might have pointed in a different direction, maybe toward the west.

None of the doors I could find led forward, or if they did were blocked to me in some way. Sometimes when I opened one it was filled in on the other side with wood, other times access was restricted and I was either forbidden or the door had a lock, possibly a combination one, and though I saw other people able to go through it, I couldn't. I had to go back through the door I came through and go around. I finally got to the front. I think maybe that's where I met the TV people again for the interview and where I asked about my glasses.

Wordzzle 80 - The alligator people

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 my entry number 24, for Wordzzle week 80.


Ten Word Challenge:

Charitable,
alligator,
tribute,
drunk,
slave,
preparation,
carrots,
mountainside,
propeller,
lark

He looked at his meal of alligator and carrots, and wondered again about the recipe. He normally wasn't a slave to such things, or for cooking in general, but he had felt a special affinity for this cookbook. It was a tribute to his will that he had gotten this far, though. He lived on a mountainside, and had gone through a great deal of trouble to get the alligator. That part about killing it with a propeller had been the most awkward, and the hardest. He didn't understand it at all, but it was what the recipe called for.

It had to have its mouth propped open and a lark in it, too. Feathers and all. He hoped it was just a decoration. He supposed he should have gotten the lark first. He had had to buy a large freezer to store the alligator in until he could get the lark. Then he had to dig a huge pit to cook the alligator in.

He had never been able to find a place that sold dead larks, so he had to buy a live one, then kill it himself. He hated to do that. It was harder in a way than killing the alligator. He finally drove out to a chicken farm and paid one of the workers to do it. He had boiled the lark, then, as called for in the recipe, trying not to damage the feathers too much.

He found in the end that he had eaten most of the carrots, waiting for the rest of the meal to be done, and had to go buy more. He was getting a little drunk, too, taking increasing sips of the wine that was supposed to go with it, as the project just kept getting longer and longer.

It was finally done, though. The alligator was laid out on the long table, specially purchased for this occasion, with the lark in its mouth and the carrots around it. To say that it had taken an awful lot of preparation was being charitable, but at least it was done. All done. Finally. Or was it?

He checked in the cookbook again to be sure. Hmmm. It said continued on the next page. He turned the page and read: "For those who have gotten this far, and completed everything according to the directions, congratulations! Dig in. For those who have simply read this far without doing anything, relax. It was just a joke. The real recipe is below..."


Mini Challenge:

chisel,
worship,
suicide,
organic,
plus

The chisel slowly committed suicide as he beat on it, trying to carve the stone. He finally had to stop again and grind a new edge on it. He had gotten a whole box of them very cheaply, from a man who was selling them from his trunk. Too bad the steel was so soft, but he guessed they had to cut corners somewhere for a price like that.

He had gotten some surprisingly inexpensive organic food from the man, too, a bunch of cans and microwave dinners. Too bad it turned out to have a lot of organic bugs in it, plus the occasional twig, but the price made it worth it. Art sales were slow now, and he really had to keep costs down.

Well, it looked like the chisel was sharp enough now. Time to get back to work. He paused and stared at the mostly completed statue with something akin to worship. This was going to be one of his better ones. He hadn't been able to afford a model, but things were turning out nicely anyway.

He was about to start again when he heard a groan. He quickly stepped forward and bopped the man again with the hammer, then carefully propped him back in position. Then he returned to the statue, and began to work again.


Mega challenge:

Charitable,
alligator,
tribute,
drunk,
slave,
preparation,
carrots,
mountainside,
propeller,
lark

chisel,
worship,
suicide,
organic,
plus

The excavation of the site of the alligator cult had been going on for years before they found the well with the fire pit at the bottom. It was covered with a heavy layer of decaying organic matter, and under that dirt. At the bottom of the pit they found a layer of ash several feet thick, mixed with human bones, the remains of the sacrifices.

An argument went on as to whether they were forced to jump into the fire, perhaps even being pushed, maybe even bound and thrown in, and whether they had been slaves, perhaps captured in a war, or, in a slightly more charitable interpretation, whether they had gone willingly, committing suicide. A large number of wine vessels were in the area, and perhaps they had fortified themselves with that, maybe even being thoroughly drunk. No one remained who knew of the cult, so it was hard to tell for sure what went on in it.

It was a difficult place to get to, high on a mountainside, and no one had even known it existed until ten years ago. It was not some place one went to on a lark, and it had been found purely by accident. A survey was being done back then of the plants in the area, and one of the people had tripped over a paving stone. Archeologists had eventually been brought out, but they didn't immediately realize the immensity of the find. Too much was hidden by the jungle. Even now, they just knew the outlines of it.

The discovery of the alligator statues and then the fire pit had been great finds, and had really stimulated interest in the area. They had also eventually found tunnels leading down to the fire pit, at the bottom of the well. They were probably for tending the fire and bringing in air to it, as well as cleaning it out afterwards. The cult-people had apparently been a little behind in their cleaning, which was good for the archeologists.

Whatever other rites and tributes might have occurred in the worship of the gods was largely unknown, though carrots were featured prominently in the stone carvings in the area, plus a few instances of a strange propeller-like design. Perhaps the ceremonies had something to do with the harvest, bloodthirsty alligator gods that had to be appeased for everything to turn out right.

A lot of research was being done now in preparation for a book on it, and eventually a TV special. A whole team of people were out there, not only archeologists but photographers and cameramen.

The head archeologist, who was also the writer of the upcoming book and an executive producer of the TV special, was sweeping away the dirt over a nearby stone walk, when he found that an inscription had been chiseled into it. The language was close enough to an ancient language that he knew that he could read most of it.

It said that the place was used for funerals, and cremations, and that the alligator statues were there because of memories of a time when the people used to live in a different area, near the ocean. The people actually worshipped carrots, instead. The propeller-like design was simply a representation of the odd furrows they used for the ceremonial plantings.

This was going to be a much less interesting book, and TV special. He looked around. No one had seen him. He quickly swept some dirt back over it. He would put something heavier over it later, maybe some of the paving stones. Maybe he would reveal it in another ten years, after he had gotten all the money he could out of the first story. Or maybe he would leave it to be found by later generations. Who knows, he might be able to work out some movie deals for a fictional adventurer/archeologist finding some of the alligator-cult people still living hidden in the forest, and the money might never end.

The truth was only what people thought it was anyway, at any given moment, and for many moments to come this truth would be only his.