What an exhausting work day. When a party spaceship breaks down in deep space for unknown reasons, my sister and I help to calm people, ration supplies, and send them out with their families, a few scant belongings, and enough fuel to make the passage to their home planets. Alial (my sister, whose name has been changed for security reasons, but which reasons I will get lazy about and refer to normally in the near future), is also a superhero, and sporadically appears and aids me in Dreamworld. Unfortunately, both of us have a rather botched sense of time, and quickly land on our street and trek up the hill to the Caldwell estate, where we are late for our friend Adnama's (also altered)18th birthday party. Her mother tells us it's been great, that she's just waiting for us to open the mysterious gift we sent--and Alial and I look at each other strangely. Gift? I think to her. What gift? We had forgotten about the party...we didn't have time to get one...
We race up the steps, both shouting at the same time, "Don't touch it!" and manage to crash through the door to Adnama's room just before she unwraps it, her hand hovering over the large pink package.
"Darling," I say quietly, "Have we ever given you a pink present before? You hate pink, remember..." Which, strangely enough, is our code for "Dangerous situation."
She looks down at the innocent looking gift. Alial walks over to the wall, unhitches the clock with her hand, and removes the batteries. In the brief silence, another ticking sound is revealed.
"How cliche!" laughs Adnama. "I wonder which villain is tracking us now." Because Adnama (also a super. There is a very random chain of events and reasons for all our powers, which I'll tell you about later) makes the best mental force fields, we leave her with the bomb and sneak outside to investigate the grounds for possible hiding villains. Which, it turns out, is quite easy. They were already coming for us...
As the dream switches perspective, a leering man cowers behind the neighbor's hedge, watching Alial and I progress down the pasture below Adnama's house. He adjusts his spectacles, presses a button on a control panel hung around his neck, and whispers into a mike, "Subjects in sight. First test initiated."
As Alial and I amble down the hill, a small girl suddenly steps from behind a tree in front of us in the pasture. She appears to be the girl scout mum and I saw yesterday night at Fred Meyer's, who mum bought two boxes of cookies from for $4.00, because she liked her singing. We stop short, and I gently query, "Hello... I remember you from the store. Are you lost? You shouldn't be out alone away from home, it's almost sunset-"
the little girl looks up and smiles, her eyes hooded and vacant, and pulls out a pocket knife.
"I'm not alone." As we look up, glancing around, shadows detach from all over the grounds- all people from our lives, passing acquaintances. All hostile, armed, and coming our way.
"I'll take the west side, you take the east grounds, we'll regroup at the top of the hill!" I shout, running for the shelter of the barn as shots ring out from an old man armed with an M-16, a guy I remember from dad's shooting club. A tall young boy and dark-haired girl pursuing me, I dart full-speed up the side of a metal shed. The girl, Stephanie from my AP Art class, vaults up the side, lands on her feet, and kicks me twice in the side before I can even catch my breath. I sarcastically retort, "My kidneys? Great idea-- but you missed!" and jump into a spinning kick, knocking her senseless off the roof of the shed. *Twinge of guilt. Who knows if these people are programmed, robotic, brainwashed, coerced?...Yet I keep running on the ground, keep playing in the heat of the game against their plans, not flying, not using magic, because I feel that we are being watched and it would be wise not to reveal too many of our secrets. Besides, this should be easy. We've fought harder battles.
Eventually, whomever observed us seems to have enough, for our pursuers suddenly vanish, as if merely holograms. It is dark, and we return inside, exhausted: only to find that Adnama is missing. We have played into their hands all along. I should have used magic...
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Parasites...Germs...Viruses...Oh, Yum!
Ya know one of those days when you wake up and the world feels upside down and moldy? Well. . .
I'm in a mall at night, lost as usual but helping an old lady cross the food court through intertwining escalators, when I feel a strange twinge in my throat, a little tickle, the urge to cough. Not wanting to be rude, I resist until I can make it to the bathroom. Alone. I look in the mirror and discover the truth in my gaping mouth. My throat is covered in white and yellow fuzz, the result of some bizarre fungus, and floating in black-red saliva pools, zooming about, are spiky, multicolored molecular compositions of super-contagious, easily breakable macro-viruses. Frightened, I start coughing them out into the sink, but they refuse to go down with the rushing current, bobbing on the surface, waiting for their ominous escape. A woman opens the door to the bathroom, and I try to yell, "Stay away!" but only a gurgle comes out. The viruses, sentient and attuned to the sound of new prey, rush towards her through the air, unimaginably swift. Contamination is inevitable, but perhaps I can find an antidote...
I experiment with different mental techniques. Finally victorious, I emerge upon a screaming mall populace, fluid everywhere, the disease spreading. I must have picked it up while hitchiking... I telekinetically lock down the stores, and rush to and fro mentally transferring the cure in a Vulcanesque mind-meld, because this device seems preferable and because it makes me feel part of a sci-fi novel. After hours of painstaking cure (how do other heroes always seem to instantly reverse bad situations?) I emerge outside, only to find one macro virus left, waiting for me. It is quite large, compiled of a strange DNA, and able to assume human form. It launches a parked car at me, I create a force field, and the battle of the beings is initiated. We chase each other in speeding cars down long avenues, hide behind trees with plots and counterplots, but eventually I kill the virus in the most simple (it would angrily declare a cop-out) of ways: I wake up.
(Only, in this case waking up didn't really help to ameliorate the original fear, because when I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror and assure myself that everything was fine, there WERE little white spots of viral infection growing in the back of my throat...Very tiny ones though. It turns out, I have a lysine deficiency. Every once in a while, the symptoms return, and I have to take these giant white pills packed with essential amino acid stuff to make the viruses go away...Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.)
I'm in a mall at night, lost as usual but helping an old lady cross the food court through intertwining escalators, when I feel a strange twinge in my throat, a little tickle, the urge to cough. Not wanting to be rude, I resist until I can make it to the bathroom. Alone. I look in the mirror and discover the truth in my gaping mouth. My throat is covered in white and yellow fuzz, the result of some bizarre fungus, and floating in black-red saliva pools, zooming about, are spiky, multicolored molecular compositions of super-contagious, easily breakable macro-viruses. Frightened, I start coughing them out into the sink, but they refuse to go down with the rushing current, bobbing on the surface, waiting for their ominous escape. A woman opens the door to the bathroom, and I try to yell, "Stay away!" but only a gurgle comes out. The viruses, sentient and attuned to the sound of new prey, rush towards her through the air, unimaginably swift. Contamination is inevitable, but perhaps I can find an antidote...
I experiment with different mental techniques. Finally victorious, I emerge upon a screaming mall populace, fluid everywhere, the disease spreading. I must have picked it up while hitchiking... I telekinetically lock down the stores, and rush to and fro mentally transferring the cure in a Vulcanesque mind-meld, because this device seems preferable and because it makes me feel part of a sci-fi novel. After hours of painstaking cure (how do other heroes always seem to instantly reverse bad situations?) I emerge outside, only to find one macro virus left, waiting for me. It is quite large, compiled of a strange DNA, and able to assume human form. It launches a parked car at me, I create a force field, and the battle of the beings is initiated. We chase each other in speeding cars down long avenues, hide behind trees with plots and counterplots, but eventually I kill the virus in the most simple (it would angrily declare a cop-out) of ways: I wake up.
(Only, in this case waking up didn't really help to ameliorate the original fear, because when I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror and assure myself that everything was fine, there WERE little white spots of viral infection growing in the back of my throat...Very tiny ones though. It turns out, I have a lysine deficiency. Every once in a while, the symptoms return, and I have to take these giant white pills packed with essential amino acid stuff to make the viruses go away...Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.)
Murder and Marriage
I've had many other dreams like this: vague, incoherent, powerless, relative... first, my sister and my best friend were possessed and killing friends and relatives, and I eventually had to strangle them to stop them from killing. No imprisonment would force their minds to relinquish their strange pursuit, save Death itself. I cried upon waking, but even more so because the second half of the tale involved a lot of people I knew lined up in a foyer to get married- high schoolers bustling happily into pairs with no reason or rationality, happily sealing their fates with a kiss and some paperwork as they grabbed their diplomas. Everything was planned out robotically...I detest such horrific dream proceedings, out of my control. I feel they weaken and demean my true nature, a pretense of Reality leaking into my lair of secret thoughts and wonderful dreams.
Still, even negatively charged dreams present some hope. The last few students to pass through the gates looked around them, as if sensing something askew, and I prayed that they would think for themselves soon after, and then departed to fight more noble battles than judgements on the life choices of others.
Still, even negatively charged dreams present some hope. The last few students to pass through the gates looked around them, as if sensing something askew, and I prayed that they would think for themselves soon after, and then departed to fight more noble battles than judgements on the life choices of others.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
And So, It Happens...
Well, here I am again. Hello.... um...
Life continues. That's just it. There are so many things that have happened here, in myriad worlds of imagination and dreams. Looking back from all I know, reading the journal I originally scribbled these in, it is strange to see how much and how inconsistently I have changed. Probably the result of unusual dinners. Anyhow--what I mean is, so much of my life is spent here that at times I lose touch with that other place, Reality, and merely dwell within the pages of crazy neural eclipses.
So, from many perspectives and ages and immaturities, you may follow the stories I am now chronicling, exactly as I lived them. They don't all make much "sense." They are all more vivid than breath on a snowy morning, or kittens attacking string, or high school finals, to my brain. Here is the next, exactly as I first printed it, though others will change, I know, under the scrutiny of an older eye.
"The Unexpected"
A regular crime-fighting Nancy Drew, Kate Summers finds herself running for her life. When one day she discovers the secret warehouse full of stolen SpyWere technology, sneaking away and reporting to the police, she is assailed by the evil mastermind of the place, who plants a promise as he is taken away: "Before four days and four years are out, I will find you and kill you for what you have done." (The guy really liked fours)...He tries over the years to gas her, drown her, strangle her, explode her...but as time continues, he disappears, and Kate forgets it all. She discovers by chance a world of fairies and nymphs, and feels at home flying through the forest and singing with animals, away from the foreboding of humans and taxes. Then, one day, an injured young man stumbles across her forest home. He is lost. Kate decides to help him, and over a very short time the two forge a deep, close bond--but one day, as they are walking through a new meadow, Kate falls into the spiked pit of a trans-dimensionally traveling poacher, slicing her thigh deeply. The young man tries to help, desperately, asking her name (though no one knows why he didn't think to ask before)-- then reels back in shock. He is the evil old man, given a second chance at life--but she has no such thing, and fulfills his age-old promise on the cold forest floor. Until, the man, truly sorrowed by the debt of his actions, gives up his second chance to restore her life--and the magic regenerates them both. They live in the forest forever, telling stories to the birds and trees of the Worlds of Men.
Life continues. That's just it. There are so many things that have happened here, in myriad worlds of imagination and dreams. Looking back from all I know, reading the journal I originally scribbled these in, it is strange to see how much and how inconsistently I have changed. Probably the result of unusual dinners. Anyhow--what I mean is, so much of my life is spent here that at times I lose touch with that other place, Reality, and merely dwell within the pages of crazy neural eclipses.
So, from many perspectives and ages and immaturities, you may follow the stories I am now chronicling, exactly as I lived them. They don't all make much "sense." They are all more vivid than breath on a snowy morning, or kittens attacking string, or high school finals, to my brain. Here is the next, exactly as I first printed it, though others will change, I know, under the scrutiny of an older eye.
"The Unexpected"
A regular crime-fighting Nancy Drew, Kate Summers finds herself running for her life. When one day she discovers the secret warehouse full of stolen SpyWere technology, sneaking away and reporting to the police, she is assailed by the evil mastermind of the place, who plants a promise as he is taken away: "Before four days and four years are out, I will find you and kill you for what you have done." (The guy really liked fours)...He tries over the years to gas her, drown her, strangle her, explode her...but as time continues, he disappears, and Kate forgets it all. She discovers by chance a world of fairies and nymphs, and feels at home flying through the forest and singing with animals, away from the foreboding of humans and taxes. Then, one day, an injured young man stumbles across her forest home. He is lost. Kate decides to help him, and over a very short time the two forge a deep, close bond--but one day, as they are walking through a new meadow, Kate falls into the spiked pit of a trans-dimensionally traveling poacher, slicing her thigh deeply. The young man tries to help, desperately, asking her name (though no one knows why he didn't think to ask before)-- then reels back in shock. He is the evil old man, given a second chance at life--but she has no such thing, and fulfills his age-old promise on the cold forest floor. Until, the man, truly sorrowed by the debt of his actions, gives up his second chance to restore her life--and the magic regenerates them both. They live in the forest forever, telling stories to the birds and trees of the Worlds of Men.
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