I was a bird.

Free, but caged...

Pulling with my talons, I save an old man who escaped from the dinner party but got caught by his borrowed handkerchief in an invisible net of thorns in the trees behind my house. He was almost forced to distill life in a tricky waterfall, almost shot many times while he ran from the tea and crumpets, ran from doilies and nice summer tablecloths and the fizzy neon drinks that accompany Dinner Parties at rest homes. "Once you attend one 'o them doozies," he informs me gravely, "Ya know yer done fer. That's why I'm shovin' off. Gonna take to the forest again, like when I was young..." He shoulders his ragged pack, following his swooping Mentor through the deep ferns, off to learn the ways of an obscure falcon clan. I follow him there in the forest, pursuing though I know I cannot truly break free of my societal bonds, and ask his falcon mentor to guide me as well. I come back changed.

I wander the streets, telling hungry children the secret of humanity, of its many different shapes, their value and significance. "We are like any other species," I whisper sagely as I watch a beetle climb up a tree. "We just want love and a home. That is all we need- not progress- not glory or splendor either. The world around us already progresses in its natural way. It is already beautiful. We need not bustle endlessly to and fro to change it. Life would be so simple... if we just stopped to enjoy things the way they are."

 I create in the middle of the town square a towering chocolate cake, for all to eat and enjoy, because there is no reason why I should not, and every reason why I should.

I realize there is NO reason why I have to have a concrete shape and personality throughout my entire existence, and flee, leaving my body below to disintegrate into tiny pebbles, rolling their way to the seashore, thousands of miles away.

The Nose

I'm in the library, studying various graphic novel and manga art styles, when out of the blue a boy sits down next to me, leans over, and kisses my nose.

Naturally-- I freak out.

I dash backwards up the bookshelf, cowering at the top with full force-field threat-repulsion engaged, which knocks off some of the sculptures on display, but I reach out and catch them with the back of my heel, before realizing what a stupid position I'm in...

"Interesting," remarks the bespectacled boy, who makes some scratch marks on a yellow legal pad. "Even more of a reaction than I expected."

"Who are you?" I whisper angrily, coming slowly down off of the top shelf, trying to ignore the dragonness incarnate in the nearest librarian which has woken from slumber. "Why would you invade my personal space like that?!"

"I'm doing a research project," the boy sniffs. "On the instinctual reactions of fifth-level dejenerated primate derivative species. Wouldn't expect you to understand. You've only got four dimensions here, poor dear."

You can see why I am in a huff. I realize, though, as you may have, that huffiness merely confirms this know-it-all's suspicions that my species is a coarse, dejenerate lot who is far too easily riled. I shall attempt to prove him wrong...

"You can see, sir, that my initial shock at your actions has subsided, and I am feeling much better and more able to answer any questions you might have about my race or home planet in a...suitable...manner. But first, would you care for some refreshment? Tea, perhaps?" I gesture to the table, and it floats closer, setting itself down between us. The librarian has gotten bored watching and goes to reorganize romantic novels.

"Ah, some perception of class still lingers, I see," the thing I call a boy notes, inclining his head sagely. "Perhaps you aren't all as primitive as I first assumed. Though your traffic courtesies are absolutely atrocious." I glance outside the window at the piles of dead small animals littering the sides of the road. Well, the speed limit is only 150 mph around here. I don't really see much to complain about, it's a small and peaceful town, but...

"The Mayor says that when teleports are invented, then we won't need to use streetcars anymore, and the world will become a whole lot safer."

He laughs outright.

"Do you really think that will stop your people from being violent? Far from it, dear human. Your kind will invent any reason to slaughter more of itself or any other thing that moves and breathes. If it's not traffic, it'll be coffee...a terrible invention, yet it shows up consistently in all lower-level planetary systems."

Drat! He must have heard about the Coffee Wars...not the best part in human history, I'll admit, but far in the past...We've done so much good since then...

We discuss politics and reality TV and hiking for awhile, then I show the alien boy a few "magic tricks," which entice him because he is from a very logical dimension and cannot understand how I contrived them (I do not waste my time letting him know they are actually real), then he says goodbye to go write his paper, jumps into a computer screen, and disappears.

The Virtual Museum

There's a new exhibit in town- a sort of traveling, carnival-esque museum.

For a price, you can go back into history to experience events as recorded in the memories scavenged from corpses discovered in recent archaeological digs...

Becca and Laila and Amanda and I decide to explore it. When we pay our entrance fee, the Gatemaster hands us our brown ticket, and gives us all a long, somber look. "Make sure you don't lose it. It is your minds' passage in, and out, of the Past..."

We get into a Time-Jeep with our proscribed "tour guide," and off we drive into a rickety metal chamber. The doors close, and darkness reigns: then, the attendant flips a glowing switch on the Jeep's dashboard, and we careen backwards into the path of a prehistoric rainforest.

Prehistoric in the sense that it ISN'T from Earth- it's from an older, far more dangerous world. Turns out we've just entered the scavenged memory of an alien who crash-landed on Earth after a somewhat...turbulent adventure on a jungle planet.

And, yes- the moment we leave the jeep, flying octopi land on our heads.

The tour guide cowers behind his car door, crying frenzied phrases such as, "This wasn't in the contract! They told us we would see harmless Neanderthals! This isn't the history I signed up for..." 

Amanda, grabbing the spare crowbar from the Jeep's aid kit for protection against the octopi, replies: "Yeah, well, that wasn't how the Earth was created anyway! Besides, you're here now, so you may as well get used to it." She tosses him a lose tree limb. "Defend yourself."

We forge deeper into nowhere, thwacking at brambles thicker than mustaches, and generally having a good time. Becca starts up a rambling shanty of her own invention, and we sing along to the tune the way we made up songs for Mary when she couldn't come to Lost Lake that one year...

Man. Who'd miss the chance to experience an alien planet through the memories of a deceased savage?

She does have theater practice, though...

Which, in dreams I've had of what can happen in it, is a story for a whole novel...

Murder at the Horse Race

I am indulging tonight in a little mental musical theatre...

I find myself, at the beginning of the dream, sitting in the top stand of a stadium overlooking a freshly groomed racetrack, and beyond the starting gates stomp furious, excited horses, eager to break free of their confines and race the wind in their souls.

So naturally I think of My Fair Lady and, willing myself into a gloriously striped outfit, wiggle down through the crowds to the front of the stadium.

The starting gun is raised- anticipation is high, the crowds in a politely escalating rapture, waiting for that moment of defining:

BANG!

And just as the first shot is fired, horses speeding down the dusty fare, a man falls from the stands onto the ground below, his form laying there, limp- and before anyone can save him- the horses rush past, a fury of hooves...and he is trampled.

The crowds go silent.

The jockeys slow their mounts moments after they notice the fall, but it only takes seconds to do the sort of damage which now clutters the field....

Why would a man just fall into the track?

I rush down to the body, pushing through the circle of spectators which has gathered, and bend down to examine him. There are the typical signs of pulverization, but the body is not as warm as it should be, the blood not as plentiful, for such a recent wound. Why would someone kill a man, then go to such lengths to publicly disguise it in such a poor way? Perhaps for need of an alibi? Strange...

The police inspector shuffles his way through the crowd, edging out towards the body, and steps with a crunch on something I had missed-

There, near the hand of the outstretched body, lies a small silver locket.

As I converse with the inspector, looking for clues to solve this murder mystery, a high, lilting music starts up from somewhere in the stands. The crowd turns around, searching, for it seems to be coming from several places at once, the voice of a young boy-- but as we turn our attention back to the body- it is gone!

At first I assume sleight of hand, and look wildly for a paunchy person in an overcoat shuffling the body away from the scene of the crime- but no one could've escaped the circle without being noticed. It has to be magic...

I try to dig deeper into my mind to find out what exactly would be required to work this kind of trickery, when a shout clear as dawn distracts my attention:

"KILL ALL THE INFIDELS!!!"

And flying horsemen leap over the stadium and onto the crowd below. In the chaos, the story is changing...
People running in waistcoats and frocks melt into turbaned camel herders, as desert sands whip in fury around our heads. The attackers are wolves now, ravenous and wily, and as I edge into a more defensive position, I realize with chagrin- I am still wearing my Audrey Hepburn dress.

I am about to change when the inspector, knees shaking, comes up behind me, and putting a hand on my shoulder, quavers: "It's all changin', miss- I don't understand, what's going on? What foul demon brought us here? How are we to retain our sanity?"

"Well," I reply, hitching up my skirts and peering out into the violence-infested storm: "We can pray that our sanity looks after itself. Right now, we've got worse things to worry about. Let's try to find some shelter."

As it turns out, we were transported to the outskirts of a village near a river. As night falls and the wind gradually lessens, we sneak down to the water and wash off the crust of sand caked on our skin and clothes. I'm still buggered, though. I really wanted to solve that case.

"We were lucky that wind didn't take the flesh off our bones, my dear," the inspector pants, flopping on the bank of the river and mopping his brow with a relatively clean handkerchief.

I am about to respond, when the scene changes again, and we've barely had time to catch our breath when we are hurled into a maelstrom rising from the river, suddenly engulfed in a sea of swimming horses, saddles on their backs but no riders...

As we struggle to stay afloat, a staircase appears in the middle of the whirlpool, spiraling slowly upward into the darkening night sky. We swim towards it, latching onto the banister and pulling ourselves up out of the deadly sweep of the waves. My dress is really getting quite ruined. I glance upward to the top of the staircase, which grows ever distant- and catch a flash of light; something is dangling off the banister. I gather my heavy skirts and, wringing them out as I run, make my way to the top where I find:

The silver locket from the dead man's hand.

Perhaps this isn't a physical murder at all. Perhaps this is a part of someone else's mind- someone that enjoys watching horse races and knows the sea- someone that just recently received bad news that shocked them to the core...enough that they feel people should know they are dying inside, besieged by horrible thoughts- but no one can see the mark of their pain...

I lift the locket from the banister, running my fingers over it.

I find the catch, and open it.

Bees on Beach Rocks

There is an island in the world where the dolphins don't come.


Among the rocks there are no tourists laden with fishy treats, nor nutrients or plants to attract fish so far out from the continental shelf to seek them.

There is only a cave, a boy, and the Bees.

Alone among the rocks, the boy tends to the hives, day in, day out, making sure they are perfectly structured, well stocked with glucose, warm and well-swept and safe from the dangers of the outside world--

And in return the bees, on their long seasonal journeys to the Lands where Flowers Grow, pluck for him every year a single lily that grows near to the Fountain of Life.

When I found him there, the boy with no name and a love for the sea, he begged me not to tell of the island and the work that he did.

"People would not understand. The bees have warned me that they would try to take me away, that they would lock me up or put me in a strange home, and that people would hurt each other trying to get to the Nectar of Life which keeps spirit and body joined. They do not know that it is only bees that have the power to attain that nectar and turn it to a palatable form, else it brings Death instead...  It is best for them not to find it at all. Far better to live a normal life and not know such things even exist."

The bees on that island are the last hope for mankind.

The work that they do, the sugars they spin into hexagonal shapes, are a tangible part of the tapestry, the matrix, the coding of the inherent patterns of the universe....

If they were to be discovered, they would likely be destroyed.

Pests.

Then the universe would shift once more- diversity would be lost, in little ways- and the thread would slowly start to unravel...

There are many places like this in the world- mostly underground.
Some are frenzied dens of calculated chaos, others peaceful willow-reeds of continuity, some balanced hives of activity. Together, they keep the realm of imagination intact, so that when one's mind wanders off into ever-expanding territories of thought, it does fall of the edge and into the Abyss.

Circus Reasoning

Days are passing by like acrobats on time-traveling trapezes...

One morning, I wake up to brightness glancing off my eyelids: a circus spotlight.... murmured voices... announcing the next act.....
 and open my eyes to find myself surrounded by surgeons on an operating table.

The surgeons in their long white coats and masks, their latex gloves and bizarre metal instruments...

They are clowns, of course. I can see them truly now, spinning round the ring on miniature BMWs, performing farce operations- and the fans, laughing as bloody paint splatters the stands...

I look down the table, fascinated by the sheer amount of red.

Isn't my blood supposed to be a different color?
This must not be mine, then.

A doctor hands me something, wrapped in gauzy cloth.

It squirms as I hold it tight in my arms, and I pull apart the covering to reveal:  myself.

"A history of the world, my child..." a voice echoes somewhere overhead:

I peer into the brightness above me, and am transported.

Images flash before my neurons:

women in fire dancing heroes fighting agents listening prince hamlet's speech fairy trees running vertically over zebras escaped convict old man little boy friends searching water sword-stalking smiling cats batting through mouse holes a rich man enslaved a guest blowing on his hot dinner tears stained glass windows and a ballgown opera...

I snap awake.

My skin falls off in the department store, and beneath it they see that I am just a female human baby, and laugh with shuddering sound waves that bring me to my knees.

I try to make sense of the judgement, but there is no reason- so the Ring Master hands me a mask and I step onstage.

The crowds are cheering and clapping and I feel them inside of me, so many voices beating incessantly at the door.

I let them in, and begin to fly...