[Dream] Boy and a Girl

How often should a dream be clear in its recollection. If a dream recalled is a dream both vivid and clear-cut... is it a dream recalled correctly to begin with? They come from the ether, chaotic.

A boy and a girl were on a journey to find civilization. Walking through the woods there was a fork where the path they took went on and on and the land slowly was elevated and the light was golden filtered through the leaves... the other path was dark and the leaves dried and wilted and things were... off, they were. This path was never touched on, and thank goodness. It was ominous, bereft of rise and then, very slowly downwards, the light seeming darker and a fog rising from the earth...

 A young deer had four antlers, as was common of his species--two on the head, and two where the whiskers should be! But when I say he had four, I mean he actually had but one and a half: one antler had been shorn from his temple, another from his face, and a third half-snapped off from his face as well. He was ashamed to return to his people, but not ashamed with what he'd become, so, smiling and slumped against a tree, he touched the girl's shoulder and became one with the boy. How this happened I do not know, but where once there was the boy and then there also happened to be the deer and a girl, there now was the boy and girl together and sometimes the boy was the deer and then the deer again was the boy.

 They'd been following a river, the boy and girl. Alarmed is how I’d describe them, as the water had turned a frightful shade with a sickeningly rainbow sheen, and then green. The river life would have gone from fish and many-legged crustaceans and insects with gills and whiskers, to slimy eyeless things like worms and leeches, and mosquito larvae too, and finally... nothing. The pair came upon a sewage plant, right there on the river, huge pipes the size and width of houses vomiting filth into the stream! At once I was overcome with premonition: a shaking, sweating, pale-skinned, red-eyed boy he had become, with a limping, wretched leg and dark veins. A scalpel slices his foot, and at once a gush of pusses white yellow and red, stinking terribly but causing him great relief in its release.

 He steps on a shard of grimy glass. It punctures his shoe and slides deep into his foot. The girl screams, he winces, touches her shoulder, and pulls it out in a quick jerk that has him hissing through his teeth. They continue.

 Huge cement walls rise, unscalable, on either side. One such wall they've got to their right, and the one to the left is blocked by the river, green and grizzly and dangerous to behold, with the corpses of household products floating swiftly by, saran wraps, table legs, turkey bones and more. The speed at which these things did fly alerted the two of the swift current beneath the motionless sludge... and the sudden end to the pier they'd walked along showed they had no choice but to swim through it to the other side, boy's open wound and all.

     "It's okay," he reassured Girl, "Think. A structure like this? Man-Made. That means... civilization must be nearby, right?"

They enter the waters, start to swim... but they never make it across... the water shifts and churns, and rising from the depths, is... something!!

. . .

The sub-mariner greets the boy and girl with quick words of concern and a helping hand. The struggling, wincing boy helps him with the girl first, and then he himself is brought inside. The man and his assistant are speaking to the children, consoling them, crooning and cooing and comforting, and once again the submarine is submerged, chugging through the waters that shift from green to brown to crystal clear, with that slight, slight fog to indicate a balanced pH.

Flash forward. Evening. The boy is healthy again, and the girl catches him just as he leaves the town.

     "You need to stay here, okay? That's why we came... you belong here. As for me, this is where I belong. I need to travel, to return to the woods." And so he does. Last I see of him he's reclining against a log, arms crossed and cradling his head as a pillow, smiling as a beam of light dances across his face.

 Now, a teacher is irate that the class does not participate. One boy, a skinny athletic blonde, has been answering all her questions, and so she gives all her candy to him! I'm annoyed, naturally, but could really care less about the candy. It’s her attitude what’s rotten, that teacher’s attitude. I walk over and deposit my mints to his pile of Tootsie Rolls while no one is looking--I don't want them anyway, don't care for stupid candies. My next class is in the city, it seems, a little cafe beside the arcade. Curious....

 A big, oafish looking guy toddles up to the cafe entrance, hair in a balding tonsure, and hesitates rapping his knuckles on the doorframe. He gets over it and does so, rapping his knuckles on the doorframe, and gaping when a beautiful woman and tired looking man answer, sliding the slat of an eyehole open to consider him. In retrospect I don’t know how the woman was beautiful, but she was. Like, Marilyn Manson kind of beautiful, with golden curls and haughty eyes that seemed to both look at you and through you, pinning you naked to the wall and then piercing that wall and continuing for miles, a powerful gaze. The man was tired.

     "The class isn't for another five minutes!" the tired man says.

The dumb guy stands, and stares.

     "Well, off you go then!" The tired man says.

The dumb guy stands, and nods.

     "Darling, you need to learn how to walk," the beautiful woman whimpers.

The dumb guy turns, and walks into an arcade.

 Suddenly the tired man becomes a startled man, a confused man, and finally an outraged man. Across the street stands a smiling student, a shocked student, and then simultaneously a student terrified and a student disappeared from the dusty old window behind which he stood. The professor tears after him, sprinting 'cross the street and barging into his daughter's abode that sits across his classroom. She is naked beneath the bed sheet, and there, by the man's feet, cowering in the corner, is the student who looks rather like Michael Cera in a tie.

 Man sits Cera down and starts to interrogate what he did with his daughter. "Don't worry don't worry! You won't have to get her checked for things if you don't want to!" He exclaims, then, as the man's eyes bulge, smiles, leans in, and adds, "I mean, I'm fairly certain she has them now, if not before."

 The man looks as though he is about to hit Cera, but now his daughter touches his arm, face stained with tears, an exclaims that "Father, I am with  child!" He deflates, and looks to turn a single shade of grey.

     "With this... inferior specimen!? But... we were to be selective with your breeding! I'd given you a partner and everything! With this… this boy's genes, your child shall never attain a superior neck!

     "Father, my 'partner'..."

 In the corner stands an elegant swan, elegantly smoking an elegantly crafted cigar and impatient by the elegant bed. Elegant elegant elephant elega--wait...

 A singing mouse has won the hearts of the animals of the city. As he leads the guard dogs and clever cats of the houses on wild chases through their homes, so too does he lead them in magnificent duets! A grinning, laughing dog with a moppish face barks in a booming bass as the mouse jumps and spins and flutters and flips about the house, discussing the fineries of cheese and how even those don't lead to his having an obsession with the stuff. Other animals listen on radios, hootin' and a howlin'--and hollerin' too, of course-- a few meowing as well.

 Doctors Robotnic and Doom sit in their underground lair, knuckles on their chins, wondering why none of their animal minions are reporting in. A bunch of colorful, sugary tweets land from their rooftop perches onto the ground below, from which rises suddenly a perfect circle of grass and dirt, the dark void beneath sucking them all in at once. Their squeaking and chittering all at once as they clog the thing, puffed out and smooshed together, eyes wide and little sugary beaks working open and shut made me laugh even in the dream. ‘Twas quite a sight!

 Now, we've super heroes and villains alike attending a party in a dilapidated, run-down house that is more a shack, a shed, a shanty than a home, though it is rather homely indeed. Three stories tall, with dusty windows and a little lean and creaky stairs.

 Superman and the Penguin are chatting alone upstairs, and wouldn't you know it is a friendly little trap! Other villains enter through the door, tie him down, and discuss their evil plans. Penguin exclaims 'nyeeeesssssss, brilliant!", and then this brief scenario repeats itself two or so times again.

 Now I'm in my backyard, though it’s hardly recognizable as such. My '1' key is tied to grenades, '2' a pair of dual machetes, and '3' a gun that is almost out of ammo. The zombie soldiers are approaching in the dense fog that gives my surroundings a sense of death. MY life has become a survival horror videogame.  One is"that is, one of the skeletons"is in red, rusted armor, leather straps dangling and rotted and the whole thing nearly ready to collapse at any moment. I hit Mouse3, hoping to execute a shove command, but... the game won't have it! Either the range is short of the button is wrong or the universe is just gitched because it won't let me shove. So I try to throw one of the machetes at him, but instead I'm just blocking.  Attempts to attack result in a very pathetic, short swing that doesn't register with any hitbox despite the fact I'm practically able to make out with the grinning effigy of death if I so desired, which... Well...

 The one that manifested as a shadow on the horizon came with heavy breathing and a sense of some intention, foul as murder, and far more lewd.

 Finally was me, collapsed first in my backyard, and then as I woke, more and more into mine own bed.  In bed I was late for work, and in the yard I was late for the dentist. I could overhear mom vaguely in both locales, discussing with my sisters that she was to deliver me to 'the dentist', and have my dreams reprogrammed, refreshed, me pacified, and their control maintained. I was scared... and then I was awake!

The end.

Reviews

[Tenderest Talk]

I love this.

[Cal Iginis]

This is a dream? My god I can barely remember breakfast much less a dream! But the structure and sheer fantasy of it are staggering. I would love to see this reworked into a proper story. But for now I'm more than happy just experiencing it!