In a weird mood. I guess that’s normal when you’re about to leave for a funeral in thirty minutes. Brain’s been a little funky this week.
I’ve been having a lot of odd dreams lately, but this one had a certain… I don’t know. Sense of despair that I thought would go well with your early morning Friday coffee.
The dream started with me walking down a claustrophobically narrow cobblestone street very early in the morning. It was lined with old, crooked four-story buildings, with old, crooked signs hanging from them. Everything was a different shade of Depression Blue and came in through some kind of sick Lovecraft fog. It was like Tim Burton was directing my dream. And I hate Tim Burton.
Some old bum approached me. He was one of those cliched “wise man” bums that pop up in movies from time to time to help guide the protagonist toward a goal, offering Yoda-like wisdom along the way. The kind of knowledge that can only be learned by drinking canned heat while attending a masters course in the university of life.
He told me that he needed something from me, and was very insistent about it, beckoning me along with one of his bony, half-exposed fingers. The rest of the finger was hidden in the knuckle-length gloves that cliched “wise man” bums always wear in movies. His neck was wrapped in a thick scarf, and he was wearing a hat which hid his face. It was so unoriginal.
But I followed him. He wanted my help, and if nothing else, Rory Blyth is a Friend and Helper of All Mankind. I went. I followed him down the crooked streets until we came to a house. He opened the door, we entered, and ascended a staircase which was in such a condition that I thought it might have been purchased second-hand and fitted into the building using hammers and anger. It wasn’t exactly in tip-top staircase shape. As staircases went, it would have been at home among some of the lesser Mayan ruins, if staircases like this were the sort of thing people encountered at Mayan ruins.
At the top was a room filled with people, each looking like a strange cartoon caricature. They had strange, disproportionate body parts. Heads were too big, arms were too long, and shirts were sometimes just a little too striped. From a physiological and fashionable standpoint, the place was a mess.
It was, as I came to understand in that dream way where no real information was transmitted, a boarding house. What kind I did not know. I could only guess by the actions of the freaky mutants around me. Each was engaged in some useless, but utterly disturbing activity.
Like the two “women” who were putting a cat in the oven. I couldn’t watch that for too long. I happen to be a “cat person,” and I don’t like watching them being roasted alive.
Not that what I turned to was any better.
Looking away, and standing among a throng of freaky-freakheads, another freakaholic walked in the room. His shirt was, like some of those I mentioned earlier, a bit too striped. Red and white, alternating on the horizontal. That alone should have been a problem, but he went further.
He held his hands up, balled in fists, and then, through his foot-thick glasses that looked as though they must have weighed several hundred pounds, said, “Do you know what’s so wonderful about insects?”
None of us did. Couldn’t really come up with any redeeming qualities. I mean, they must do something good, but for the most part, they’re ugly and tend to keep their skeletons on the outsides of their bodies, which doesn’t sit well with me.
“It’s the sound they make when you squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze them!”
And then, as he started to tighten his fists, I could see that his hands were filled with cockroaches. Dozens of them. And as he crushed them, they made terrible noises. Like the noises that other people make when they’re eating cereal (I never mind the noises I make while eating cereal, but I find that other people slurp much too much and crunch way too loudly).
Liquid oozed out through his fingers and dripped onto the floor. It was white and viscous, a little thicker than motor oil.
Then he started throwing them at me. All these crushed cockroaches.
And I danced the OCD dance as I tried to avoid the bodies of the murdered insects. I was shreaking. No particular interest in having any of that on my nice duds.
I ran out of the room and started talking to some girl. Every few sentences, she used an acronym. I don’t remember exactly what the acronym was (although it could easily be deduced from the evidence I am about to supply), but when I asked her about it, she said that it referred to the boarding house and the people in it.
“It stands for ‘Not the Smartest People On Earth’,” she said.
And that’s when terror set in. That wise bum from the beginning? He was a red herring. He wasn’t leading me to wisdom – he was taking me away from it. And here I was, stuck in this house full of freaks who cook cats and squash cockroaches. The eyes of Rory Blyth had seen situations more ideal than these.
I wanted to run from the house, but there was a sudden flurry of gasping and ooh-ing and ah-ing. I looked out a window and saw that there was a tsunami rolling in.
“Hey,” I thought to myself. “That’s some pretty good timing. Here I am, stuck in a house that has been set aside to contain stupid people, and disaster is about to hit it. Sweet.”
And disaster did hit.
It hit the streets, it hit the buildings, and it hit our walls. The lower floors filled with water. I looked out another window for the cobblestone streets I had come along, and could no longer see them. The city had instantaneously been converted into a Venice-like town that was lacking in all the qualities that make Venice charming.
That’s when I realized I was stuck. The last thought I had before waking up was to drown myself. It was either death or being stuck in a house of really stupid people.
Which I think would have been the right decision.
Anyway, TGIF! :)