Dream: Literarily Weird

I'm almost embarrassed to post this just due to the level of weird, but I have written before about the majestic awkwardness of my dreams and it's not quite flying around on a waffle. I also kept waking up overnight, so I kind of had dream vignettes that lead up to some fuckery that will probably surprise you or not.


1.

"Are you wearing a skirt?" My mom gives me a weird look as she lounges on a large sofa in an art gallery. The towering walls are crowded with framed artwork. (It's basically like the gallery rooms from Penny Dreadful where Dorian Gray hangs out.)

I look down and pull at the light blue fabric and immediately recognize what I'm wearing, so I correct her, "It's Sailor Mercury cosplay."

Mind you, it's not good Sailor Mercury cosplay, but something I tried to sew when I was eleven or twelve. A white tank top with pleated blue fabric sewn onto the bottom. Complete the look for yourself with shorts, spiky dark brown hair, and dark-rimmed glasses. Very hipster dude ironically cosplaying as Sailor Mercury. Good choice, subconscious.

I'm being haunted by unfinished sewing projects past.


2.

I wander into a bathroom. It's pretty dark, lit only by amber-tinged light from stained light bulbs. The glass on a couple of the bulbs is broken, but the filaments are still glowing. The toilet has electronics thrown into it. Wii and Xbox controllers. More junk is thrown into the filthy bathtub.

The mirror is smudged and dirty. I can't see my reflection that well and I'm not quite sure why I'm in there so I leave.


3.

In another room a doorbell rings, so I walk the halls to find it. This building is darkly Victorian in style, lots of curiosities everywhere, except it's exposed to unreasonably bright light. It's kind of like looking at a theater scene when all the stage and house lights are up, and there aren't any curtains to cast shadows. Not sure if I'm even in the same building as before or if I'm jumping between locations each time I fall back asleep. Whatever, I'm still in my total crap cosplay.

I open the double doors to the outside and find a very tan, shirtless muscle guy and a pale trans woman in a shiny spandex club wear kind of dress. Neither of them talk to me, but they just walk into the house like it's totally obvious that they would be there. I follow them and don't try to question anything that's going on.

There's another art gallery sort of room, but this is a different one. The artwork is larger and not as cluttered. An elaborate bed is set up against the wall at the back of the room. Clothes start coming off. Oh, okay, this is one of those dreams.

I watch for a while, and decide to join them because this is my dream and they brought me along. I kiss the woman. They're both trying to get me out of my fetching Sailor Mercury costume, but I hold onto it because I think I'm going to need it later. And I keep hearing this odd noise outside the room.


4.

The next time I'm aware of it, the room has shifted into something more modern and smaller. The bed is still against the wall. Eventually I decide to go check out the weird noise. It's the sound of shuffling and more solid footsteps. Maybe I'm paranoid because my dreams don't just gift wrap attractive naked people for me. That's not how this goes. Ever.

After finding nothing worthy of notice in the bright hallway, I head back into the room and close the double doors. The naked people have been going on without me. I sit on the edge of the bed and get used to the idea that this could possibly be a sexy dream and not a weird one.

I put my hand on the muscle guy's thigh. The doors to the room burst open and there's a scraggly-looking man with a mustache standing there. He's in a worn brown suit that might have been a nicer suit at some point in time. He has a revolver. I jump up and dive for him. It's all very slow motion. He fires off four shots in an arc over the naked muscle guy's head.

Yes, Edgar Allan Poe just showed up to the sexy dream and started shooting at us. All of us glare at him. End scene.


 --I have loosely interpreted this dream as trying to tell me that I need to stop fucking around and get back to writing.

Flash Fiction: The Window

I'm posting this on the 2nd even though it's the 3rd now just to keep things all organized. It was supposed to be there, but I was lazy last night.

I had been thinking about writing some zany, dark comedy zombie story (which may be my story for the 3rd) and then read about someone's suicide via twitter, and even though I didn't really know her it still zapped all the zany out of my writing. I'm not exactly against suicide since I think people should be able to make that decision for themselves, but thinking about anyone suffering for a long time due to anything is pretty depressing.

When I took 3-dimensional art I was told that glass, especially broken glass, was too symbolically easy of a material to represent pain, so this story may be that but I don't really care. It's just the 182 words I wrote yesterday that were somewhat cohesive and comepelte. Also, the "they" in this story is a singular gender neutral "they" because I couldn't decide on any specific details.



The Window

The first time the window broke, they patched it back together with tape. Scotch tape. Invisible, but not so secure. Smoothing it down flat until it was only a delicate ripple on the surface. It was the best that could be done without anyone being able to see the break. And there was only one at that time.

Over the years the window broke several more times. Sometimes they knew what had struck it and other times they did not, but it broke anyway. The cracks spider-webbed out from the impact. Almost invisible tape held the splintering pane together. Layers of adhesive clouded it over from the inside.

It wasn’t a perfect fix. The integrity of the structure had been compromised, but they’d reached a point where they couldn’t add any more layers because someone would notice. Some people had noticed. Friends would walk by and wave, but they couldn’t be seen through the fog. Besides, those people didn’t have to deal with this constantly broken window. Pieces of glass that were only held in suspension as long as the tape held.

Flash Fiction: Maybes and What Ifs

I'm doing Story A Day May right here. Knowing that my goal is to write and post a story each day helps me feel a little more motivated to actually write one every day. Otherwise, I might fuck around with obsessive re-working and the sort of behaviors that might stop me from moving on to a new story. I'm looking at this as a series of sprints, as opposed to NaNoWriMo, which is more of a marathon.

Today, I used the Neil Gaiman guest prompt from Story A Day's webpage, which involved writing about a character desperate to get home, and twisted it up with a Time Travel theme. The finished story is a little under 1000 words. I've been first reading submissions for Crossed Genres magazine's Time Travel issue in recent days, so I've been thinking about time travel stories much more than I usually would.

Maybes and What Ifs

Shane knew that he’d never really get home, but he was so close.

When testing the small time traveling device he'd built, it threw him into the future for a brief moment and back again, but at a tilt. And then it broke. The only one in existence, and when he bounced back he’d overshot that waypoint by a couple days. To a time before he’d figured out that one last thing that would make the stupid machine work.

And now the blueprints were in his house. In his old house.  Where his real body still lived.

During the return trip Shane’s thoughts, his spirit, whatever made him who he was, had been forced into a new body. That of the elderly neighbor across the street.  

It took him much longer then he’d ever thought it would to realize that he was wearing someone else’s skin, but his partner, Nick, had always said that Shane had never been that observant of daily minutiae. Always caught up in some new project. He’d also been a bit of a hypochondriac, perceiving lots of little aches and pains every day, but now they were all real. He’d woken up in a dark room as well, so that didn’t help his perceptiveness either. The new body needed glasses to see. He hadn’t even considered that before.

As it stood, Shane wasn’t sure if his mind was just pasted in over the old man’s. Sharing the same space. Displacing him altogether. Or if they had somehow switched bodies completely.

He pondered this for the first day and didn’t leave the master bedroom suite. The aches and pains took some time to get used to, and he had to find his glasses. It was all very different. The brain holding his thoughts felt different. Forgetful. Circling back as each thought examined itself over and over until the idea stuck. He was dealing with the same data, but different hardware.

He tried to remember what he knew about this neighbor. Hell, he’d never even learned his name.

In the evening he looked out the window and saw himself across the street.

On the second day Shane had a much easier time with everything. He checked the mail and learned his name—the neighbor’s name. Gerald.

He entertained the thought that maybe his past mind was still in that body across the street. It was probably still working on that time machine as he had been. It was probably on the verge of the same breakthrough he’d made, but could no longer remember.  

Maybe he would just zap right back to where he had been once the experiment was all completed. Correcting the time. Setting everything right as it had been.

When had he done that experiment? Well, it’d been pretty late. He’d probably go to bed and wake up in his own house. No problem. So, he went to sleep that night.

And woke up to search for his glasses. Shit, it hadn’t worked.

Shane got up and dressed. He made coffee in Gerald’s unfamiliar kitchen, wishing he could go back home, but all he could do was sit on the porch and watch it from across the street. This is what Gerald did all the time. It wouldn’t be suspicious.

It was always a little unnerving to feel watched, but on this side it felt more like observing.

Now, he realized all that he hadn’t seen before. He remembered when he and Nick had bought the house. Picking out the furniture. Wanting everything to be perfect because this was where they wanted to live for quite a long time. They adopted a pug. Later they had a baby via surrogate. Jacob. His life had been pretty good, and he could sit here and reflect on it all like watching a movie up close; a movie in which one was far too emotionally invested.

Nick knew most of the people in the area. He’d probably talked to Gerald at some point. Maybe he’d sat on this porch and they talked. Maybe they’d talked about Shane’s experiments. Nick supported most of his career, but the stranger stuff had to stay in the garage. Shane wondered if Gerald was interested in that sort of scientific experiment. Time travel. What the hell had he been thinking?

Shane sighed.

Across the street, Nick went outside holding Jacob.

Shane had watched the house so long—dwelling in his thoughts—that he’d almost forgotten that he wasn’t over there. That was until he saw himself again, carrying a box of what looked like electronics and computer parts. He dumped them into the trash can. That’s when Shane really knew he and Gerald had switched bodies.

Gerald in Shane’s skin stopped to look across the street. They waved at each other, Shane more restrained in his motions. Nick took notice and waved too, causing Shane to flood with embarrassment. He couldn’t believe how he’d screwed everything up just trying to go a little bit into the future. A little bit into the past. Thinking of all this progress and advancement. Wanting to answer all those What If questions.

Now, he didn’t even have his own life, and he’d aged forty years. The gravity of the situation finally set in. This wasn’t some freaky little vacation. He was stuck.

Nick got in the car. And Shane watched his body across the street. Gerald in Shane’s skin watched a bit longer and grinned before getting into the car right next to Nick. Forty years younger. Perfectly content to be where he was.

Shane in Gerald’s skin waited for them to drive away. He walked across the street to pick up the box of equipment. It contained most of the components he’d been putting together, and some of his notes. What if he could rebuild it? Maybe he could get back home.

Consumable Media: April 2014

Here's what I read and observed in April...

Novels:
Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed

Poetry:
"The Death of Aweilo" by Sofia Samatar

Short Fiction:
Abomination Rises on Filthy Wings by Rachel Swirsky
Silent Bridge, Pale Cascade by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Magdala Amygdala by Lucy A. Snyder


Articles:
The 50 Most Disturbing Movies
Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing by Daniel Jose Older

Movies:
Frozen (2013)
30 Days of Night (2007)
Titicut Follies (1967)
Mean Girls (2004)