Something was moving around on my property. I walk out and hear it. I see something moving by the barn and run out there to see what it is. Then something rustles in the bushes by the barb-wire fence. I reach out and grab a skinny arm, and yank a skinny kid out of the bushes. He's all cut up because of the brambles and barb wire, so I start pulling him towards my trailer house. He's shouting "No! No!" and struggling to get away, and I'm saying "Shut up kid, I'm not going to hurt you, I'm just going to clean those cuts and call your parents." Then a bright light shines on my head from the sky above, spotlighting us. Then it moves off to the oak tree by the well and tightens up like the beam of a magnifying glass when you're frying ants and the leaves start smoking. I'm seriously freaked and run for my trailer house, kid in tow behind me still screaming and yelling about how "they" are out there. As I reach the porch, a hole flares in the roof of the porch, punched right through and smoking like a laser. I get the kid inside and pull the door shut behind me, and try to figure out what the hell just happened, and whether it has something to do with this weird kid who is just standing here shivering. I pull him towards the bathroom and someone knocks on the front door. I open the front door but not the storm door. A weird guy, looks like Jim Carey, says "Can I come in? I have something for you." I say "Hold on a sec, I need to get something first" and slam the door and head down the hall to my bedroom and grab my 12 gauge shotgun, I don't see the kid in the living room as I head for the hallway but maybe he's run down the hall in front of me, is he going to jump out a window or something, I don't know, too much happening. I come back down the hall with and the door is open and the guy is gone and the kid is gone. I'm saying "What the fuck?" and I poke my gun barrel out gingerly -- damned shotgun is too damned long and unwieldy. Nobody there. I jump out onto my front porch and swing the barrel to the right where someone might be hiding. Nobody there. I swing it up to see if someone is on the roof. Nobody there. Nobody around. What the fuck? I go back in and I shut the door. There is a red wire in the way, like a network cable. I have to shove it up to the top of the door where the television wire comes in from the mast to make room. Then I realize, hold it, I don't have a red network wire going to my roof. I follow it and look to the left of the door, around a cabinet, and on top of my refrigerator is a box that's ticking. I say "Oh shit" and run down the hallway and out the back door, still hauling the shotgun. I don't know what to do. Do I go run for cover by the barn? Or stand in the middle of the small field behind my trailer so I can see anybody coming? Or will that just make me a target?
My cat meows. I wake up and roll over and notice that it is 6:43 AM. My heart is pounding. My head is working furiously trying to figure out what the best thing would be for my dream character to do. My cat rubs against me and I pet him and he purrs. My clock is set for 7:00AM but I doubt I can get back to sleep. Instead, I try to figure out what the hell my dream was telling me. One thing, maybe -- get a freakin' handgun, for cryin' out loud, and keep it handy because a long gun in the bedroom is way away from where you might need it.
My creative writing instructor in college once asked me where I got my ideas. (Yes! He did!). I shrugged and said "I dunno." I have my suspicion that the next novel, if I write another one, will be a Dean Koontz style thriller.
-- Badtux the Overly-imaginative Penguin
So, THAT'S why those spy thrillers always feel like you're slogging thru molassas in a bad dream... :)
ReplyDeleteWhen penguins dream, their dreams are vivid, and often are of flightless waterfowl trapped on land while other birds fly overhead.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about Koontz. But Stephen King has often said that his novels start with nightmares.
-BT