Hmmm... How about (after losing perilous combat with a spunky and too-short blanket)... Pulled the covers back to my chin, falling asleep, once again--a dreamy, restful, deep sleep, where you have a very satisfying dream that you now work in a top-secret photo lab for the NSA? Its a very critical job essential to national security. And lets say--youre the expert and leading authority on surveillance imagery interpolation and analyses; you really like your boss--and nobody in your personal life knows what you do for a living. Youve been trained to basically blend in with your surroundings, to maintain that bland expression of a nobody in public, can easily neutralize the glancing inquiries of friends and loved ones; and know exactly how to remain inconspicuous-but-deadly at social functions with an open bar and expendable but desirable single women. Youre thinking about this perfect life while duplicating and archiving as-yet undisclosed historically significant satellite photos obtained during the Cuban Missile Crisis--when suddenly theres a massive earthquake and youre buried under tons of falling equipment and photo-developing chemicals. Next thing you know--and truly unexpected--you wake up fully exposed in the middle of a lecture and book-signing regarding Notable Novels of the Fifties and Sixties (only slightly aware that this might simply be part of a dream inside a dream) surrounded by twittering snooty spinsters wearing musty wool sweaters, funny-looking hats, and mostly exclaiming excitedly with Eastern European accents--who are now focused on you: the center of attention. They are loosely associated with an obscure writers club that is primarily devoted to female authors of British detective and spy novels--where the heroine unerringly falls in love with the villain. You know: the kind of stuff popular with babbling, whispering teenage girls least likely to conceal a national secret. But what you dont know is how you know these things; the knowledge of it is just there. Youre pondering this when suddenly you realize that it doesnt matter, because you are still naked--and divisive action is called for. And all that expensive training on blending in isnt going to work in this situation. Theres just this foreboding sense of impending doom, and the inescapable odor of recent death--and decomposition. beyond the twittering spinsters is this terrible growling presence that causes you to visualize unspeakable mayhem in a lumber mill--of all things. its getting pretty weird now--with the incoherent twittering of these absurdly attired spinsters--and everything now conspires to immobilize you, while hinting at a particularly gruesome and devilishly auspicious demise in front of hundreds of strangers. In blazing fear of death, you grab the battered hat decorated with a dead sagging bird from the blue-haired spinster nearest you, slap it to your scalp, lower the brim as you rise from your seat, quickly exit the auditorium with a couple of strategically held notepads, and head for the nearest door labeled exit. Once inside you stare down an endless gloomy hallway that, find the door you just passed though, locked, and begin running as the hall with no end grows dimmer with each frantic step, until--no light remains. Darkness! Then a gasp as a thing unnatural begins to throttle you--the growling beast about to rip out your thorax! Then you awaken--this time for real--in your own bed, stunned that youre lying next to your snoring wife. And yet you hesitate to move. Gradually you relax, begin to feel a contentment, and relief. It was nothing but a lucid dream... A very disturbing one, perhaps, but not some dark omen within unfathomable circumstances delivered by the Angel of Death... Still, something seems out of place, and you discover, wrapped loosely around your neck, a sweaty blanket. After a time, your eyes, drawn toward the foot of the bed, see the dim, familiar shapes of your bedroom in the darkness. And on your chest, unnoticed until now, rests an open book. A book..? I say to myself. Now thats really strange. I never fall asleep while reading. Strange that I hadnt felt it... I hold it up for a closer look. I should have guessed: The Spell of Mary Stewart, Nelson Doubleday hardcover... ...a gift from Chryses dad when she was much younger; stories read by teenage girls... She must have laid it there herself...right before searching for her gingerbread house... (How did I also know this before it happened? I would wonder later, and think: Maybe I wasnt as awake as I thought...or maybe I was in someone elses dream...) ...Chryse is still fast asleep next to me, snoring like a happy demented lumberjack slaughtering vast swaths of the Black Forest with her massive saw-blade in desperate search of her gingerbread house...which is more and more looking like bean salad, for some peculiar reason. Sleep still eludes me; I turn on a reading light, adjust a pillow, and resume reading a book about conspiracies and the Bermuda Triangle, an ideal sleep inducer. This particular chapter describes a theory on how giant methane bubbles rise to the surface of the ocean from thousands of feet, and literally sink giant cargo ships and ocean liners by abrupt loss of buoyancy. And its when I finish reading this passage that Chryse suddenly bolts upright from the depths of dreamland, cursing like the great lumberjack of the Black Forest--while throwing aside the blankets and releasing a most vile and noxious presence--an evil entity! ...which quickly consumes the room and and any chance of a good nights sleep.In fact, I barely survived laughter-induced asphyxiation. This time, I told Chryse, you cant blame it on the cat. If theres a moral to this [true!] story, its this: Dont pick a fight with a blanket just because its shorter than you. And (more importantly) dont let your wife eat all the leftover bean salad lest she cast her own Mary Stewart spell. Goodnight. God bless. Dont let the bedbugs bite. (Ill proof-read this later...)
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 12:50:52 +0000
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