Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Furboten (catfinition): Areas of a resident or office where cats are not permitted to enter.
In Use: “Once she cleaned the guest room, she closed the door on the cats and declared, “This room is furboten.”” They immediately began clawing and meowing to get in.
A crazy dream finished my night. I’d been driving in a borrowed vehicle. It was in good shape, nothing special. Rain was falling. Traffic was dense. I was going a long distance.
We entered a wide tunnel lit with diffused dull yellow lights. More lanes were available. Veering into one, I accelerated, and caught a glimpse of a Chevy pick-up behind me. He’d apparently wanted into the space I’d taken. Now, filled with rage, he was coming up on my bumper.
Still in the tunnel, the road curved. We were going up a hill. I floored the accelerator pedal, keeping it down as engine, road noise, and speed built. Terrified by the speed, and barely in control, I was pulling away from him, and everyone else, when I rounded a corner and almost hit a van crashed on its side. There wasn’t time to stop but I managed to swerve around it. As I thought about stopping for the van and warning the other traffic, I discovered that boulders and rocks were strewn across the tunnel road past teh van. I drove around them, trying to grasp what was happening, and left the tunnel.
Rain was pouring. The day was fading. I reached my destination and pulled in, weary to the bone. It was Monday. I knew I needed to be somewhere else by Tuesday. More travel was ahead. I was with my father’s wife, and her family. Talking to others, she was planning a get-together, and I was there for it. But in flashbacks, I remembered that I’d left some things at my previous location that I needed. I grew conflicted over going back to get them – it had been such a long distance, and an exhausting drive – staying for the event being planned, or foregoing continuing on to my next location. Regarding the last point, I was attempting to understand, where was I going, and was there a need for me to go?
I awoke with this part of the song, “The World I Know,” by Collective Soul, playing in my mind:
So I walk up on high
And I step to the edge
To see my world below.
And I laugh at myself
While the tears roll down.
‘Cause it’s the world I know.
It’s the world I know.
I seemed to have reached an age where my body and I talk a lot. They’re meandering, lackluster exchanges. Like, my back will be hurting after doing something. That’s the point where we begin the conversation. I don’t know where I was when I hurt it, so I’m skeptical. Am I really hurt? A general query is made to myself, and my body. “Is my back hurting?”
I turn, and flex…feeling…confirming, there is pain and stiffness. I then become a pain detective, interrogating myself about when I hurt my back, where it hurts, and how I hurt it. Most of the time, my client – me – answers, “I don’t recall.” I ask my back, “Does it hurt when I do this?” Then I bend and stretch.
I try recalling everything I did that day, and the day before. My back never made any protests during the day. I thought, if I’m hurting it, it would probably speak up. “Hey, you better stop that. You’re hurting me.”
When I was younger, I never had this problem of confusion. I knew when I hurt my body. I remember exactly when I did it. But it now all sneaks up on me, like a very delayed reaction. Hours pass, and then my body announces, “I’m hurt.”
I never know why I’m hurt. It becomes a mystery, subject to monitoring. I find myself limping and ask, why is my heel hurting? What happened to my back? Aw, my elbow hurts. What’d I do to it?
The conversation never ends, like a plot without a resolution.
Michael Seidel, writer 