Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Dribblefloof (floofinition) – A housepet who seems to leave a messy trail behind them.
In Use: “It was easy to see when Boo had been eating, as the big beast was a dribblefloof who took the food from his bowl to eat it, and dropped leavings out of his mouth as he walked away.”
Dreamfloof (floofinition) – 1. The perfect, most wonderful pet. 2. An animal who only appears in visions.
In use: “Except for her intolerance to other animals, Flash was a dreamfloof.”
He was pleased to be going out with her. He’d met her at the coffee shop. She was a barista, and he was a regular. Three years older than her, it turned out. She was a student in her final year. He’d just graduated and was taking some time off in the area. Her eyes, gleaming jade and almond-shaped, felt like a laser cutting through him when she looked at him. She is it, he thought, with a wildly hammering heart. It turned out she was very funny and intelligent, studying English Literature, with plans, she said, “To be a CEO.”
They went to Louie’s for dinner, a safe place, none too romantic, with plans to zip over to Aqua to hear LEFT and dance after dinner — “We’ll see,” they told one another” — but then, sitting opposite him, laughing as she brushed a strand back off her face with a thumb — isn’t that endearing? — and her nails lack polish or gel, interesting! — he looked down at the table. She put her hands down, palms first, on the table, moments later.
She was speaking, but it was like light and sound left the room. Her hands on the table looked like giant spiders with long, slender legs. Thereafter, he couldn’t look at her without seeing her hands and noticing their resemblance to spiders. He didn’t understand at all, but it made him physically ill. It was easy to tell her, “I’m sorry, but I think we might need to call it a night. I’m not feeling well.” Then, as if his body felt that his declaration needed validated, he slapped a hand over his mouth, raced to the bathroom, and violently puked.
Looking at himself in the mirror as he washed up, he wondered, why? Perhaps he’d been drugged.
The next day, he went in for his usual coffee. She served him, concerned about the previous evening. He couldn’t look at her. All he saw were her spider hands. When he saw them, he immediately felt like he was going to be sick. Sighing, he left without drinking his coffee. He’d need to find another coffee shop.
It all saddened him. He’d liked that coffee shop, and he thought he loved that woman. A few days later, at The Roasting Company, he met another young woman. He felt madly in love with her, which shocked him – what kind of fool was he, falling in love so quickly and easily? – and he was leery of dating after spider hands, but she asked him out, telling him with a smile that he thought as intriguing as Mona Lisa’s, “Don’t worry. You’re in my hands now. I’ll take care of you.”
Her words startled him. He wondered if there was connection, but then dismissed it as silly, and accepted with pleasure.
After staggering out of bed and then using the bathroom, I started feeding the cats. “I Am the Walrus” by the Beatles from waaayyy back in 1968 when I was twelve, began streaming in my head. “I am the eggman — woo — they are the eggman — woo — I am the walrus. Goo goo g’ joob.”
WTH? Why? It’s another mind mystery, innit, a nonsense song in a nonsense world after some nonsense dreams. Guess it’ll work for a quiet summer day that seems like a warm autumn day, as though the seasons have been turned into a jigsaw puzzle that need to be assembled.
Listen to it. Let me know what you think. Goo goo g’ joob.
The healer dream followed the wrestling dream last night.
The wrestling dream was about me taking another’s place in a wrestling match. Throughout the dream, I mocked myself for being part of this crazy scheme where I would wrestle a high-schooler. I was doing so to keep the team from forfeiting. My match was either going to be first or second. I told myself and everyone else that I had no chance, that what we were doing was illegal, and that we were going to be caught, humiliated, and disqualified. In the end, I handed someone my watch, some expensive and exotic time piece, went and dressed for my match, and then waited, learning at the last second that my match would be the second one.
Dream end.
The healer dream was brief. I walked into a room. The room reminded me of a classroom, with desks, windows that looked out onto a lawn and playground, but I have no idea where it was. I don’t know why I was there. A woman dressed in a dark blue sundress in there told me she was sick, and then rattled off her health complaints. Brunette, with auburn shoulder-length hair, she looked tired and pale.
“I can fix that,” I said. Then as I touched different places on her, I would say something about infusing her with healing energy. For example, I touched her shoulders and said, “Infuse your shoulders with healing energy. Infuse your joints with healing energy and strength. Infuse your collagen, ligaments, tendons, and muscles with healing energy and strength. Infuse your bones with healing energy and strength.”
Although I did this all over her, it was done in a couple minutes. She stood up and said, “I feel great. All my pain is gone.” I nodded, like, yeah, that’s what I expected. That’s what I told her she was going to do. I was quite casual about it.
A man had entered while I was doing this with her. He was wearing clay-white walking shorts with a gold, short-sleeved shirt, sweat socks and activity shoes. He seemed in his fifties, with sandy hair cut short but casual, bangs across his forehead. Clean-shaved, he looked healthy enough, tan.
“Do me, do me,” he said.
I didn’t think he needed it, but he’d asked. Shrugging, I started healing him as I had her. When I did, he squatted down and grinned, continuing to grin as I healed her as I had him. He seemed very happy and satisfied with what I was doing to him.
Dream end.
Elizabeth Drake wrote about the macro-process, time, and commitment to bring out her latest book, Knight of Valor. My most critical take-aways from her post was believe in yourself, trust yourself, don’t give up on yourself, keep trying, and keep learning.
Toughest of these for me is to trust myself. I seem to get easily shaken. Elizabeth wrote, “Part of the reason this book had so many revisions was I took a lot of advice I shouldn’t have. More benign advice was to write in any order than piece those scenes together. Yeaaaah, no. Doesn’t work for me, and it created a lot more work in the revision process.” I don’t take much advice, but I read a book that I enjoy, and my brain attempts to duplicate that book. Sort of, kind of, maybe the same sort of thing, because it results in false starts and dead ends. It’s a tough lesson to learn, and one that I learn again and again.
Scoot on over there and have a read.
Michael Seidel, writer 