Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
My wife doesn’t want me to mop the hardwood floors. I asked for feedback: “Why?”
“You don’t do a good job.”
I was insulted. But, the craftiness in me decided, well, that means that she will always mop the floor.
On the other hand, she admits that I do a much better job cleaning the stainless steel kitchen appliances. Although, she notes, she thinks that I’m “a little obsessive” about having it streak free.
It all works out. I do those items, and she does the floor, and we’re both happy.
It’s funny, sometimes.
My wife picked up a skillet the other day. Washed and dried, she was putting it away. When she turned, the skillet nailed her glass of water on the counter. Put the glass airborne and shattered it into sixteen zillion pieces of glass. Water, Everywhere.
We have hardwood floors in that part of the house — kitchen, foyer, dining room, halls. The glass was cleaned up as best as we could. But. It’s glass.
A few days after the incident, a piece of glass found my heel. Bleeding and pain followed. As the situation unfolded, after almost fifty years of marriage and three more years of being together, my wife asked me, “Why aren’t you wearing shoes?”
I replied, “I don’t wear shoes in the house.”
Yep, it’s funny, sometimes.
A long and chaotic dream won the morning memory. There was another dream about having sex with a French woman in a desert after being accused of some crime, but it’s not a sharply recalled.
First I was with a group of friends, all males. We’d been out having a good time in the outdoors and were now filthy. Many of these people were real life familiars from across my stretch of existence and life stages. I was young and it was sunny. Many more groups of similiar people were out there on a large, dusty, gold-sun plain, like knots of bison congregating around a larger herd.
A sudden call to go get a beer put us in motion. We ran along, laughing and eager. We were going to have a beer! “Don’t worry, I have chits from last night,” I shouted, holding up discolored pieces of white paper. I reached a table and sat, still outside, but now on a plateau. My friends were coming but were behind. I pulled out the chits and discovered, they were chits; they were just torn pieces of paper. Some fluttered out of my hand and dropped into the mud as my friends arrived and I explained, “I don’t have chits after all.”
We all set out to go somewhere and were now downtown in what looked like a small city. Without preamble, I decided that I’d had enough and started in another direction. I was soon running in the streets alone but as I turned a corner, I saw ‘my crowd’ running in parallel in the other direction. They saw and recognized me and called out, but I’d kept going in the other direction, alone.
I arrived at my wife’s mother’s house. I knew that’s what it was even though it was nothing like any of her places in real life. My wife was there, along with my sister-in-law. She was sitting crossed-legged on the ground. As I see her in that scene after awakening, she looks as she did as a young pregnant woman in a photo taken of her when she lived in New Mexico. Giving no warning, she pulled her breast to feed an infant. I was a little surprised but then went, okay, she’s comfortable with it, and my wife, beside me, showed no reaction, so I should be okay, too.
I went off because I noticed my mother-in-law was busy digging. In real life, she passed away about six years ago. She was about the age she was when I first met her, mid-forties, in my dream. I spoke with her briefly but don’t remember what we said, and then wandered around the yard to see what she was doing. She’d dug a moat around her house. Then, I thought, she expanded an existing moat. It wasn’t large as moats go, about a yard wide, and didn’t seem deep. Water lilies floated in places. I discovered little tiles. Two inches square, I realized that she was going to ourline her moat with them.
The first one I turned over was scarlet. I put it in place on the moat to see what it looked like. Next, I found one that was yellow. I took out the red one and put the the yellow one in. It was a soft yellow, not as bright as a lemon. Next, I found a sage green tile. As I was going to put it in, I heard a man calling. A tall male stranger, dressed in a tie with a rust colored corduroy and tan pants and large, handlebar mustache was walking up, telling me how much he liked the yellow tile because it was a bold and striking color, and he approved my choice. I was just beginning to explain to him what was going on when another man in a charcoal business suit came up, urging me to go with the first color, the red, because it looked sharp against the water and grass. As these two began talking about the tiles, I turned over a third one, which was sage green. That was my preference, but I also thought that a pattern using all three colors could be made.
I went back to tell my MIL that, which is where the dream ended.
I dreamed I had a very fancy sportscar. I knew it was quite unique, exotic, and expensive. It seemed dark in color but I never saw its color or make, and know little about its shape other than some brief glimpses. It appeared low and svelte with organic curves, along the lines of sports racers in the mid-sixties.
My wife and I were traveling in it. Along our way, we paused to submit an entry in a contest. Everyone was participating in it. My wife took care of that entry, going in and providing them some sample of clever engineering that we’d either found or created. Coming back to the car, she told me there was another opportunity to come back to give them an entry at three that afternoon. We agreed we would return and drove on.
We drove to our destination without incident. Then, with sunset chasing us, we headed back the other way. First we stopped to submit another entry. Since my wife did the first one, I volunteered to go in and take care of this one.
Inside this well-lit, austere place, it was chaos. I found a counter where a rotund white man with a thin mustache was supposed to be handling the entries. He looked like he was in over his head. I brought our device to him for registering and entry. The thing, whatever it was, was round, small, and lightweight, easily residing on my open palm. I gave it to him with the paperwork and watched to see what happened, wanting reassurances we were properly vetted. He did some things but seemed to lose focus halfway through. I made it a point to pester him to ensure our entry had been processed. Reassuring me, he showed me a pullback lid from a small metal can, the sort you’d find on a pet food offering. I was horrified and protested, but then decided, the hell with it, I had to go.
I returned to my car but didn’t see my wife. Picking it up, I carried it out of a crowd of people and around a corner, and set it down with a thump. Still looking for my wife and not finding her, I reasoned that she must have gone off and would be back in a moment. But she rapped on the car window from inside the car; she’d been sitting there the entire time and was indignant about the way I’d just picked up the car and carried it because it’d been unsettling for her.
That out of the way, we and five other couples began driving down a curving multilane highway into the gathering dusk. I could hear the people talking in their cars. Many were discussing my car and me. I gently accelerated, easily outdistancing them, though I knew they remained behind me and could still hear them talking.
By now, it was a moonless and starless black night. I reached a point where the road went up a vertical grade. The car handled it with no problem, but at the top was a ceiling. Reaching it, I stopped the car and left it. I was at the juncture between a white ceiling and white wall with a blue and black pattern. There was a crawlspace access. I knew from my journey there that I had to pick up the car and carry it through this crawlspace to the other side. I knew I’d done it before but I was a little more tired this time.
Nevertheless, I scaled the wall and entered the crawlspace. The other cars had arrived and were queued to follow me. Reaching back, I picked up the car with my wife inside it. As I began wedging myself and my vehicle through the narrow space, I thought, this is stupid, and stopped.
There must be a better way, I thought.
Dream end.
After knowing one another for 53 years and being married almost 50, my wife still surprises and confuses me with some of her decisions.
I have no doubt that she’d say the same thing about me.
I’m currently contemplating making arrangements for my wife and I to go the the Oregon coast for a break. You know the thinking: get away from it all. Take well-deserved time out from the usual routines. My injuries and medical matters curtailed many of our travel plans this year. Beyond that, the burden of caring for me, cleaning the house, and well, doin’ everything, was shoved onto her shoulders for several weeks. She held up well but she could use some downtime.
The thing is, it’s winter. Snow could come at any time. And we’d be driving through the mountains, often on winding two-lane highways. She no like. As a naturally anxious person, travel heightens her anxiety. Blend in additional risks like driving on snowy, icy weather, and she’s hanging over the edge.
In that way, she’s my polar opposite. I’m a calm and relaxed traveler and driver for most of the time, taking things as they come. When driving, I do get impatient with other drivers and vehicles. I allowed the impatience to take over when I was middle-aged. Now, I gently coax it back into its shell.
So I’m up in the air about what to do. Stay or go. Probably plan it and make reservations, and then buy the cancellation insurance in case the weather is too daunting.
First, I dreamed that my ankle was completely healed. Such a real dream that when I awoke, I asked myself, did I dream that? Checking the ankle, I confirmed, nope, not healed. Yet.
Next dream had me dealing with space. A father was in space, apparently as an astronaut. It wasn’t clear if he was a private citizen, military, government effort, etc., but the news was full of his attempt. Then, boom, we were all looking up at a starry explosion on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. Then the newspaper, electronic, and digital media is full of his disaster and death.
I wasn’t involved in any of this, just a spectator. Talking about the matter in a fractured dream process under a blue sky, my friends and I went off to get lunch. But while this progressed, I put forward the man’s daughter, a four-year-old, had been with him, and he was launching her separately back to Earth. I kept insisting that she was out there, coming back. All others were doubtful. We hunted down a tracking monitor. As we watched it, another object was being traced across the sky. There was a target arc and vector it was supposed to be following. As it veered off that, reports of a crash came in. Everyone agreed it was her and that her vehicle crashed and she was deceased. But I remained optimistic that she’d come down, and that what we’d seen was just a ruse to throw everyone off. Certainty remained in me that she’d made it back. Then I stated my belief that her father had also made it back, using the distraction of his spectacular destruction as a diversion.
That’s where the dream ended. Who this man and his daughter were supposed to be and why we cared is a complete unknown.
The night’s final dream found me with a power to make toys come to life. I could also make them grow larger. Once I learned of my ability, I tested it on a yellow toy dump truck and a green army tank. Finding my wife sitting on top of a tiny green hill, I demonstrated my new skills to her as my black and white cat, Tucker, watched.
In true dream strangeness, I then went to a cafeteria to find something to eat. Although the dining room was full, they were preparing to close. I got in line. Only a young couple were ahead of me. Cloying and loving, they were annoying and silly as they flirted and teased one another over their food selections. Seeing me waiting behind me, they apologized and offered to let me go ahead. I declined and they finished a few minutes later. Stepping up, I found that only pasta with a brown meat sauce and hot dogs were available. I piled some pasta on the plate and then loaded up two hotdogs. Eating one of the dogs, I thought, wow, that really tastes good. I was pleased with having it to eat and scarf the rest down.
My wife rushed in, interrupting my meal to warn me that something was happening to one of my toys. Her explanation was inchoherent so I just ran to where she indicated. As she said, my largest toy, a stuffed bull which was now a dozen yards tall, had fallen into a deep water. I ran over, trying to think instructions for getting out to the bull. But I was still assimilating the situation and didn’t have a clear idea yet.
The bull was running in a circle under the water. I thought he would drown. Then I saw that my black and white cat, Tucker, was riding the bull. As I gaped, I realized that Tucker was guiding the bull. Encouraged by that, I thought instructions to Tucker to help him, telling him to turn toward the shallows. Apparently receiving the guidance and applying it, Tucker guided the racing bull left and left again, and up and out of the water.
Dream end
The first dream found me and my wife living in an apartment. A nice place, well lit, spacious, and quiet, it had some problems with ventilation and water, but I’d fixed them. However, one window gave me some trouble, so I went to adjust it.
I was surprised when I pulled back the window’s sheer curtains; another window, to another’s apartment was directly opposite, about a foot away. A man was over there. I easily looked into their pleasingly furnished place of overstuffed furniture (it was their living room) and then, as I thought was right, apologized to the man and made haste to shut the curtains and pretend they weren’t there.
But the woman, short, with thick, dark hair, was hurrying forward, calling, “Wait, wait.” So I did. She rushed up and asked, “How did you fix your ventilation?”
I had no real answer, explaining that I’d just kept tinkering with it. Impatiently, she interrupted, “Well, can you fix ours?”
Weirdly, there were then two other windows I could see in other people’s apartments. A woman was at each, a man behind them asking, “Can you also fix ours?”
I was taken back. I hadn’t done anything special that I could explain. I’d just kept addressing it. But I couldn’t tell them no; they wouldn’t let me. So I agreed to fix their places.
Dream end.
The next dream found me in a small square waiting room, darkish with heavy wood paneling. I’m not sure where people were waiting to go. I wasn’t waiting but just passing through. A woman escorted me through the room. I came across one individual, a man on the floor. Bearded with curly brown hair, he seemed almost lifeless.
“Oh, that’s Reardon,” the woman said when I asked about him. “He’s a lost cause. He doesn’t have a reason to go on.”
That upset me. Though the woman and I continued on through the room, Reardon stayed on my mind. I finally said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t just leave him like that,” and went back.
Getting to him, I just gave him a long hug and talked to him, telling him that he was special, and that he shouldn’t give up. Then I went on.
I next came back into the room. Much lighter than it was before, a door was open on the other end. People were filing out. Most were already gone. Looking around, I asked about Reardon. I was told that he had recovered and that he was about to go through the door. She said he was very happy with what I’d done and kept talking about me.
I hurried over, calling him as I did. I didn’t want him to have the wrong idea, which to me, was that I was in love with him. I don’t know why I was suddenly worried that this is what he’d believe.
I called his name when I saw him. He turned and greeted me. At least a foot taller than me, I was forced to look up at him. In his right hand was a thick fan of money, mostly $100 bills.
Seeing me, he grinned. “I know what you’re going to say. I know what you’re thinking. You think that I think I’m in love with you, but I’m not. I understand what you did. Honestly, it saved me.”
He offered me money as a gift. I declined, saying something else that I don’t remember. We hugged, my face to his chest. A woman at the open door said it was time for him to go. They were waiting on him. Reardon released me and went through the doorway.
Dream end.
I awoke in the dream in a bed. As I sat up, I realized a young cougar had walked in from outside. Before I could do anything, it jumped up on the bed and came to me. I was freaking but urged myself to relax and stay calm.
My wife entered the room and gasped. “That a cougar?”
“Yes,” I quietly answered. “Don’t move fast. It’s pretty chill. Don’t do anything to upset it.”
The cougar was sniffing me and sometimes licking me. Wasn’t real big, about the size of a small large dog, if you follow. It wasn’t threatening me.
My wife said, “I’m going to back up back into the bathroom and close the door.”
“Do it slow,” I replied.
She did. The cougar spent several more minutes with me and then left through the door. I gathered from what I saw in the dream that I was in a living room sofa sleeper and the front door was open on the other side of the room. When the cougar left, I hurried out after it with an intention of warning others. The cougar meandered along the sidewalk, literally sniffing the flowers, along with other things, and then went down a hill away from the place through thick foliage.
I went back and dressed, and my wife and I walked down the sidewalk to the dining room. My sisters and brothers-in-law were there, so we told them about what had happened. As I finished telling the story, my older sister came in and listened. Giving a hand wave, she said, “Oh, that’s just Leslie.” She explained that Leslie was a young cougar who lived here. He never bothered anyone.
I was mildly indignant that she was so blase about my cougar encounter and that she’d known about this cougar and didn’t say anything.
Dream end.
First, I had this dream about sharing my apple pie with a young woman. As she was eating my crust, my wife came along. I went off to talk to her.
My wife and I ended up in what seemed to be a living room. Other family members were vaguely int the area. But my wife came to me and said, “I want you to look at my colors and tell me what you see.”
And I was all, “Huuuhhh?”
Other than being Caucasian as my wife, this dream wife didn’t look at all like RL wife, even though she’d started out as RL wife. Her hair was darker, heavier, and longer, and she had this pale, long, face with bright red lippy.
Second, she was dressed like a goth.
Third, she was holding up some kind of panel in front of her.
I thought the panel was a mirror at first. Then I saw that it reflected with nothing but swirled with images that reminded me of melting steel. I was trying to answer my wife’s request to tell you what colors I was seeing and describe her clothes, skin, and hair. She unleashed a heavy exasperated sigh at me and said, “Not those colors.”
Then I saw the mirror thingy was changing. Yellows and oranges were emerging, along with lesser spots of apple green and pine green. There was also a stretched out blotch of purple that was so dark, it was almost black.
I described these things to her, and then, somehow, I knew the colors had to do with her health, and told her, “I think you can change these colors. Just think of the color that you want to be, and that’ll happen.”
She was doubtful but almost immediately, a soothing fair blue swept across the mirror.
Dream end.
Michael Seidel, writer 