.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

Fermius Firefly

A Dream Log, whenever I remember the dreams I've had.

My Photo
Name:
Location: San Marcos, United States

Fermius is a pen name drawn from a series of short fiction I wrote when I published the small press magazine Stellanova (on paper.) I play RPG games to escape from my daily grind as a technology wage slave for the state of California. I eat out a lot in order to do my part in supporting our increasingly service level economy. I am butler to 2 feline masters. If you ask them they will tell you I'm not very good at it, late with dinner, don't have enough hands with brushes in them, and sometimes I even lock them out of their office.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Time Lost

              I dreamed that I woke up in a cluttered two bedroom apartment south of Poway. I knew that something was wrong, as I couldn't remember what day it was, or where I worked. I went to find my car, but the only keys I could find had the Plymouth key on it, not the Honda key. I got up and fed the two strange cats. They acted like they knew me, and were very affectionate, but I didn't recognize either of them.
              I brought in the newspaper, and the date was August 24, 1986. The paper itself was new and fresh. I realized that something was very amiss. I drove up to the school district offices, where no one knew me, but a couple of people asked where I'd been, and what I'd been up to. Apparently I hadn't worked for the school district since I'd gone back to school. (Which I, of course had no recollection of doing.)
              Things got fuzzy and things got blurry, and I found myself back on the road, this time not in the Plymouth, and not the Honda either. I pulled over in front of a Seven-Eleven and paid for a paper. The date was still August, 24, but the year was 2010. I drove back over to the school district offices, where they were even more surprised to see me this time. It seems I had died in a boating accident in Wisconsin in 2006 or 7.
              Finding that very awkward, I made my way out to my car, and then realized that I had no idea where I should go. I checked the address on my driver's license and drove home. The problem was, that N wasn't living there any more, and the only familiar thing was a scrawny T-Rex who made his way out of the Juniper Jungle that is in the front of the house to greet me. The current owners came out to ask me what I was doing.
              “Just petting T-Rex, he's the only thing left from when I used to live here.”
              “You used to live here?”
              “N and I, but I don't know what happened. Where are the other cats?”
              “She took them with her, but this one keeps coming back.” They looked at me, suddenly uneasy, “What do you know about an orange toy box in the rafters?”
              “I had one of those when I was a kid. I think there were some badly aged plastic road strips and some other toys, like the old red, white and blue Tupperware building blocks. Probably some of my grade school papers as well.”
              “We thought you were dead. Your wife never came back for that or the suitcases full of D&D stuff.”
              “Do you happen to know where she went?”
              “I think you need to leave now.”
              By this time, T-Rex was quite attached to my neck and purring so loud I'm sure everyone on the block could hear him.
              One of the neighbor 's older boys walked across the street. “Where did you come from? We went to your funeral. Are you D's brother?”
              “No, I think something has come unstuck in time. It's me, but this might not be my time-line.”
              While I was talking to C, the new residents brought out my gaming cases and the orange toy box. They wanted me to take them, and the cat, back to N. I agreed to do so and headed over to a condo address near the college, near our friend J.
              I never got there, but even though the location and time (I presumed) changed, the gaming cases and T-Rex remained with me. I was starting to get very frightened. I didn't want T-Rex to be lost somewhere, but I had no idea what was happening, and how I might have any control of that. The rest of the stuff, I realized, was just stuff, but I didn't want to lose T-Rex as he was my only connection to my right time-line and the possibility of getting back to N. While I was rustling up some cat food and water for T-Rex my cell phone rang. (Not the work phone I currently have, I noted.) The FBI wanted to know where I was currently located, they said I should stay put and they might be able to answer some questions. I told the voice on the phone that I didn't want to go anywhere, especially without my cat.
              The problem was, I didn't know where I was currently located. I was back in the Honda, Little Red, but was parked in a KOA campground with a tarp closed in the windows and stretched out over the back of the hatch and held on the ground by my orange toy box. I had some sort of fold out cot structure that I was using for a bed and the hatch was being propped up by my old costume wizard's staff.
              Out of curiosity I opened up the toy box pushing the tarp up a bit with the lid. The toy chest was full of clothing, including long thick socks and various kilts. There were also a couple of notebooks in the chest. For some reason I found myself describing this as I went through them.
              “Don't read anything!” The voice on the phone warned. “That seems to be what triggers the changes for most people.”
              “You mean this is happening to lots of people?”
              “Not lots, but enough to keep a couple of us busy.”
              “Do you know how to stop this, to get me back to my real home?”
              The voice hesitated, “Uh, we're working on it.”
              I idly flipped open a notebook and immediately recognized the handwriting, it was my own version of the 'Stop' typeface, meticulously lettered around a complex drawing. I felt T-Rex climb into my lap, smelled the cat food on his breath. I flipped a page and read the titles on the next page “Obvious Differences,” and “Similarities,” and written in all caps under neath “D - FILL THIS OUT AS SOON AS YOU/I CAN! IT WILL TRAVEL WITH YOU/ME, IN SOME FORM”
              I saw the words “2012, PDA replaced by paper notebook, Police State! As the last line of the 'Differences' page. And a string of “T-Rex, Orange Toy Box,” under 'Similarities.
              I was about to ask the FBI caller how the Constitution was these days when everything shifted again.
              I was still sitting with T-Rex in my lap, but the world was a gloomy blend of dark purples and deep forest greens. The Journal was my old Leather covered Journal, this time with a thick notebook made of graph paper in it. I quickly penned in some notes for the last place, what little I'd experienced, and the differences I noticed in this place. The Orange Toy Box was not in my range of vision and I knew, somehow, that I would be here a little bit longer. I pulled out my wallet to see where I was living, or at least what was recorded there. I flipped back to the complex drawing, actually several of them, and discovered that the further apart myself, T-Rex and the Orange Toy Box were, the longer I stayed in a place. I found a note page that indicated that when T-Rex was in the box the time in that realm was estimated to be mere seconds. “DO NOT REPEAT THIS EXPERIMENT, ALMOST LOST T-REX!” was written under the illustrations. And “Always keep food and water in the box!”
              It was T-Rex howling that made me realize that we were sitting in the overgrown wreckage of my current home. He was reacting to the presence of another animal. A raccoon was watching us from the thick Wisteria bush. I stood up, frightening the animal off. T-Rex tried to burrow into my armpit. It was chilly, so I looked around for something to throw on. Everything in the place seemed to be covered with a thin layer of dark velvet, mold, I realized, and carefully made our way out into the street. The whole neighborhood was over run with mold. Even the sky seemed tinted by it. I pulled my shirt up over my nose and let T-Rex climb in underneath, using the notebook to give him a place to sit. I started looking for my car, or any way out of this particular place.

Labels: , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home