I have to relieve myself, so I knock on the door of my dad’s house. He has finished a new remodel, with lofty ceilings and dark wood. The rustic quality of it all speaks to him and of him, but the restroom is occupied. I know there is another in the basement, so I venture there.

Surprisingly, the concrete is clean, the rooms tidy, but the toilet has no walls, just a shower curtain to conceal me while I do my business. I decide against it, and begin to appraise the basement instead. My dad is making his usual attempts to connect with me, and I am making my usual acquiescent responses. I affirm his work. I agree we spend too little time together. I try to be a good son.

In the house, somewhere nearby, I can sense my brother and sister socializing. When I wake up, I am filled with determination, if not purpose, to live my life well.

I drove through the corn field to escape the stuntman. I had finally escaped the trap.

It began on a rainy road, shining with streaks of colored light, reflections of signs and street lamps turning the slick pavement into a smeary chalk drawing. My charming new friend and I had just counted all the money that his kindly grandmother had earned from her wise investments and recently had liquidated into cash. My mother had crossed the line by telling everyone some of my most guarded secrets, so Charming Friend, as a way to blow off steam, however ill-advisedly, took me to a baseball game. We got there late, and the rainy road was the setting for us to receive the elderly baseball manager who gave us some granola bricks laced with cannabis.

I saved half of mine for later, heeding his warning that it was quite strong. Charming Friend indicated that the after-party was a short car ride away from the parking lot where we had all gathered. I climbed into the back of a small truck, and it peeled away before Charming Friend could get in.

Stuntman and Driver chuckled that they had me stuck now, and mused that the Friend’s Grandmother would have to give over the cash. We drove down a now sunlit country road — in that Ed Wood continuity of dreams — and I managed to overcome them, drop them out of the vehicle and make my way back down the road in their truck, carving a path visible from above through the corn field, creating my own crop circle.

No, I don’t really know what it all means. Possibly, it has more to do with being woken up by a dog throwing up on the bed at 5:15pm.

I am at a fight camp, fighting outside with pool noodles. Many of my fight friends from my most recent excursion are there. Soon, I find myself needing to use the restroom.

I enter the building to find it a colossal, mansion-like structure. The bathroom is no different, where troughs like you would find at a baseball stadium line the walls. I need the stall, however, and its door is a half-door, revealing the occupant’s face. I sit and go about my business, but am constantly interrupted by “visitors” with urgent conversations.

In time, I remove myself from the premises, heading to the top floor where my friend Chris Dunham and a friend of his are waiting to have it out with me over something. The friend is a little person, to use the current politicized colloquialism. When I arrive, they are harrassing a girl from the fight camp, whose identity shifts so much as to make recognition impossible. Regardless, I stand up for her to the point where violence is imminent.

I swallow my reluctance and set about to giving them each a well-deserved pounding. As in many dreams, I am essentially invulnerable once I decide to mete out justice. After slamming Chris to the floor and beating him into submission, his head —now that of an unidentifiable blonde man with a buzzcut — begins to shrink almost comically to the size of a golfball.

Suspecting this is his way of retreating so he does not have to hear my lecture, I tear away his several layers of t-shirts. I come to realize that he is nothing more than a crudely constructed skeleton of paper towel tubes and dowels on which hang the t-shirts. His head is all that is him and it has now shrunk beyond my ability to find it, if it ever existed.

—

I wake myself up moaning in confusion and anger. For those who don’t know him, Chris Dunham is wholly awesome and I hold him no ill will. I don’t know why he was the avatar of such a creature in my subconscious.

Having moved into a new house with a roommate, a house that vaguely resembles the Dunham’s home, but finished, I am searching for a place to set up an office for myself. The squarish spaces of the rooms do not match my furniture terribly well, so the going is tough.

My roommate informs me of something happening outside that he feels requires my attention. When I leave the house, our farmland yard is covered in tiny blue spheres. In the wind, I hear something say, “If the balls are moved, it will wake the spinet.” Then, through unclear necessity, my roommate moves one of the things. Dumb ass.

Immediately, as though the spheres were a blanket over a nest, a swarm of winged insects burst from beneath them and somehow captured us. We are enslaved by the bugs, who possess a sort of telepathy.

When I awake, I am in a space-age elevator where several different-colored caterpillars spell strange letters on the floor. When we do not respond, we hear in our brains, “We are to assist you. Please take care with your feet.”

My roommate, still a dick, makes a motion to stomp on them, and they scurry into the cracks of the elevator which abruptly stops. He must hear something in his brain that makes him leave, then the elevator resumes, taking me to a different floor. The navy blue caterpillar returns, introduces himself in my mind as Adrian, then takes me to a room much like a classroom.

A projector plays what seems a child’s video game, with frequent Hardee’s commercial breaks. As I am subjected to tests, a woman in the room informs me that we are now slaves. We will be given everything we could ever want and live in blissful paradise, but will occasionally be called upon to massage the carapaces of the cow-sized insects who are the ruling class of sorts.

The other choice of course is death. I choose the former, but am met with baleful looks from my fellow inmates.

Before I encounter the massage, I wake up, but the question remains in my head: Would I suffer occasional mind-bending horror to live in paradise?

A man named Pedro makes a second daring escape from a prison, breaking into a flat out sprint across a golf course-like lawn, lit by floodlights from all sides. As part of some kind of protest, I and my fellow Improv Everywhere compatriots mill about in similar clothing on the lawn, confusing his incarcerators. I struggle with the morality of this, while Pedro’s get away car pulls that prank on him where the driver pulls a few feet away just as you reach the door. The improv group of three hundred laughs.

The protest over, I am walking Buffy the Vampire Slayer home (not Sarah Michelle Gellar, mind you, but Buffy). I am in a Xander-esque best friend role and have no romantic interest in the petit blonde. As she enters her dorm room, I notice that the building is actually Whitefish Bay High School. It is dark, and something is lurking. I make my way through back hallways and the like, avoiding shadowy pursuers, ducking into stairwells at appropriate times. My fear strangles me.

—

Yep. It’s audition season. I wonder who Pedro is meant to be.

My friend, Ricky Gervais, and I are visiting a cherry orchard with some very salt-of-the-earth people, who invite us to lunch in their barn-like open eating area. As we chat and eat, I notice that the place is also my apartment.

Ricky is wearing a shirt which is completely black, but which is also completely yellow and covered in some black hand-made lettering spelling out some phrase that I mentioned to him was indicative of our friendship.

As a prank on the people of the orchard, Ricky has sealed something in a brown packing envelope. He opens it to reveal a vaguely face-hugger-y thing which immediately begins to screech and squiggle out of his grasp to skitter along the ground.

Eventually I catch the thing by stabbing it with a large fork, I fling it into my kitchen sink and cram parts of it into the garbage disposal and switch it on. The thing seemingly dies, but to be sure, I continue to force feed it into the in-sink-erator. Somehow the device is actually beneath the opening, though, and it slides to one side, allowing the creature to fall partially into the cabinet beneath the sink. Meanwhile, Ricky is laughing his characteristic, high-pitched cackle.

As I continue to struggle with the monster, I begin to yell at my friend Ricky for thinking this would be a funny prank to pull. He’s having none of it. After a brief spat, he makes for the door. I yank the rest of the creature out of the sink and shove the remains back into the package, yelling, “Well, you’re taking this with you.”

As he reaches the outer door of my apartment, I see the words on his t-shirt and am suddenly moved. He’s not the sort to wear anything but black, but he is wearing this homemade shirt with our phrase on it. I apologize, we hug, he leaves.

She didn’t look like she was having much fun with the greasy, tallow-looking guy with the meandering hands, but she was trying her best to keep up the act. I made my way through similar sweaty circumstances across the smoky — thankfully dark — bar, past congealing puddles of alcohol and ash, and sat across from them shooting looks at her occasionally and rattling the ice in my now-empty collins of whiskey.

With a final shake of her leather-bound ass against his leg, she straightened and walked over to me.

“Need a refill?”

“Not really, but since you’re here, I’ll have whatever passes for whiskey in this place. On the cheap, if you don’t mind.”

“Can do.” She winked at me, seemed like sincerely; her eyeshadow was expertly chosen and applied.

“That guy was giving me a rash, and I don’t know if I’m being figurative,” she said, a little too loud, as she stepped behind the bar and served me up another. The other bartender, Jay, was busy chatting up some friends at the far end.

Almost up to the shoulders her arms were bound in ratty, wide-holed fishnets black against the cream of her skin. Silver rings on a few of her fingers, no visible tattoos, between the lattice of the fishnet her tour shirt read “Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.” She had dark shiny hair, that fell just shy of her shoulders. Obviously, the owner liked her to work here because even customers without much in the way of cash would spend it here, trying to impress her. Her motivation was less clear.

She was pretty and young — too much so of either — but already had that presence and attitude of the older waitresses and strippers employed at Tank ‘n’ Tabby’s. And she obviously had a head on her shoulders. Probably just liked being the big fish in this scummy pond. I pitied her, that she felt she had to choose this life. Or worse, wanted to.

“One cheap whiskey,” she said, handing back my glass. “What could be cheaper than on the house? Thanks for the assist.” The bar was noise from end to end. Even I had trouble hearing her.

Without thanking her, I sipped my whiskey and watched her flit from table to table, a butterfly in black and white.

—

Marco was a good sort of guy to have around if you were a squatter. He could barely read, but he could get into almost any building. Either he knew how to get past the lock, or he’d simply clamber up the building in through a window. He said he used to hang out with a bunch of rich kids who did parkour, a sort of urban gymnastics. He kept up on it because they would buy him lunch once in a while. They apparently got wise to him, though, because now he mostly hung out with me and Jimmy and Troy.

Good-looking kid, too, which helped on the sympathy angle if we had to panhandle a few bucks here and there. Mostly, though, we stole it and he was good for that, too.

Marco pulled aside the plastic sheeting that served to keep the chill November air out of the squatter’s den where the girl lived. Her name was Kristin, Troy said. We all had spent some time warming up at Tank ‘n’ Tabby’s but Troy the most by far. He had seen Kristin more than once, first in her professional capacity and recently as an outside friend. And that’s why we were here. No one knew where Kristin was and Troy, love-struck and horny, suggested we go to her place and see if she was all right.

Troy and Jimmy had seen Kristin fighting with her latest boyfriend outside the bar two nights ago. She hadn’t been at work since. Happens all the time, I said. But these were all kids I hung out with, kids lost after the Towers and the war left the city in ruins. Grudgingly, I had assumed the role of big brother. Shit, I had nothing else to do today, and they promised to buy the first round once we found out where she was.

We plodded up the concrete steps to the apartment that Kristin had been squatting in. The door was open. Normally, that would not surprise me, but Troy said she actually had a locking door, and kept it that way. We all ignored the stalker connotations of Troy’s advance knowledge and pushed our way inside.

“Not much for housekeeping, eh, Troy?” I heard Jimmy say. Covering the floor were discarded t-shirts and jeans, newspapers, books and comics. Every surface had an ashtray with several butts in it. The kitchenette to one side of the main room had never been used to prepare anything, except maybe a bong. No needles, though.

“Fuck you, Jimmy. Obviously somebody tossed it. Look at it.”

“Whatever.”

“C’mon, Dean, tell him.”

“It wasn’t tossed, Troy. And someone’s been looking after it until very recently.” I said. “Look at these comics and books. None of them are lying open. They’ve all been just put down. Plus, all the ashtrays are still standing.”

“Girl’s just a slob, man. She’s fine, I won’t lie. But she’s a fucking slob.” Jimmy and Troy slugged each other lazily behind me. While I sat on her creaky bed in the center of the room and paged through some of the comics, I saw Marco squatting down in one corner, examining a bookshelf.

“What’s she want with all these books? She could sell half this shit and get a halfway decent place. She wouldn’t have to work in no strip club, at least,” Marco said, wistfully.

She likes to read, I thought, putting down a copy of Wonder Woman #218, the alternate reality issue where she caught the planes that hit the World Trade Center. When I had time for comics, this was one of my favorites. Plenty of Batman, too, and Alan Moore novels.

“You know… I don’t wanna be a dick,” Jimmy said, “Seriously, I don’t. But if she ain’t back in a few days, we should grab this shit and sell it before someone else does. I think Kristin wouldn’t mind, if she ain’t gonna be using it no more.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Troy said, his voice cracking enough that even Jimmy capitulated.

Marco was still fingering the books on the shelf. I stood next to him before heading into the tiny bathroom, read titles like “A Brief History of Time” and “The Republic.”

“She’s got good taste,” I said quietly, “Let’s see what she stocks in porn.” The mirror was relatively clean and free of cracks, but the porcelain of the sink bore the dark patina of a girl who dyed her hair. I opened the cabinet underneath; nothing but a few cleaning supplies, some extra rolls of toilet paper (the good stuff) and a curled up catalog for goth clothing. The shower curtain was pulled to one side, revealing mildew and soap scum, but the room smelled of expensive shampoo and lotions.

“You think she’ll be pissed if she finds us here?” Troy said from the doorway. The other two were still enjoying the relative warmth and welcome of the apartment I wouldn’t have pissed in eight years ago. I thought about telling Troy the truth; she likely was not coming back, wherever she went.

“She… likes you Troy. I doubt she’ll call the cops, anyway.”

Around the sink was a wide array of cosmetics, colors and combinations that must have cost more than she made at the bar, even with the kinds of tips she earned. Strangely I found myself smiling at the Q-tips boxes stacked at one side. An old-fashioned girl, or maybe a theater major or beautician. Boxes. Two of them. Both open.

I picked them up and shook them. About 100 left in each box. Quirky, I guessed, until at my shaking a small slip of paper, folded in half, stuck out from between the swabs. I took it out, noting the dirt caked on my hands in contrast to the white of the clean paper. An address, typed out, torn from a larger piece of paper.

“What’s this?”

Troy came and looked at it. “An address? 13th St. I didn’t think she knew anyone over there.”

“If she knew them well, she probably wouldn’t need the address.”

Marco said from the main room. “I found something, I think.”

I stepped out from the windowless bathroom into the natural light from the windows of the main room, blinked a little. Marco had turned his attention to the newspapers scattered around on the floor and bed. In his hands, he rustled some clippings that someone had torn from them. They referred to eleven buildings that were marked condemned and the plans to restore them to their original state from blueprints and photos found in the city archives. One mentioned possibly unearthing the original train station from its abandoned state beneath the city for use as a municipal building, and a symbol of recovery from the destruction of the war with Al-Qaeda.

“She ever mention this stuff, Troy?”

—

The dream ends there because I had to get up for work. I tried to keep it to see where it was going, but no such luck.

Our scene opens with your hero and mine, Steelbuddha, sitting comfortably in his study. In this instance, study means a small room, just big enough for two people to sit, nestled among bookshelves and computers and cables. To Steelbuddha’s left, a barely audible beep preludes the rattle of a vibrating cell phone on a pressboard desk.

He picks up. “Hello.”

“Hey Chris. It’s Brad Bird.”

“Hey Brad, how are you?” Steelbuddha greets his friend warmly. This call is unexpected, but not without precedent, as our hero and the creator of The Incredibles have been friends for some time.
(more…)

At first, the young soldier is conversing with the captain of the large starship about what sort of things change a man, how witnessing horrible things can change your perspective, your life, your morality, etc.

The ship is attacked and the captain and the young soldier deploy two fighters to intercept whatever hit them. After a brief battle, the only survivors are the two fighter ships and a strange automobile-like starship which attempts to escape.

The young soldier, emboldened by his victory so far, chases after the car and blows out the back “windshield.” A strange creature, like a leopard-spotted manta ray chimera with a face similar to the standard alien (large, dark almond eyes, no mouth) flies out into the vacuum, apparently unaffected, and soars over the young soldier’s ship, completely obscuring his vision for a moment.

The soldier maneuvers the ship to face the thing which is now behind him. It swirls until it becomes a hypnotic morass in front of a colorful void, a wormhole seemingly. For a moment the creature hovering in front of the wormhole resembles Michelangelo’s painting on the Sistine Chapel, as seen from the perspective of Adam in the painting, God’s hand reaching out to him.

The ship is pulled into the wormhole, where the soldier now stands — unprotected by ship or suit — in the vacuum, witnessing the galaxies around him as spiraling circles of flame, spinning in their orbits at an incredible rate. The true infintiessimal nature of space is overwhelming and his mind reels. He flinches, unable to tolerate the obscene size of it all. And he seems to be watching it all coalesce in extreme fast-forward, which only makes it more boggling.

He passes out. And wakes on a planet where there are people with their eyes torn from their sockets. He has not been driven mad enough to do the same so he sees their world in ways they cannot. They are peaceful, but ignorant of the problems around them do to their blindness. But he cannot be their savior. He has seen much of what they have seen and cannot forget, cannot blind himself to it.

He eventually wakes up on the ship and it was all a dream. My subconscious really needs to work on those endings.