NEEDLING

I not only wrote but lived a short story last night during my dream, about which I apparently refused to talk about during a wild party on the fifth floor of a building in a city which might have been Paris, but probably not. My dog was with me, which is a good sign, being that he’s still at the clinic – doing much better since yesterday, cleaning himself, wagging his tail, sitting up when you visit him – and there were other dogs, and lots of cats too. It’s all quite complicated and blurry. At one point this old woman got into a car, a brand new mustang, and drove off. She was a bit weary of other cars so she stuck to riding on the sidewalks. Her car was an electric kind and was plugged in with a very long extension cord back in the building she’d left. So she finally ran out of cord and had to stop. It happens that she stopped right at the top of a sidewalk staircase, like you see in Paris. She got out of the car, carrying her kitty cat, and stepped down the few steps, about ten of them, to the lower sidewalk, were she sat down and started pulling on the extension cord so as to be able to start all over again. That’s when some young girl of about ten or thirteen years walked up to her and harassed the old woman, telling her how once that kitty cat she’s holding bit her and she was going to tell on her. This is all quite confusing. I’m not sure what the old lady in the electric mustang had to do with anything. It was towards the end and I was tired of dreaming all ready.

The short story was more interesting. I was a man on the run. I was an Indian on the run from a movie shooting crew. You see, I played an evil man on a popular television series, and finally I had had enough, and went on the run. I no longer wanted to be portrayed as such. It all started on an afternoon stroll with my family in a Paris neighborhood when something was said that I disagreed with profoundly – as if I was thirteen or eighteen again, in total rebellion against anything my family said – and I ran off. I started running through the streets which quickly became more of a West Texas flatland of desert and bushes. At first, it was my family members who would come after me, trying to talk some sense into me, telling me I had to get back to the film set. I refused, I ran, I climbed rocks, jumped over ravines, nothing was going to force me back to that film set where I played an evil man with no scruples. Then the film crew started getting involved. They weren’t nearly as nice as my family. They fought me, threatened me, but I was always one step ahead, they couldn’t catch me, until I climbed this rocky small hill on the side of a busy country road, and followed it through till I found myself real high up with nothing in front of me. It was either jump or get caught, but I thought about it too long, and there was the producer right on my back. He was very angry, and pulled out some papers filled with numbers and charts. He was yelling at me, tugging at my shoulder, telling me to get the fuck back to work. Look at all I had cost him all ready, I would have to pay him all this money back, that there was no running away. I told him, show me my original contract then, show me where it says I owe you diddly shit, where it says I can’t quit whenever the hell I want to. And that’s when I decided to jump. Underneath, a good jump, was a lot of sand, and I decided it would break my fall, so I jumped, and the producer climbed back down the other way. He had people surrounding me from the other sides of the road. I landed without hurting myself except now I was in this large hole with a difficult climb all around me. Almost as large as an Olympic size swimming pool, but nowhere to go, I was trapped, I thought. A car screeched and stopped right on the edge of my sand trap. The nose of the car hanging off the edge. One of these old square numbers. An Oldsmobile or something from the mid-eighties. Red burgundy paint in bad shape needing of some work. A woman at the wheel looking down into the hole at me. Shit, I says to myself, there they are, they’ve got me now, I can’t get away, I’m trapped. She gets out of the car, she’s wearing a two piece bathing suit, and she jumps into the hole with me. I go to her to see what the hell’s she doing. She’s laying in the sand, turning around so that’s she’s mostly on her back, and she’s looking at me with big round eyes, scared.

“Please don’t hurt me too bad, I know you’re evil and you’re on the run, but I just want to be famous.”

I realize she’s not one of them, that she’s only some crazy broad, god only knows what’s she’s thinking, so I go to her, sit next to her placing my right hand on her stomach, she’s thinking I’m about to hurt her real bad, when I say...

“I’m really just a nice guy. The rest is fiction.”

That’s when it gets weird. Big pink cubes start falling from the sky, barely missing us, bouncing up and down. I’m now watching three space aliens playing a board game. They’re playing with large dice-like pink cubes, and little stick figures. I recognize myself, the man on the run, and the damsel in self-distress, as two of the little stick figures they’re playing with. Other stick figures surrounding us such as the producer and his team. Then, one of the space aliens tells the other two, “You loose!” And slams one of the large pink dices on me and the damsel to squash us. A little splatter of red squirts out from under the pink cube. The three space aliens have a big laugh as they get up to go do something else.