2004-02-27 - 12:14 AM

Another dream. Same playground. Different universe.

I don't remember how it started, but I was being led somewhere. Some PBS character, big bird, Ernie, someone like that was in front of me, mumbling about how the underworlders needed a sacrifice every hundred years, or they would all die. Big talk for a puppet. Curious, I soldiered on.

Suddenly we were on the grass, near a hallway. Me at the center of a makeshift amphitheater with my guide. Definitely Ernie, now. The audience... The "underworlders," every puppet who ever had a hand shoved up it's ass, every costume that had ever danced on educational TV. Teletubbies, muppets, fraggles, Sesame Street characters, Barney... The whole batch. Talking, chattering, glancing at me, though never in the eye.

They went silent, Ernie began to speak. "The sacrifice," he said. "Your power to reproduce." "A spell?" I asked, hoping it was either that or a giant X-ray or radiation or something. You know, kill the swimmers, but leave the pool intact.

"No, we need to cut it off."

Did I just hear the letter-and-number-of-the-day orange little guy from my childhood SAY that? I swerved around, hoping to win the crowd over.

"Elmo!" I said, eyes fixing on a white, short version of the bastard. "You gave me a freakish nightmare a couple years ago involving a banana. Don't you think you owe me one?"
"Elmo sorry!"
"Not as sorry as Alex. Elmo's dick not on the line, Elmo." The crowd laughed. I continued forward.

"Cookie monster! In 11th grade, I sang your song when my report card came. 'C is for cookie, that's good enough for me.' " They all laughed at that, but without sympathy. I wasn't winning them over, I was just entertaining them before the meal. Sadly I turned and saw one more character. Barney.

"You bastard," I frowned. "You've always just bugged the hell out of me. Making it out of this will be all the better for sealing your death. I'm bummed about the rest of them. But not you." Barney had a malicious laugh, that's why I burned him the way I did. Behind me I heard the voice of my jailer.

"You know what we have to do, Alex."

"Yeah," I said, smiling grimly. "You have to catch me."

And with that I was off, through a doorway, down a hallway, a PBS deathsquad hot on my heels. This wasn't the childhood I'd loved, these weren't the same creatures that had offered me comfort and entertainment. They'd been perverted somehow, changed in a wholly wrong and terrible way. I rounded a corner, hurling myself forward and leaning back, skidding under a table, my sock sticking out the other end. Shit, where'd my shoes go? From under the table I watched a stampede of legs of all shapes, sizes, colors and species trample by, but they hadn't seen me. Then I looked with horror at this one that lagged behind, about 3 inches tall, it looked like a little PDA with arms and legs, and the little mini-speaker was bleeping, "Alex near. Warmer, warmer, warmer, colder, warmer" as it stumbled around gradually getting closer, all the while shooting this little laserpointer beam out to see if it could spot me. It was weird, some sort of dream-instinct, I didn't intentionally do it, my hand just sort of did and I watched it happen and picked up where it left off. My fist shot out and punched it into the wall, breaking it in two, then I grabbed the peices and broke them down even further. Little bastard.

Footsteps. I rolled out from under the table, hurled myself out an open window. I landed in a treehouse. in a tree in the middle of the playground. No building in sight. One of those weird hyperdimensional doors/windows that exist in dreams, I guess. There's 3 other guys in there with me, but I don't recognize any of them. They all look familier. I hunker down. There's one wall missing from the treehouse, I look at the playground below. Little girls playing handball. Ernie's scampering past the food benches, swearing. Just as he leaves a girl points at me and yells "peeping tom, peeping tom!" One of the kids behind me puts a hand on my shoulder and tells me he's sorry, but I have to run now. Out another window. Onto a sandbox. There's a row of 10 swings. I get on one, simply because in my head, in my dream, at that time, when you're being chased by a bunch of psychotic childhood puppets whose lives depend on castrating you, well, it's time to swing.

Higher, higher, it all starts to peel away. The fear, the frustration, the chase, the hopelessness. I jump. It's a good jump, I land about 10 feet away, hunch in the sand with the landing sting fresh in my ankles. Some kids come over. One of them from the treehouse looks at me, then at the rest of them. Then at me again, then at them again.

"You don't have to do this alone," he said. "Nobody's gotta do this alone." Then he held out his hand towards me, in a fist. And then another kid next to him did the same. And then another, and then a few others. And then I put my fist in the circle and smiled, and said thank you. He looked at me and smiled, and I laughed, and suddenly the underworlders, whyever the hell they decided to take that name, they were all gone. And it was just me and a bunch of kids in a sandbox, and everything was okay.

After that, well, after that I woke up. I stumbled off to class and quoted transvestite standup with MJ via text messege, and I had lunch and did homework, but the whole day I couldn't get my mind off this dream, this epic stupid crazy dream that has to rank as one of the weirdest I've ever had.

And I kept smiling at the end, in the sandbox, when a little boy told me I wasn't alone.

-Alex

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