Story: Oneiromancy, VII

(Part O , VI , VIII) - (Written long ago - Currently in Amsterdam, testing the Dutch toffee tolerance)

Weirdness has an endearing habit of becoming normal with exposure. So many things that used to be weird are now normal, and so many that used to be normal are now quite bizarre. On many levels, weirdness is interchangeable with unfamiliarity. Those thoughts wouldn't occur to Stanley for another few days, until long after his world had changed irrevocably.

After departing the Blue Monkey, the teacher spent his evening marking and then transferring everything he could remember about the dreams and his experiences to paper. The light path, the owl in the blue fez, the great sand face in the desert, and finally the incredible feeling of familiarity and connectedness in the cafe that day. After some thought, he mentioned the infuriating dreams of his past and the extents he had gone to to rid himself of them.

Two streets away, Helen had scribbled down what little she remembered about her dreams. She also wrote about some rumours she had heard about while studying at college. The rest of the evening was spent distractedly at Spanish class, which fact does not concern the narrative any further.

Dusk fell early in what was after all the late Spring, and Stanley worriedly took a walk around the park, then around the supermarket, and then once around the block. It had been years since he had been so scared of going to sleep. Finally, in a state of near exhaustion from worry, he nervously brushed his teeth and washed before retiring to his rather unruly bedchamber. For all the wrong reasons, he couldn't rid Helen Ostrander from his mind.

Two desperate hours later he got up, made a cup of cocoa and then returned to bed. Several sips of the warm brown goop later he subsided into sleep and mirrored what Helen had been doing for hours already. He slept, as she slept, and then they dreamed.

Within the dream, Helen had been floating on a raft in the middle of a deep blue ocean, watching the dolphins and building houses out of giant dominoes. To windward a second raft approached rapidly, in a most illogical manner. She paid it only nominal attention and continued laying the large double six as the garage roof.

Stanley held on to the raft grimly as the squids propelled it along, endlessly pumping away. Finally they slowed and then vanished underwater as the rafts collided and merged most ridiculously into one giant structure. He examined the house Helen was distractedly building and wondered why she hadn't properly buttressed the arched ceiling. He got down to work and piled into the architecture. If only they a mass of kapla and a steadier raft they could work wonders!

The raft approached a darkened island. Upon the island there was a shack. Within the shack a light burned erratically. Stanley and Helen looked confusedly at one another and then up at the shack. Behind them was a clear dividing line between night and day, firmly defying the sun high up in the sky. At their feet, a scale pagoda made out of dominoes. On the topmost level, a message was crawling out in pebbles: "Help me."

A figure emerged from the shack.

To be continued...