A Right Proper Pirate Raid

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick tock, tick, tock, tick, tock…

The room was mostly austere. There was a small table in one corner on which sat several small casks of gun-powder with black boot logos painted on them. There was an off-white canvas sheet covering a small heap of junk or clutter or something. There was a small window on one wall, through which one could see the entirety of the Black-Booted Bay, so called because it was the location of the Black-Booted Fortress, headquarters of that scurvy rapscallion of a pirate, Black-Booted Bernie the 3rd. There were two wooden doors on two of the other walls. And on the fourth and final wall yet to be described there was not a single thing at all, except for a picture of some pretty flowers in a purple vase and a lightswitch with a little skull and crossbones themed border around it and two ornate black cast-iron sconces with five glowing light bulbs each mounted in the corners and the clock ticking and tocking and like a single scrap of torn wallpaper hanging off the wall.

Well, the clock on the wall went on ticking and tocking and ticking and tocking. It’s what clocks did while they were waiting for something to happen, and this clock was certainly no exception to that rule. The rule to which this particular clock was an exception was the rule that clocks usually are not persons. This was the Fabled Tick-Talking Clock of Person-Being. It opened its eyes and looked this way, and then thattaway, and then thissaway again. And then it sighed. Nothing was happening in this small room. You’d think the Black-Booted Fortress of a Black-Booted Evil Pirate Captain Lord would have a lot more of interest going on.

But no, all that was going on for this clock to listen to was its own unending mantra of tick tock tick tock tick tock. Even talking Clocks can’t shut up their own ticking. That would be kind of like stopping one’s own heart from beating and we all know how that usually turns out.

So the Clock looked out the window and saw nothing but a bunch of boring clouds and a bunch of boring water and a boring ol’ pelican grabbin’ a boring ol’ fish. The Clock sighed again and shut its eyes. Wow, it was bored.

Then it opened its eyes again in surprise when one of the wooden doors opened suddenly and a very out-of-breath pirate ran into the room. He had spectacles on and black boots and was not smiling. He shut the door again and ran through the room and opened the other door and ran through it right on out of the room again.

The Clock blinked. And then it blinked again. And then the pirate poked his head back into the room and shut the door, leaving the room as it had been before he had entered.

The Clock blinked again. But then it heard something. “Get back here, Black-Booted Bernie, you dirty pirate of a rascal!” shouted someone from somewhere beyond the first door. Then that someone burst into the room, knocking the door clean off its hinges with a single kick. It was some kinda pirate with a plain ol’ small regular pirate hat and a golden cutlass in his hand. Well, he ran through the room and also kicked down the other door and went through it.

“Gotcha!” the Clock heard the pirate say. “Stop right there, Black-Booted Bernie!”

“Curses!” came the response from the other pirate with the spectacles and the black boots. “It’s Captain Arrrrenan!”

The Clock’s eyes widened and it gasped. “Wow!” it said.

~   ~   ~​

Captain Arrrrenan ran through the small room and into the next room. It appeared to be a luxurious pirate captain’s quarters with a big Black-Booted bed and gold coins and rubies and treasure maps and assorted skull and crossbone themed paraphernalia scattered all around.

There was also a Black-Booted bespectacled pirate standing in the middle of the room.

“Gotcha!” said Captain Arrrrenan. “Stop right there, Black-Booted Bernie!”

“Curses!” said Black-Booted Bernie. “It’s Captain Arrrrenan!”

“Ye got that right, ye scurvy ol’ rogue of a scourge! For ten minutes I been chasin’ ye all o’er this here Black-Booted Fortress o’ yours and now I gotcha rightly cornered! So it’s time for ye to die or else beg for mercy!”

“Wait!” said the Black-Booted pirate. “I’m not Black-Booted Bernie!”

“Ye can’t fool me, Bernie, ye ol’ scoundrel! I see them Black-Boots o’ yours.”

“Nay, ‘tis the right and proper troof!” he insisted. “Me ain’t no Black-Booted Evil Pirate Captain Lord.”

“If what ye says is tha troof, then why doncha proof it to me ‘stead of yammering with that ol’ jaw’ve yers? And maybe I won’t skewer ye to death.”

The lyin’ dog of a pirate turned and hung a large black-framed picture frame on the wall over the big Black-Booted bed. He stood back, and when Captain Arrrrenan looked upon the picture frame he saw that it was a large full body portrait of his scourge of a nemesis, Black-Booted Bernie, complete with spectacles and Black-Boots and everything.

Then Captain Arrrrenan looked at the pirate he’d been chasin’ and gasped!

Without the large black-framed portrait in the way, he could see this truly weren’t no Black-Booted Evil Captain Pirate Lord at all. T’were a plain ol’ scurvy underling of a pirate! His boots were regular ol’ brown, and he had no spectacles upon his face at all. He didn’t even have a pistol or cutlass or nuthin’, just a dirty ol’ feather duster in one hand and a bottle've off-brand chemical cleaning agent hangin’ from his hip.

“Curses!” said Captain Arrrrenan. “Ye fooled me with yer’ tricksy disguise! Where’s yer Evil Pirate Captain Lord?”

“I’ll tells ye,” said the plain ol’ pirate. “He’s on sabbatical from pillagin’ and plunderin’ so’s he can be searchin’ for a new Great Gunsmith since that ol’ master of a gunsmith Grant Granterson retired last week. Black-Booted Bernie told me he was leavin’ to do that and I was to mind his pictures and his favorite casks of gunpowder and dust ‘em twice a day. He ain’t here, so just set the thought’ve murderin’ him outta yer mind!”

“Curses again!” said Captain Arrrrenan. “I done successfully raided this here Black-Booted Fortress all by meself and not a single right defeated and proper slain eternal-sworn arch-nemesis of a Black-Booted Foe t’ show fer it. S’enough te drive a pirate right up the wall with anger!”

As if to punctuate the point, Captain Arrrrenan casually swung his golden fightin’ cutlass and chopped that great portrait in two right down the middle and two half Black-Booted Bernies fell down on either side of the room.

“Arrrrrrr!” cried the other pirate. “Me handywork! All that dustin’ and cleanin’ for naught!”

And the pirate drew his bottle of chemical cleaning agent and starting sprayin’ it at Captain Arrrrenan with all his might! But Captain Arrrrenan just knocked it out of his hand with the hilt of his golden fightin’ cutlass.

So the pirate swung his feather duster hither and thither with great gusto, but once more Captain Arrrrenan knocked that out of his hand with a well-placed front kick.

But the pirate, right and proper enraged by the destruction of his Evil Pirate Lord’s favorite portrait, still didn’t give up! He started kickin’ and punchin’ and just generally floundering with his lame pirate fightin’ skills. And so Captain Arrrrenan got so frustrated that he stuck out one thumb and poked him right in the eyeball.

“Ow ow ow ow!” said the pirate, holdin’ his face.

“There!” said Captain Arrrrenan. “I done poked outcher eyehole. That makes me yer new master pirate lord, them’s the rules.”

“Yessir, so’s they are and fair’s fair,” said the pirate, nodding his head and pullin’ an eye-patch out of his pocket and puttin’ it on over his ruined eye. “Ye poked out me eye fair and square and that means from today until the end of all piratey days of piratey doin’s, this here scoundrel by the name o’ Custodial Skip is yer good and loyal servant.”

Captain Arrrrenan sheathed his golden fightin’ cutlass and smiled a big piratey smile. “So’s ye are, but from now on yer name’s One-Eyed Skip. By the by, I got me a bully custodian a’ready, so ye’ll be on fightin’ duty once I get ye right proper trained.”

“Yo Ho Ho!” said One-Eyed Skip.

~   ~   ~​

The Clock was still busying itself being a person and just generally eavesdropping on the previously described encounter since it couldn't really do anything else except just passively go tick tock tick tock and so on and so forth, when the two pirates came back into the small boring room.

“Okay, One-Eyed Skip,” said Captain Arrrrenan. “Ye keep a lookout on that door o’er yonder while I help meself to these here casks of gunpowder. I had me eyes set on nemesis-destroyin’ but seein’ as that ain’t possible, I’ll settle for doin’ a little gunpowder stealin’ instead.”

So Skip set about pointin’ his looker at the door while Captain Arrrrenan turned his back and started to pack up the casks.

Well a moment later, the Clock saw someone come through the door. It was a large dangerous looking rogue, to be sure, with thirteen single shot pistols hangin’ all over his muscular frame and a silver killin’ knife hangin’ from his side and a big wide-brimmed leather pirate captain’s hat on his head. The Clock looked at this scoundrel and raised its eyebrows. Then it looked at One-Eyed Skip, and raised its eyebrows a little more. Skip was lookin’ at the door into Black-Booted Bernie’s private bedchamber, not the door out into the Black-Booted Hallway, so he didn’t even see the new pirate come in. And so the Clock looked back over at the newcomer and raised its eyebrows again ‘cause this big villain of a scoundrel drew one of his single shot pistols and leveled it right at Captain Arrrrenan’s backside and pulled the trigger.

“Yow!” said Captain Arrrrenan, takin’ a bullet right in the back and spinnin’ round and facing his attacker. “Who’re you?”

The big pirate smiled a big piratey grin with several gaps in his big ugly pirate teeth. “I’m Thirteen Bullet Barry, the nastiest ol’ nasty ye’ll ever meet! And the one to be killin’ ye! I heard about how ye got offa that deserted island me ol' master Evil Pirate Captain Lord Black-Booted Bernie the 3rd right proper deposited ye on and ye didn't die like ye was s'posed te nor even lose an ounce a weight from right proper starvin'. But if ye thought all ye had comin' to ye was a little island starvation then ye'd better think again!” The Clock raised its eyebrows a bit more as Barry drew another single-shot pistol and fired it right into Captain Arrrrenan’s chest.

“Oy!” said Captain Arrrrenan, “Stop it, that hurts! Skip, ye scurvy rogue, why didn’t ya warn me ‘bout this scallywag afore he shot me?”

One-Eyed Skip shrugged. “Sorry, Cap'n. S’only one eye on me face now so’s I couldn’t watch both doors all at the same time. And ye didn’t really specify which door ye meant so I did the ol’ eeny meeny routine and alas it came up the wrong way.”

“Aye, s’a fair point, so’s it is. Nevermind.”

Thirteen Bullet Barry fired a couple more single-shot pistols on Captain Arrrrenan and after an “Ow” and an “Ow” Captain Arrrrenan asked, “Skip, why ain’t ye helpin’ me fight off this here ruffian?”

One-Eyed Skip shrugged. “Sorry, Cap'n. Ye ain’t done me fightin’ trainin’ yet and I don’t wanna mess this up, and besides, ye right proper emancipated me from me best weapons a second ago.”

“Aye, s’a fair point too. Nevermind.”

Well, the Clock watched as the big pirate kept drawin’ his single-shot pistols one by one and emptyin’ their chambers into the pirate captain, and each time a bullet was fired the Clock raised its eyebrows a little more until at last after thirteen bullets had hit Captain Arrrrenan the Clock’s face was really starting to cramp up with the strain. Captain Arrrrenan fell backwards onto the small gunpowder cask table and clutched his chest and stopped moving.

“Arrrrrrrr!” said Thirteen Bullet Barry, walking over to the fallen pirate captain. “That ought’ll teach ye to be burglin’ me favorite Black-Booted Evil Pirate Captain Lord.”

Well, the Clock’s eyebrows weren’t done raising yet, since just as T.B. Barry got within punchin’ distance of Captain Arrrrenan, the brave pirate captain’s eyes shot open and looked right into Barry’s villainous eyes. “Ye think a mere thirteen bullet wounds to me body’s gonna stop me, ye ol’ fool of a joker?” Then Captain Arrrrenan, still clutchin’ a cask of gunpowder, punched Barry in the gut so hard that his belly was right proper punctured and then he pulled his hand back out again without the cask.

“Take this, ye nasty ol’ scurvy dog of a Black-Booted Evil Pirate Captain Lord’s rogue of a second-rate miscreant of a crony!” shouted Captain Arrrrenan. Barry reached for his killin’ knife, but Captain Arrrrenan was a touch faster and when Captain Arrrrenan punched him again right in the gut, he punched with such force that the gunpowder ignited and Thirteen Bullet Barry exploded into thirteen little Barry pieces scattered all over the small boring room.

The Clock’s eyebrows just lifted right off its face at this point and fluttered gently to the ground. Captain Arrrrenan spotted them and then looked right at the Fabled Tick-Talking Clock.

“Whoops,” said the Clock. “Busted!”

“Aha!” said Captain Arrrrenan. “One of Black-Booted Bernie’s spies! I’ll hand it to me ol’ nemesis, he surely knows how to get his spies into the most remote and exotic of places. I can’t never keep the scallywag outta me business and so’s he’s always figurin’ out me plans and—Skip, why ain’tcha lookin’ at this here magic Tick-Talkin’ Clock with me?”

One-Eyed Skip shrugged. “Sorry, Cap'n. Me eyesight ain’t so good as it used to be since me vision range got right proper halved in half when ye done poked out me favorite eye-hole.”

“Aye, s’the fairest point ye’ve made so far, me bucko. Nevermind.” And Captain Arrrrenan walked over to the Clock on the wall and delicately cleaned a chunk of Barry’s guts off its topside and looked right into its two beady little magic Clock eyes and frowned.

“Ye listen well, ye good-fer-nuthin bilge-rat of a Black-Booted Pirate Lord servin’ magic Clock of a villain,” said Captain Arrrrenan. “Why ain’tcha announce yer presence sooner like a right proper polite buckaroo?”

The Fabled Tick-Talking Clock of Person-Being answered him in a right proper dignified fancy English professor accent. “My apologies, Captain Arrrrenan. The issue is that I've had such a scarcity of recreation for so many months and become so thoroughly accustomed to having nothing to fill my time nor even so much as a single civilized person to speak with, that I found my enthusiasm for speaking had drained right out of me, leaving me but a veritable shell of a Magic Talking Clock rather than the loquacious fellow you would be perfectly reasonable to expect.”

“Well, I ‘spose that makes sense,” Captain Arrrrenan said, scratchin’ his chin. “S’prolly right proper boring to hang on a wall all the time, ain’t it?”

One-Eyed Skip came over and eyeballed his last remainin’ eyeball at the clock as well. “Wow, lookit the time, Captain Arrrrenan, it’s four-thirty already?”

“Curses!” said Captain Arrrrenan. “I meant to be done with me dirty deed and outta here by quarter to four and here I am foolin’ around explodin’ Black-Booted Evil Pirate Captain Lord servin' enforcers and chattin’ up the local magic timepieces.”

Captain Arrrrenan turned and found Thirteen Bullet Barry’s head and plucked off his wide-brimmed leather pirate hat and took off his own ol’ stinkin' dungball of a hat and tossed it out the window onto the water of the Black-Booted Bay where it was immediately eaten by a great white shark. Then he put the new right proper hat on his head and gathered up the rest of Black-Booted Bernie’s favorite casks of gunpowder and turned again and said, “come on, One-Eyed Skip, time to go.”

But he stopped at the door and turned to look at the Clock, “Hear me well, ye ol’ dirty snake of a Clock. I ain’t done with yer master Black-Booted Bernie. Ye best be warnin’ him I’m comin’ for him again once he’s done romancin’ gunsmiths or whatever right proper villainy he’s up to. And he’d better have more up his nasty ol’ sleeve of his’n just thirteen bullets and remote desert starvation islands or he’s gonna have a hell of a bad day! And ye too if ye don’t mind yerself! Don’t think I won’t smash a clock just cause I feel sorry fer ya that ye can’t walk or play cards or nuthin, but seriously though that sounds pretty boring and I feel right proper sorry for ye.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said the Clock.

And then Captain Arrrrenan walked right on out of that Black-Booted Fortress with One-Eyed Skip followin’ behind him.

Then the Fabled Tick-Talking Clock of Person-Being blinked and blinked and ticked and tocked and got right back into its unending mantra of tick tock tick tock tick tock.

“Best day ever!” said the Clock. “Wow!”

The End.

The Legend of Derrick the Terrible

The Legend of Derrick the Terrible

in which the lamest underdog loser teaches the greatest grandmaster an important life lesson

Master Buffman Tuffgai and his three pupils, Gregory the Strong, Camilla the Very Attractive but also Strong, and Derrick the Terrible were standing in front of a great passageway at the bottom level of the famous Dungeon Full of Treasure. They'd fought their way through hordes of monsters, skeletal warriors, evil beasts, bandits, pirates, skeletal pirates, pirate bandits, skeletal pirate bandit monsters, and dangerous robo-monster-bandit-beasts just to get here, the last treasure chamber on the last treasure floor of the last treasure dungeon in the entire world.

Well, honestly Master Buffman, Gregory, and Camilla had done all the fighting. Derrick the Terrible had truly lived up to his name. He had been terrible, and not in the evil warlord sense where you're considered terrible for killing lots of people or whatever. No, this guy was called terrible because he was actually just kinda terrible at killing stuff. The others mostly just let him tag along as a favor to his dad who happened to be Buffman's uncle the King. So Derrick basically just carried their food and bags full of money and weapons and extra underwear and stuff like that.

"Derrick, hurry up and get over here, you worthless dummy!" said Buffman. "I need that magic sword to slay this Ultimate Guardian so we can get the last of the world's secret hidden treasure."

Derrick, in his infinite lameness, had not even noticed the Ultimate Guardian that Buffman referred to. Well, there he was, a big ol' giant Minotaur Dude with a bull head and like twelve horns and giant golden armor and big bloody spikes for knuckles and stuff. Actually, at the moment, he didn't seem to Derrick to be especially threatening because he was just sort of sitting there eating a sandwich. He finished the sandwich, and Derrick watched curiously as the monster reached over and delicately grabbed another sandwich right off the top of a big pile of these sandwiches.

"He's just eatin' a sandwich..." Derrick said.

"Shut up, you dummy!" said Buffman. "It's a monster and it's in our way. I'll just kill this guy and then we'll take his treasure, okay?"

"But..."

"Just gimme that sword."

But when Derrick looked in the weapon bag, he found that there was no magic sword.

"Um, the sword appears to be--Wait-a-minute, you have it!"

Yup, Buffman already had the sword and was juggling it and twirling it and doing all sorts of cool tricks that made him look totally awesome. "Yeah, you slow idiot. While you were lolly-gagging over there daydreaming about sandwiches or whatever I snatched it outta there myself, and you didn't even notice. I'm just that good!"

"Wow."

"Anyways, time to get to Ultimate Guardian stompin'."

And so Master Buffman headed over to where the Minotaur Dude was sitting and started swinging his sword all slick and cool. But then the Minotaur Dude stood up far more quickly than any of them had ever seen even Buffman move and punched Buffman right in the face with his bloody spike knuckles! Buffman flew backwards and landed on the ground and said "Oooof!"

The others ran over to the fallen Master Fighter and helped him up. "Wow, that guy means business!" said Master Buffman. "A lesser man would be dead right now for sure, but well, I'm buff, you know? Hey, come to think of it, maybe you guys should take this guy out, as like, a final test of your skills. Gregory, why don't you start?"

Gregory was a little unsure about taking on a Minotaur Dude who had just clobbered the great and mighty Master Buffman Tuffgai, but he had no choice. So he pulled out his favorite Double Fiery Ninja Swords of Death and charged at the big ol' monster yelling "YEEEAAAARGH!" In a moment, Gregory was right back where he started with a couple of big spike knuckle shaped dents in his forehead.

"Owwww!" he said. "Owwwwwwwwwwww!" It looked painful, but big picture, he was fine. He was pretty buff himself, after all.

Camilla stood there staring at the dents in Gregory's face with her jaw hanging open, like WOW those are deep dents, but then suddenly she realized Buffman was staring at her and tapping his foot with his arms crossed, kinda like, "Weeeeeellllllllllllllll, I'm waiting..."

So Camilla grabbed her Lavender-Scented Super Spear of Feminine Ferocity and ran toward the Minotaur Dude. She was considerably faster than Gregory, so she jumped here and there and darted her spear at the Minotaur Dude's eyes like a hundred times per second, but the Minotaur Dude just swatted her with the back of his hand and she fell down. But wow, she was determined. She got up and came at him again, but again she just got shut down with the back of a giant hand. So she let out a ferocious scream and charged at him doing flips and zipping around like lightning. Derrick thought it was kinda funny watching the Minotaur Dude's eyes rolling around trying to keep track of her, but then he just like, stuck out his arm and suddenly Camilla had stopped and was stuck to one of his giant knuckle spikes. The Minotaur Dude peeled her off his fist and threw her back over to the others and she just lay there with stars twirling around her head.

"Camilla, wow, are you all right?" asked Gregory.

"Yeah," she said, "I think so, but I don't think we're gonna get past this guy. His knuckles are just too spikey."

"Psssssh," said Master Buffman. "You two idiots don't even know how to kill an Ultimate Guardian Minotaur Dude? That's like, something from Master Combat Fighting Kindergarten! Here, let me show you."

So he shut his eyes, sat down with his legs crossed, and started chanting some kinda mumbo jumbo until he starting glowing and levitating in the air. Then all the weapons in their bag started levitating too and flying around him this way and that. The others made space so they didn't get an accidental murderin' dagger in the ear or something, and then Master Buffman's eyes shot open suddenly and he flew towards the Minotaur Dude with fire streaking behind him like a Hellfire missile had just been fired from an AH-1W SuperCobra attack helicopter.

The Minotaur Dude swung his arms one way, stopped for a second, and then swung them the other way as fast as he could, sending himself spinning on his heels like a spikey top of spikey knuckley death. Buffman's weapons all tried to stab him and slice him and poke him and chop him and mince him and fillet him and carve him and finally kill him, but not a single blow could get through this new Ultimate Minotaur Tornado Move. Master Buffman opened his mouth and started breathing fire at him, but the Minotaur Dude just zoomed out of the way. Buffman fired a giant blast of mystical ice summoned from the ethereal spirit realm, but the spinning Minotaur Dude hopped over it in a single deft spinning hop. Buffman fired lasers out of his eyes, but the Minotaur Dude stopped spinning and punched the lasers with his spike knuckles, and the lasers bounced right off, right back into Buffman's eyes, and he went "YOOOOWWWWW, that smarts!" and flew backwards and landed at the feet of his students with smoke coming out of his eyes. The Minotaur Dude went back to eating his sandwiches.

"No, you're right, Camilla," he said. "This guy's knuckles are too spikey even for me. Let's go back to town and just tell the King that there weren't any more treasure rooms. He'll never know the difference."

They started to leave, but then they stopped and looked back. Derrick was just standing there scratching his chin.

"What are you waiting for, Derrick?" said Buffman. "Come on, you privileged moron. If your father wasn't the King, why I'd, I'd, I'd, I dunno what I'd do, but let me tell you, you wouldn't like it."

Derrick turned and faced them. "Don't I get to try?"

"YOU!?" the three great fighters said in unison. "HA HA HA HA HA HA HA," they started laughing, and then they continued with "HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA" and finally concluded with "HA HA A HA HA A HA HA HA HA HA A HA!"

"What's so funny?" said Derrick.

"You can't kill that guy, are you kidding me? Don't make me laugh at you again, Derrick, seriously."

"No, watch this." And Derrick strolled over to the Minotaur Dude, who stood up and glared at him, lifting up his fists to show off their spikeyness.

"Don't worry, bro," said Derrick, "I don't really want to fight. I just thought you'd maybe like a friend to eat with."

The Minotaur Dude just stood there, staring at Derrick the Terrible. The others thought for sure he'd pound him and stomp him and make himself a terrible Derrick sandwich. But then, to all of their amazement, the Minotaur Dude's eyes started watering a teensy little bit. A single tear emerged and rolled down his great bull snout and fell onto the ground at Derrick's feet. The Minotaur Dude reached over, picked up a sandwich and tenderly handed it to the little human standing before him, and later they all swore that they had even seen a tiny inkling of a smile on the Minotaur Dude's big ol' bull face.

Derrick took a big bite out of the sandwich. It was a turkey sandwich on toasted country buttermilk bread, with lettuce, tomato, cheddar cheese, and mayonnaise. He gave it about a B- in the big picture, but honestly that was actually pretty good for a sandwich found at the bottom of a deep dirty grimy legendary treasure dungeon so he didn't complain.

"Hey, Minotaur Dude," said Derrick. "Since we're friends now, you wanna see something funny?"

The Minotaur Dude looked down at him, and Derrick took another bite, then another, then another, until finally his mouth was just bursting with big wads of munched up sandwich. Then he held his hands up on both sides, both of them made into fists. He paused, and then he punched his own stuffed mouth from both sides simultaneously so all the food suddenly shot out of his mouth and made a big mess all over the dungeon floor.

First, a tiny chortle came from above, then a chuckle and a muffled snort, then the Minotaur Dude finally broke into full on unrestrained bull-headed laughter and he fell down and rolled around laughing and clutching his stomach. Derrick guessed it had been a while since he'd seen any good comedy, cause honestly it wasn't really that funny, but whatever.

Then the Minotaur Dude stood up and grabbed a big giant bull-handed handful of sandwiches and started stuffing them into his own huge mouth until practically the whole giant pile of sandwiches was crammed in there and his cheeks were bulging out like crazy. Then the Minotaur Dude brought his big enormously spikey knuckled fists up and punched himself in the head from both sides at once, and his whole head exploded in a great shower of blood and brains and sliced turkey and tomato and giant bull skull fragments and cheddar cheese and big globs of bloody mayonnaise and buttermilk bread.

Then, with blood and brains raining down all around him, Derrick the Terrible turned around slowly and faced his "friends" and smiled a big goofy smile and the image froze and a hit rock song started playing while the credits rolled.

The End

The Joker and the Submarine

I dreamed that I was a crew member on a nuclear submarine. We captured the Joker and forced him to do work for us. You know, free labor, like the Suicide Squad or whatever that's about. Anyway, we sat him down at a work station and gave him clear instructions NOT to push the button that fires the nuclear missiles. But he did it anyway! Some people just don't listen, you know?

Actually, come to think of it, it would have been a pretty good gag if pushing the button just made a punching bag come out of the wall and hit him in the face.

*   *   *

This dream was obviously inspired by the scene in Batman: The Movie where the Joker is on the Penguin's sub and is the one who pushes the "fire torpedo" buttons. I showed this movie to my three-year old because he loves Batman but most other Batman media is a little too scary for him. He seems to have liked it a lot. Occasionally he asks me if he can watch it again.

Null Terminator - In the Presence of My Enemies

As I've mentioned before, I am producing an EP and a full length album for Galactitronic Super-Space-Composer Null Terminator. The last track I posted was from the EP, which should be released first, though I still have no idea when it will be completed.

Anyway, I felt like officially sharing another track, though this one had already been available. I simply had never really pointed it out on this blog before. This will be the third track from the full length. I should add that while the EP will probably be 100% composed by Null Terminator, this track is in fact almost completely my own composition, so on the full length I suppose I will be credited as co-composer, which is good, obviously, because I have been wanting to get into the professional musicdom for a long time now.

Null Terminator - In the Presence of My Enemies

Spending Time

I dreamed that I was spending Christmas with the family of one of my Indian coworkers. I do actually have some Indian coworkers, but this particular person was a fictional coworker conjured from the ether expressly for the dream.

The members of my coworker's family seemed to be fairly well divided with respect to what they were allowed to eat. Some had only rice and water. Others were vegetarians. Still others were eating beef. I don't remember now what I myself was eating.

I was asked to take part in some kind of family ritual. Actually, I wasn't exactly asked. The patriarch of the family, who spoke no English (in fact, I don't remember hearing him speak at all in any language), gestured to me to take part. He gave me some sort of sea horse shaped casing made from some plastic-like organic substance in which was contained some kind of shimmering silver-blue dust. I did as the others did. I used a knife to cut the end of the tail and shook out the dust into a pool of water. I don't remember whether I ever learned the significance of this act.

Later, I was speaking with an older gentleman who looked like the sort of man who might portray a Colonel or General in a movie. Maybe a little like Bob Gunton. I think he was trying to set me up with his daughter or granddaughter or niece or something. I think I was some kind of national hero, which is why he liked me.

At the end of the evening, I was speaking with my coworker, and I realized that I had started speaking with his accent. I didn't want to offend him, so I forced myself to speak like myself again.

"You know," I said, "I was thinking. If I saved up all the money I spent on soda and candy, by the end of the year I'd have a lot of money saved up."

"Or..." he said. "The vacuum will suck up your money, you'll drink a bit too much vermouth, and the Dark One will show you a good time."

~   ~   ~

I don't know who he meant by the Dark One. I suppose he might have meant himself, referring to his skin color, but I doubt it. I'm not sure what religion he practiced. I was never aware of whether Hinduism or Sikhism had any villainous entities in their theologies (I suppose now that they probably do, though I still have not checked). He might have been Muslim, but I don't think so, and for that matter, I'm not sure whether Muslims ever describe Iblis as "the Dark One." I suppose this particular Dark One may not have anything to do with any organized religions. Well, whoever he is, I don't think I want anything to do with him.

Dreams of a Swaly Gaum

I am a Gaum. If you don't know what that means, then in all likelihood you don't need to know. But you seem so earnest in your curiosity. I might as well explain it.

It's simple. I am a monster. A beast of evil company. That reprehensible thing that is the object of revulsion for those who dwell in the light. The one who delights in the suffering of the innocent. Usually the one who causes it.

Well. In my case, little of this is really true. I have done nothing to warrant being called Monster. No one from the light has had any chance to revolt at my hideous countenance. I have witnessed no suffering. How may I delight in it? I've certainly caused none.

I do keep evil company. That is a fact. This is difficult to avoid when you are born a Gaum. It is an evil world.

I am hideous. This is also difficult to avoid. Surely if a light-dweller were to cast their light upon me... hah hah...

Affection is not my destiny.

Still, I find it difficult to accept fully what I know to be unavoidable. I am a monster. There is no other course.

Yet I know myself to be different. Perhaps this is on account of my inexperience. Perhaps it is simply my youth. Perhaps it is because I am alone.

The others do not speak to themselves. In my solitude I find solace in conjuring companions to hear me out. They listen to the ramblings of a young neophyte. They speak not a word. Still, they direct me to further my ramblings. The curiosity of an imaginary companion. Does this belie an impurity in me? Am I insane?

I have been trapped in the shadowy passages of this damned castle for too long. I long to return to the comfort of the Turned Worlds. There I have no need for ramblings. I would have tangible companions. Mired in groupthink, I would bury my thoughts beneath an ocean of subservience.

Subservience. This is why I am alone in the first place. We all must assume our posts in such places as this castle. Anyplace where the tendons binding the Turned and the Upright are strong and well dispersed. Intruders must perish. The Pendants must be found. It is commanded that these places must have a Gaum present to ensure that the Evil One's ends are achieved.

Why must my post be established in such a deserted and pointless place? Why did I have to grow old enough? Why couldn't I simply have died a whelp? In death there is the greatest darkness. In darkness there is stillness. Stillness. Stillness.

I need to move. This motionless palaver with the ghosts in my mind is leading me nowhere useful.

My claws make no sound as they usher my long frame along the stone corridors. My abdomen, menacing in its slenderness but somehow housing a full system of organs, sways little and hovers inches from the floor. A pale carpet made black by the shadows. I imagine my black eyes gliding through the darkness. Ebony gems submerged in the inky air that rules this place. They do not bob or sway. They simply slide forward, searching for the purpose that the Evil One has determined for them. Their victims would not see them before they perish. They are silent sentinels that serve my claws with information.

It is the claws that are masters here.

I hear a sound. I stop. My heart beats its flattened Gaumy rhythm a little faster. Soon I will be called Monster.

The masters take me quickly to one of the outer halls. The servants shall do their work without question. It is the coming of light-dwellers to this miserable place that will steel my mental faculties and make perfect my existence. It is their deaths that will lend sense to my purpose. I will yield to the subservience that is my destiny.

There is light in the room ahead. I enter, careful not to allow the light to touch me. The sentinels behold them now, climbing the staircase at the far end of this outermost hall. A trio of humans. Not dangerous. They will be a trivial group to dispatch. All the better. Their complete innocence will make my purpose all the more pure. I am a monster.

They are a family. The father is old. He carries the torch that lights their way. His hair is messy and thick along the sides of his wide face. His chin is bare. The hat he wears is too tall. I find him repulsive.

As foolish as the man appears, his wife is easily the more innocent. She is here only because he brought her. She trusts him too much. He leads her to her death. She wears her hair up in a thing that resembles the eggsacks of the Great Worms. Scaled down, of course. This is no Great Worm that wears this dress embroidered with flowers of every color. Hmm. Her face is nearly as fat as a Worm. She is disgusting.

The third is their daughter. She is in her late adolescence. She is interesting. She wears a dress as black as my eyes. Her hair is as dark as the air through which it flows. Her face is a delicate thing. It is slender and easily broken. Yet, I detect a determination that defies her enemies' power to break it. I cannot break it. I am powerless.

Stillness.
Stillness.

O sweet disillusion

That I, a Gaum of swale, I am by riddle rendered swain

A Gaumy swain in truth for to deny would but constrain

But for emotion newly felt, wherein to swell I'm fully fain

Is denial unfair in full? Is it constraint to wane?

O blackened spirit! Wherefore ask the truth of swage and swell

When hordes and worlds and death itself in question surely tell

That acts of swell fall to upright and swage does fall to darkened fell?

If bear ye lust for newfound loft, then shed this swaly shell!

But I cannot. No more can I break my own bonds of physical form than I can break her jaw from its rightful place. Through the link from eye to claw, the girl has made the master her slave. I am powerless to achieve my purpose. And I am powerless to shift my purpose. Surely the girl would look upon me and despair. And I would find a new form of self-revulsion. This cannot be.

I make my escape as silently as I came. I am careful not to allow the light-dwellers to witness my departure. They must not know my presence.

I choose passages at random. I care nothing for my destination. I lose my way. I have not been in this part of the castle before. I will move until I hear no more sound. Then I shall make my departure. They shall not discover me.

I stop. I am in silence. Yet my heart beats. I cannot silence my heart.

I shut my eyes. I seek the fibers that bind the Turned Worlds and the Upright. They are strong here. I guide my spirit toward them. The ether pulses. I ignore it. I drift away into the Turned Worlds, but I cannot control myself. The ether pulses. I resist. Stillness. Stillness. But there is no stillness. The ether pulses, and I am catapulted through the worlds between the worlds. I feel fear. Is this the justice of the Evil One?

I open my eyes. I crouch before an altar in a dim stone room. Beyond the altar is an abyss of impenetrable depth. I would cast myself into this abyss but for the object that hovers above the altar. It draws me near. I recognize its crescent shape from the tales of my father. A crescent moon of stained glass, an iridescent codex of color-formation. It is one of the three Godly Pendants, lost from the kingdom of the Light in ages only the Light and the Evil One still know.

How did I come upon this place? I have searched the reaches surrounding my post with the greatest care. No corner, however obscure, could have escaped my wanderings.

I am a fool. It did escape me. The girl's power drove me into places I did not know. I avoided parts of the castle. Did I reserve such places of mystery by subconscious action? Was it by intervention on the part of the pendant that it was not found? Surely the pendant was itself responsible for my arrival here as I attempted to fly to the Turned Worlds. Why would it hide itself for so long only to summon me now?

No more questions. I take the pendant's glittering chain delicately between two nails of my left claw. I guide the chain over my head and it nests itself around my neck. I feel powerful and powerless. The pendant is an artifact of greatness, but can I wield its greatness?

The chain tingles upon my neck. I shift the pendant. The tingling ceases. I am content. The tingling begins again. I shift. It ceases. It begins again.

Why does the Evil One desire this thing?

~   ~   ~

The tingling on my neck awoke me. It turned out that this tingling was my ten month old son sleeping next to me, tickling me with his outstretched fingers. What he was dreaming about, I can only guess at.

Not all of this post came directly from my dream. I elaborated on a lot of the musings of the Gaum, who is actually a character that has appeared in my dreams before. In fact, I wasn't aware of the Gaum being the protagonist here until after waking. Another fabrication. Aside from this, most of this is intact directly from the ether. In the actual dream, I spent more time watching the family as they explored the castle, and I did not actually feel any malicious intentions toward them. These are all things that I came up with later.

The little poem in the middle was not in the dream. This is something I wrote many years ago and have now refurbished with slightly different language and rhythm. I have tried to make it as good as possible, but I'm not exactly Shakespeare.

As far as I can remember, the girl looked a little like Krysten Ritter or Laura Donnelly or Kate Micucci or someone in that broad category of person.

Weird Tales and Community

Last night I dreamed up a series of misadventures experienced by some of the cast of NBC's Community.

The gang were being harassed by an evil statue of a woman, and Troy decided that the only solution was to relocate the statue to a mythical island covered with landmines, where "no one could possibly be happy, except for someone who can't move, like a statue." Upon arriving at the island, Troy, careful to avoid the landmines, set about searching for a good spot for the statue. However, he discovered that the island was guarded by a legendary creature that he had to overcome. This creature was a female American Gladiator.

Everyone tried to play a prank on Pierce that involved setting something on fire. However, the random kid designated to ignite the thing accidentally ignited a small plant nearby that had been specially bred to be completely inextinguishable if inflamed. This led to the tragic burning down of the building housing the college swimming pool, referred to in the dream as the "Swim House." For some reason, Pierce was blamed for all of this, but he later diverted the blame onto Winger by revealing that Winger had inadvertently included Pierce in the mass text messages detailing the plan for the prank. This, by standard dream logic, did indeed make Winger responsible for the damage done.

Troy somehow captured a ghost by leaping over a pool of mercury. The ghost turned out to be the owner of a chain of steakhouses called Berther Werther, and his method of marketing involved haunting people.

On account of his sensitivity towards being excluded, Pierce tried to get into the college's Biology class, which was historically reserved for 8 to 10 year old blond boys. He claimed his motivation was "because the class leads to getting into Chemistry." The young kids were trying very hard to prevent him from enrolling in the class.

Null Terminator

I have to preface this entry by explaining who Null Terminator is. Null Terminator is a composer, a sort of kindred spirit to myself, whom I have been working with on and off for some time now on a forthcoming album of electronic music. But there is another Null Terminator. He is the protagonist of the story set forth in the album. He is a sort of space age superhero, granted authority in the late twenty-second century by the Catholic Federation to use lethal force against any of a select group of evildoers, one of whom is called Sentinel, another of whom is called The Void Star.

A week or two ago I dreamed that I was Null Terminator, and I was fighting against both Sentinel and The Void Star simultaneously using advanced martial arts techniques. For some reason, I was also fighting against Batman and Robin and Jackie Chan. They had all ganged up on me in the hopes that through sheer force they might be able to take me down.

Nevertheless, I summarily trounced them, every last one.

~   ~   ~

I should point out that although this entry is very short, the dream was in fact quite long, and the battle was basically just one long sequence of them trying to punch and kick me, me blocking every last attack, and then at the end me incapacitating them with a single blow. Thus, I have tagged it as Important (Long).

Ghost Tag

I was trapped inside some kind of haunted mansion or castle or something. Trapped there with me were a small number of others with whom I had not been acquainted prior to my present predicament.

One of these others was some kind of military soldier. I can't remember his name now, so we'll just call him Smith. In any case, he seemed a very well seasoned soldier, potentially a valuable ally to me, and so I tried to remain on his good side.

There was also a young lady named Miss Laverne, who turned out to be an experienced lawyer. For some reason that I can no longer remember, she was helping me with some important paperwork that I needed to finish. I was very happy for the help, and she wasn't unpleasant company by any means.

As she was a lawyer, I can't help but compare her appearance to that of Ellen Parsons from the TV series Damages. But she wore glasses, maybe kind of like Gemma Taylor from The Rage in Placid Lake.

Miss Laverne looked kind of like this...

...but with these glasses. Ignore the guy on the right. He wasn't in this scene.

There were a number of others, but their details are all shrouded by the ether now.

The layout of the mansion itself was vaguely like that of my grandmother's house, but its actual features were more like the interior of Hogwarts. That is, there were portraits on the wall that moved and talked, just like regular people. The people depicted in these portraits were, in fact, spirits of some import.

For instance, one of them was a blonde-haired young lady in a dress. The label on this portrait read, "Satan."

The others and I systematically approached these portraits one by one and spoke with the spirits contained within them. Each time we did so, an apparition of some kind appeared and chased us around for a little while before vanishing without having done any real harm.

Well, after one such little chase, we noticed that one of our companions had disappeared. Soon thereafter, we received an anonymous letter informing us that he had been kidnapped and that the kidnapper was demanding four million dollars.

After we approached the Satan portrait, a ghost of a tall, old, balding man in a white shirt and jeans chased us around. After a while, I realized that one of those old-timey telephones that you see in cartoons was sitting on the dining room table, and it was ringing.

It's for you.

I ignored the ghost as it chased the others. I answered the phone. It was Miss Laverne.

"Hello?" I said.

"This is Miss Laverne," she said.

I looked around and noticed that both Laverne and Smith were gone.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"I have kidnapped Smith," she said.

"Why?"

"I will return him in exchange for four hundred thousand dollars."

"What?"

She hung up.

The ghost had disappeared by this time, and so I informed the others that the kidnapper had turned out to be Miss Laverne.

But then I started thinking about this little development.

Why would she kidnap somebody and ask for four million, only to turn around and kidnap another somebody and ask for four hundred thousand?

Also, why would she tell us who she was, especially considering that the first note was anonymous? It seemed the sort of stupid move that might be made by some thick-headed high school gym coach, not a sexy lawyerbrarian. Something strange was afoot, and I was going to get to the bottom of it.

~  ~  ~

Actually, I never got to the bottom of it. Sadly, I woke up from the dream. I like to think that Miss Laverne was actually being framed by the ghosts of the mansion. Actually, now that I think about it, it might have been one of those Scooby-Doo villains masquerading as a ghost who had tried to frame her. But I guess I'll never know unless I dream up a sequel.

As for whether or not Rose Byrne actually played the role of Miss Laverne in this dream, I don't believe she did. I believe it was just someone who looked kind of like her. A Rose Byrne lookalike, sort of in the same sense that Carly Foulkes might be considered an Anne Hathaway lookalike.

I mention this only because on occasion some of the characters in my dreams actually are portrayed by particular movie stars. For instance, once when I was in high school, I had a dream about the lost empire of Atlantis, and as it happened, the top ranking Atlantean general was played by Sam Neill. He had golden armor and wings and could fly.

Granny (and Some Burst Dreams)

It's all very hazy now. I can't remember how I came to be in this place, but for some reason, it's important that I stay.

I can't remember why I stay. There's nothing preventing me from going outside. Indeed, I go out for fresh air often.

The place is obviously an old abandoned orphanage. There aren't any children here any longer. It's completely empty except for me.

No, that's not true. There is one child, a small South Asian girl, under my protection. I don't think she can leave. Maybe she can, but she won't.

I think she is why I am still here.

She talks often about the old woman who used to be in charge of this place. Apparently, the kids used to call her Granny. I don't remember if I've specifically asked her anything about the old woman. She simply volunteers the information. Mostly I don't listen anyway. I already know everything I need to know about her.

She is evil.

She is coming.

I'm trying to persuade the girl to leave with me, but she doesn't seem to want to go.

"This place is dangerous," I say.

She doesn't answer me. She only talks about Granny.

She does leave the building with me sometimes when I go outside for air. She seems happy enough in this miserable place. But I can't leave her here. She doesn't understand. She thinks Granny means her well. Maybe she does. But I can't let her stay here. She mustn't be here when the old woman comes back.

Every time we go back inside, the girl shuts the door. She always leaves it unlocked for Granny, just in case she returns. I never lock the door. I'm sure it's dangerous, but I intend to get out of here before the old woman gets back, anyway.

We're sitting outside on the porch. I'm talking to the girl, trying to get her to focus. Finally, she seems to be hearing me.

"We need to leave this place," I tell her.

"Why?" she says.

"There are things you don't know."

"About Granny?" she asks with an innocent smile.

I'm not sure what to say now. She doesn't need to know everything.

"Well," I say at last, "it's my job to make sure you're safe. You won't be safe here any longer."

She seems to be thinking.

"I need to take you with me," I say.

Reluctantly, she agrees to leave.

We go back inside to gather our things. This time she enters first, and I shut the door behind us. My muscles are working automatically. I lock the door.

As I'm crossing the living room, the girl is already upstairs. I'm gathering some things for the trip when I realize that this is the first time the door has been locked since I arrived.

Suddenly, I understand.

The old woman has been here the whole time. She knows that I've locked the door. She knows that I want to keep her out.

She is angry.

I turn and fly to the door to unlock it in the desperate hope that it might appease the witch, but I find that though the bolt is thrown, the door is ajar. A mere sliver of the light of dawn shines through. And then the sliver swells and the light fills the room, blinding me.

Then I see her. The old woman has finally revealed herself in the doorway. Her skin bears the pallor of asphyxia. Her hair is of the exact same color, long and stringy, floating stiffly behind her like shards of glass. Her face is short, but very, very round, and protruding from its center is a profoundly long and pointy nose. Her back is hunched over dramatically so that she stands somewhere between three and four feet in height, though upright she would stand about five. In her left hand she is holding what appears to be the carcass of a kangaroo. In her right hand she is holding an enormous three pronged fork.

This, I understand, is meant for me.

I'm not having this. I have a long invisible lance in my hands, and I make good use of it, stabbing her in the gut again and again and again. She is bloodied, but she still comes at me, apparently unphased. I retreat backwards and continue to maim her.

This continues for a while, and finally the witch seems to have had enough. She declares, "I'm resigning! It's no longer good for the kids anyway."

Suddenly there is a red Cadillac outside with the steering wheel on the right-hand side. The driver is a young man who looks like a greaser straight out of the 1950s. In the passenger seat on the left side sits a young woman that I understand to be a marginally famous South Asian film actress, though I have no idea what her name is.

The witch rides away in the back of this vehicle, and that's that.

I go upstairs to find the girl.

~  ~  ~

I don't know what happens next. I woke up. This dream gave me chills, although I lay in bed for a little while thinking about how I would alter the details in a film adaptation to make the dream more terrifying.

I closed my eyes again and I could see the Cadillac's skeleton as though the car's skin and muscle were invisible or removed. The skeleton was formed by long, curved blades like katanas. I've often thought about Ubiquitous Trees* made from blades. They seem to me especially deadly if they appear everywhere at once out of nowhere, simultaneously gouging anything that is anywhere. This was not a U-Tree. It was merely a skeleton, the foundation upon which my subconscious mind had built up a more detailed dream-entity. As my mind was demolishing this particular entity, I returned to the ether and witnessed its skeleton, sort of like observing the wooden framework revealed by tearing away drywall.

I wrote down the details of this dream and then returned to sleep. I drifted wearily in and out of the ether for the remainder of the night, experiencing a variety of burst dreams. These included:

• Being lost at a new school. My class was starting soon, but my schedule was not in my backpack.
• Lying in bed, writing down the details of a dream. I realized that I was dreaming and decided to do some stream of consciousness writing while still dreaming. I distinctly remember writing down some random words strung together incoherently. These were structural words like "because," "after," "in," and "the." Then, I wrote down, "there's a place for me in Heaven, no matter what you think," followed by scribbling frantically, and then, "OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD," whereupon I woke again.
• Running into one of my professors. I asked him if I could still do an Independent Study. He said that I couldn't. The policies had changed and now disallowed what I wanted to do.
• Waiting in a queue of cars, each one being accosted in turn by a very, very shady looking carjacker with a knife. When I was second in line, I resolved to floor the gas pedal and escape when he tried to approach my window. But when he approached, and I tried to floor it, I realized that the car was backwards, I was in the back seat facing backwards, and there were no pedals. I scrambled for the driver's seat as the carjacker started scratching the window with his knife.

 Amongst others that I must have forgotten.

~  ~  ~

* Please see the end of The Ubiquitous Shredded Chicken Tree for more on U-Trees.

The Ubiquitous Shredded Chicken Tree

Last night, some old friends, some new friends, and I were playing some kind of weird game involving golf balls in the courtyard of a shadowy motel. This courtyard consisted of a peanut-shaped swimming-pool-like depression in the ground, which was covered in grass at the bottom rather than cement and was surrounded by an ordinary sidewalk. At the two central points in this depression were pits covered by grates consisting of only a few iron bars. One could easily fit through these bars if one tried to. These pits were quite deep, and at their bottoms we could see dark murky water. I jokingly referred to these pits as sewer foyers.

By accident, some of the golf balls fell into these sewer foyers. We knew, sadly, that they were lost forever.

I was planning to jump up to the sidewalk surrounding the grassy depression, as all my friends did, but I became aware that this area was a sort of "horror movie/game area, or something," and my curiosity held me there. I wanted to see just how scary the horrors of this area were.

So I stayed put.

I had the option of loading up different "levels" of this horror attraction, and so I tried some. The water level rose until it was at the brim of the grassy depression, and I was submerged up to my shoulders or so. Piranhas and sea monsters came up out of the water, but they didn't bother me, as I am tough.

I asked my younger brother what he felt the scariest level of this arena was, and he told me it was called Undermann.

So I loaded that one up.

Instead of sea monsters and piranhas, a young girl, probably around eight or nine years old, came up out of the water and started floating on her back at the center of the flooded depression in the ground. Her face was pale, and her eyes were off-white with no pupils. She tried to grab me and pull me down under the water, deeper and deeper, I was aware, into some unfathomable watery abyss.

I withdrew upwards in that dreamy sort of magical flight and escaped her grasp. But she leaped upwards after me without altering her horizontal position, though she turned as she rose, sometimes orienting herself face down, sometimes face up.

"You can't escape," she insisted. I believed her.

Nevertheless, I continued to withdraw higher and higher. Still, she continued to rise after me, reaching toward me.

"I'll pull 2,000 Bibles down, too!" she cried. I understood clearly that this was an extraordinary measure of evilness.

There was something in this whole ordeal that had to do with Islam. The girl, Islam, and fear were all connected somehow, though not in any obvious way of which I was aware.

As I drifted back to life from the world of the ether, there existed a Ubiquitous Tree. This is a tree-like structure, a thing with a root and branches but no ends to the branches. It extends forever in all directions, continually branching out and filling every part of the Universe. This particular Ubiquitous Tree was made out of soaking wet shredded chicken.

~  ~  ~

What?

I've been reading a book called The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali. It is about the misconceptions that people have about Islam and Muslims in general, and particularly about how the sensational images of brutality and oppression that many Americans have come to associate with the religion do not actually represent most members of its community of believers. It's a very good book, I feel, that has taught me how little I actually know about Islam and the Qur'an.

I am really starting to like Islam a lot, though I am not becoming a Muslim at the present moment. I don't believe that I am presently capable of choosing my religious beliefs volitionally, but let's leave the discussion of that matter for another time, because it's large enough on its own to serve as a whole blog entry without a dream to report at all.

Islam is very interesting to me. It's amazing to me how backwards the misconceptions about the religion appear to be. Now I'm having dreams in which Islam appears to be taking form subconsciously in subtle ways. I'm pretty sure that this dream does, in fact, stem from my subconscious reaction to reading about Islam, although I'm not sure what it indicates. I'm very uncertain what it indicates.

The 2,000 Bibles bit seems suggestive of the moronic Qur'an burning that's planned for this weekend in Florida. Let me just go on record officially by saying that it's a stupid idea. It's a very, very, very stupid idea. While we're at it... If anyone is even reading this, if you see Muslims celebrating on 9/11, they are not celebrating the destruction of the twin towers. They are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, which occurs at the end of Ramadan, which happens to fall by coincidence right around 9/11 this year. They are not being hateful! They are just grateful to God that they are once again allowed to eat and drink during the daytime!

The shredded chicken forming the U-Tree probably has something to do with the tacos that I had for dinner last night.

I'm kind of a weird person, I think.