Hypnagogia

A series of thoughts upon opening my eyes:

Thought number one was that I had drifted towards sleep. Without Benadryl. Without wine. Without Benadryl and  wine. I had not reached  sleep, true, but I had drifted. Drifted. Edged downstream far enough to see the lights of its fabled cities. Ha! This was unprecedented for me. Historic, even.

This changed things. No Benadryl and no wine changed everything. The world was going to be different after tonight.

Thought number two was Doctor Belloq. Doctor Belloq, lying next to me. I knew she was there, right next to me. I knew she was asleep. She’d gone on ahead without me. She’d left me here. Had she waited, well, we might have been flying through dream palaces together mere moments from now. Was that how it worked? Maybe?

At any rate, she’d gone on ahead without me, into sleep.

Thought number three was the sound. That noise. It was like… Like… The noise was like the purring of a giant mechanical tiger, maybe crossed with a car that had a bad starter, maybe crossed with the Bionic Man when he leaps over a fence.

That was the noise but where was that noise coming from?

Thought number four was that I could not turn to find out where that noise was coming from. Thought number four was that I could not move at all.

I could not move at all because of… Roots? The roots from that big old grumpy tree from Meyer Park. That is what it seemed like. Its roots were here. In bed with me here and wrapped around me here and squeezing me here until I could hardly even breathe.

I wondered, “How is this possible?”  

Thought number five was I was awake.

Thought number six was I was definitely not asleep.

Thought number seven was that something in the corner of my room was watching me. Something in the corner of my room that was  the big old grumpy tree but was not  the big old grumpy tree was watching me.

This something was bad. This something was evil. This something was pure and unadulterated, sinister and foul and it was sucking all the good, all the love – hell, it was sucking all the like – right out of my bedroom.

Thought number eight was utter certainty that this was not a dream.

I tried to kick. I tried to scream. I tried to kick and to scream and now the something in the corner was moving towards my bed.

“Recite!”  the something hissed in a voice that sounded more than a little bit like the vocals of a black metal band. Mostly like Xasthur, but a little like Wolves in the Throne Room, or maybe – just maybe – like Agalloch at certain moments in their later discography.

Thought number nine was that I should not get caught up in subtle distinctions between black metal vocalists when I had something that looked like the Silence from “Doctor Who”  approaching my bed and hissing orders at me.

I tried some more to kick and to scream and I did everything I could to move and this time, a sound came out of me. It was not much of a sound. It was just little sound. A wheeze, at best, really. But it was a sound just the same.

I could see the something swooping down on me, but then I managed that wheeze and suddenly, Doctor Belloq was up and in between me and the something.

Doctor Belloq was grinning. She looked really excited. She could not see that the something was swooping down on her  now, and I still could not move, so I could not warn her.

Doctor Belloq held her right hand up to my face and started counting down from five on her fingers.

Five...

Four…

The something was mere inches from the back of her head.

Three...

She lifted my right hand with her left.

Two…

She moved one of my fingers.

One...

And-

-the something popped out of existence and the giant mechanical tiger noise stopped and it was at this very moment when I started to kick and scream.

I screamed and I screamed some more. I cried a lot.

Doctor Belloq flapped her hands around and she said, “How fucking cool was that?”

Doctor Belloq said, “How many fingers did I hold up?”

I screamed a little bit more and I said, “You counted down from five and then you moved my finger.”  Then I went back to the screaming and the crying.  

Doctor Belloq began pacing around my room. She said, “I knew it! I knew it!”

She said, “You are the coolest person I have ever met ever, Katy!”

Thought number ten in my series of thoughts that night was that Doctor Belloq had somehow caused all of this to happen.

I reached over, off the bed, and I got my Benadryl and wine. 

Sleep with Me

She said, “Sleep with me,”  but that wasn’t the scary part that I warned you was coming last time.

Doctor Belloq was sitting on the floor in my living room. She was surrounded by piles of papers and the papers had my words on them. My words were journals and my words were blogs and novels and ideas and research paper articles. It was kind of ridiculous. All of those words and I’m pretty sure Doctor Belloq had read them all and highlighted the parts she found to be relevant.

And now? Well, now she had upped and decided that I really ought to maybe, you know, sleep with her.

That was not the scary part.  

As a matter of fact, that part seemed long overdue. For years, I had been reading Kurt Vonnegut and I had been reading Charles Bukowski, and both of those bastards had assured me that if I kept writing words and if my words were worth a damn, then women who were way-way-way out of my league would be rendered helpless (or at least highly suggestible) in their need to commit physical abominations with me.

Physical. Abominations. With me!

So far, this statement by Doctor Belloq was the only evidence I had that Vonnegut and Bukowski might have been right.

I would have to choose my words carefully here. The words I responded to her with, I mean. The ones I said out loud. The words I say out loud rarely if ever live up to the words I write. There is just no time. There is no delete button.

How in the hell can I be expected to come up with something clever if I cannot sleep on it? If I cannot write out a few variations of my possible responses to see what works the best? Oral communications in general could only be imprecise and embarrassing and I wanted no part of them.

(Scientifically accurate diagram,
stolen from here.)

Speaking of imprecise and embarrassing, I wasn’t too sure about the whole sex thing, either.

But Doctor Belloq said, “Sleep with me,”  and it seemed like I had to reply with something.  I took a deep breath and I opened my mouth to speak and I was probably as curious as she was about what words were going to come out.

I opened my mouth to speak but before I made a single sound, Doctor Belloq started talking again, and this time she said, “Are your blogs true?”

Damn it, this woman asked hard questions!

How could I respond to that in a way that was funny and profound and sexy and cool? Burroughs would have said the blogs were all true. Hemingway would have said the blogs were all lies. Any answer in between was just boring.

“I don’t know,”  I said. “I just write them.”

Doctor Belloq shrugged off my answer. She reached down into a teetering pile of my written words. Down past the Crayola comic book drawings of my elementary school years. Over from the mopey song lyrics of my time in junior high. Behind the optimistic notebooks of “Words I Want to Use in My Writing”  from my college days.

She said, “What about this one?”  as she handed me the “Plant Life (Parts 1-3)”  blog posts from just last month.

I looked at them, I found a typo, and I set them back down. Doctor Belloq had read my “Plant Life (Parts 1-3)”  posts, and while that was sort of scary, it wasn’t the scary part I warned you about.

“That one’s mostly true,”  I said.

Doctor Belloq had a gleam in her eye now. I had never seen that gleam before. She was excited. She said, “But you were MUCH more scared of the big old grumpy tree than you admitted there, weren’t you?”

I considered this. “Yes,”  I said.

Doctor Belloq leaped up and started pacing. “You were scared because the big old grumpy tree wrapped its roots around you and was squeezing you, idn’t that right?”

I considered this. “Uh huh,”  I said.

She got right up in my face and she started pointing at me. “And you weren’t sitting Indian style like you said. You were lying on your back, weren’t you?”

I considered this, too. “Yup,”  I said.

Her hands were shaking now, flapping around like the wings of some epileptic bat. More blog posts got yanked out the pile. “And you’ve been scared of the dark your whole life and that’s why you knock yourself out with wine and Benadryl every single night!”

I considered this. “You missed your calling, Sherlock.”

Doctor Belloq spread her arms out and sort of danced around in front of me. For a moment or two, I got concerned something was wrong, but her breasts bobbed up and down in a really wonderful way with every hop, so I let it go. Whatever was happening here, events definitely appeared to be coming to a head.

She shouted, “Let me spend the night with you, Katy! I want to see this. I figured out why you have been scared to fall asleep your whole life!”

I considered this. Doctor Belloq had not been using “Sleep with me”  as a euphemism for “Commit physical abominations with me,”  after all.

I had not seen that one coming.

Vonnegut and Bukowski had left me ill-prepared for a woman like this.

(Not Belloq. Obviously not me.
Declared relevant by me anyway.)

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

DISCLAIMER:  I feel that I must warn you that the story upon which we are about to embark is scary.

Oh, it does not start off that way, but don’t let it fool you. This story is deceptive. In fact, at the start, you will probably find yourself saying something like, “This story is curious!”  or perhaps even, “This story is going to make for some light and relaxing reading at bedtime tonight.”

But rest assured, this is not the case, or at least this is not the case for very long. For, while starting off as merely curious, our story will progress first to platypus-level-weird, then to hairless-cat-level-unnerving. From there, it will take a short detour through Christopher-Walken’s-voice-level-eerie, overcompensate for the lost time by plummeting into subdermal-spidermite-level-bloodcurdling, and finally, settle into Sarah-Palin-as-President-level horrifying.

So if you have a heart condition, are pregnant or may become pregnant, or have a history of insomnia, you should probably sit this one out. In addition, this story is definitely not recommended – it is even un-recommended!– for the elderly and the infirm, for anyone with epilepsy or phantom limb syndrome, and for those of you who are able to be hypnotized.

Now, the more astute readers among you – and the word “astute”  here is used to mean “keenly observant of things ordinary people might miss” – probably noticed that I have not said anything about children reading this story. This is because frankly, I am okay with the prospect of children reading it.

In my experience, children are ever-so-much more nimble than adults are at processing and incorporating new, strange, and even disturbing information into their lives. Why, when I was a child, both of my parents died in the very same month, then my twin brother was taken away and put into foster case and I was left on the treacherous streets of Houston to fend for myself.

To recover from all of this, it took me roughly one month.

But then some more time went by and I got taller and I turned into what society refers to as an “adult.”  Now, whenever everything changes and my life turns upside down and I regenerate into a brand new person, it takes me longer to recover. It takes me about a year.

Children bounce; adults do not.

Try dropping one of each off the top of the nearest building if you don’t believe me.

The story upon which we are about to embark is scary, but children will probably be able to handle it okay – even if they happen to be very young children. The only real question – as I see it, anyway – is who those very young children are going to find to read this story to them. You  could read it to them, I suppose, but as I might have mentioned earlier, you might be better off sitting this one out.

This story marks the beginning of “Lesbians in My Soup,”  Season Four.

Season One was about my scheme for Double Bigamy (All the Way). Season Two was about my then-wife’s plans to join a religion. Season Three was about a break-up.

Season Four looks as though it might be about… fear.

By an odd coincidence, Season Four starts with Doctor Belloq – who is the woman I am sorta-kinda dating – reading “Lesbians in My Soup.”  It starts with her asking to read more of my writing, things like my short stories, my novel-length manuscripts, and my journals.

It is always a little bit scary when someone whose opinion you value reads the words you have written. It is scary because it leaves you vulnerable. But that’s not the scary part of this story. The scary part of this story is what happened after that.

I will talk about it in my next blog post, which I think I am going to call “Sleep with Me.”

You might want to sit this one out.

If you do not, please don’t say I didn’t warn you.  

Afraid of the Dark

I was born afraid of the dark.

I have always been afraid of the dark.

There was no “before”. Never a comforting night. Even before I was born, I remember. I swear it is true. I remember. And though they say to me, “Impossible!” I remember. There I was, floating, not even a proper person yet to speak of, but already there was fear. There was fear and there was the generalized stickiness of the womb.

But I did not fear that part. The generalized stickiness, I mean. For I have never been afraid of stickiness. Not one bit. So it is true I can take pride in that much, at least.