The Stuff of Dreams

Hey Thunderheads.  Sorry that you have to see me like this, but I’m about five-seconds away from being sucked into a coffee-deprived-coma and my freaking barista’s giving me lines from Star Trek in broken Spangliscottish!  Who, for the record, is so Newyorrican that PitBull the rapper has a better shot at getting cast as Montgomery Scott.  Just sayin’.  Hold on…

“What the… Scotty!!  What is this??  I said five shots of espresso!”

“I’m giv’n her all she’s got Capitan, I canna give her no more!”

“I think you mean Captain,” says I.

“That’s what I said — Capitan!   And jewww could at least say thank you.”

Ok.  Now I’m about to loose it.  “Thank you??  Oh!  So you can handle this lady’s five-pump-vanilla, three-pump-chai, soy, no-water, no-foam, 170-degree – chai latte (which is my wife’s drink by the way), but not my quinto-shot espresso??  Well maybe, SCOTTY, I should take my business to Starbucks, since they don’t seem to have a problem getting my order right or upkeeping their espresso machines!”

“But Capitannnn, jewww know cheap mexican labor make these espresso machines — they probably use cheap flux capacitors too.  Ah! Ah!  Flux Capacitors?  Who says Scotty don’t know his Star Trek?  I know my Star Trek like Kirk knows that redheaded green chick from Orion – con todas mis cosas, baby!  That’s right.  That’s what I’m talking about.”

Don’t worry Thunderheads, I’m already ahead ya.  But trying to explain to “Scotty” Ricardo Fernando Miguel Jimenez that he’s just horribly mixed-up his Star Trek with Back To The Future references is pointless.  Trust me; you’d have more success trying to get him to date Italian.  So while I wait for him to redo my drink, why don’t you and me talk about what’s really bothering me this morning.

You ever wake up freaked out by a nightmare of a dream?  I mean like the kind that gets you so spun up that you have to sit up on the edge of your bed and talk to yourself?

Yeah — well welcome to my 4am.

There I was…sleeping soundly, peacefully even, for what had to have been at least a solid five hours…and then BAM! –yanked into utter darkness.  I tell ya, my REM graph, if I had been hooked up to one, must have looked crazy stupid.  Next thing I know I’m falling down a sewer hole.  And I only know that because of the rats and a stench so bad that I immediately wanted to go crying back to mommy.

Hey — you don’t think I could fallen down that manhole that sits at the corner of East 15th & Union Square West, do you??  It seems to steam and stink pretty bad.  Huh.  Anyways…

So I’m falling down this thing fast, up to my eyeballs in crap.  I get flushed out some godforsaken sewer line.  And then there I am, face first, dripping wet, teetering outside some pub I’ve never seen like a coke addict that just crawled out of the East River.  I don’t know where I am.  It’s cold.  I stink to high heaven.  And some old hag’s givin’ me the what for.  It’s like Alice in Wonderland gone amuck, swimming in muck.  You know, done-up Tim Burton style.  Oh wait, he did that already, didn’t he?  Oops.  My bad.  Well then double it.  Better yet, quinto it — like Scotty’s supposed to be doing with my freakin’ espresso!

Sorry.  I warned you that I was five-seconds away from being sucked into a coffee-deprived-coma.

Ok.  So I’m in front of this pub, but this pub’s all wrong.  I mean not structurally, I mean like…oh I don’ know…like emotionally, spiritually, or whatever word that suits your definition for sensing something that you can’t put your finger on. All I know is my hairs are standing on ends.  And where are my feet taking me??  Yep, you guessed it, right up the stoop and through the bloody door.

No, the door isn’t actually bloody.  Geesh!  You know you have too many Brits in your life when their Britishisms are bleeding through your writing even without you thinking about it.  Ha!  Bleeding through.  Get it — bloody, bleeding through??  Nevermind.

Back to the bloody door that’s not bloody.  So I shimmer right through the darn thing.  You heard me, shimmer right through the darn thing — like I’m suddenly Patrick Swayze from the movie GHOST or something — only to find myself inside, right beside a long, twenty-seater, polished mahogany bar (an impressive one, I’ll tell you that — like I wanna find this joint for real!) with not a soul in sight except for the dead man sprawled-out on the floor in front of me like he’s been waiting for the crew from CSI New York to show up for his body-taping.  Terrible, I know!  How do you think I feel??  I’m like ten-feet from the poor bastard.

But that’s not half of it.  Then the room drops another ten degrees and dread hits me like a bludgeon to the diaphram.  My heart’s racing! I feel woozy!  And then I see IT, or I should say then I hear IT…because I never really see anything.

“I am Malice and I am Mawl,” IT said, “This is but the first of so much more…”

That’s it.  That was my 4am.  And that’s why I’m so out of sorts this morning.  Those words.  I keep hearing those words.  Now before you try psycho-analyzing me with your dream interpretations, let me just say —

“Ahem!  Wow Capitan, jewww got issues.  Jewww need some juju or something.  That’s got darkness written all over it. Heyyyy — the new Star Trek is called Into Darkness!  Crazy coincidence, right?  Yeah, I tried out for it.  But they said I was too melato to play Mr. Scott.  I say mix it up, you know.  Put a little salsa in with the potatoes!  Ah well, my agent said don’t worry about it.  We Newyorricans too caliente for space anyways, huh, Capitan??”

“Agent??” I say, “You have an agent?”

“Sure.  My cousin Rico.  Why — jewww want that I hook you up??  He give you a good discount.”

Well Thunderheads — before my head bursts and they have to cart me away because of prolonged exposure to stupidity and caffeine deprivation, let me make sure that I’m of sound enough mind to leave you with this.

Inkling #4:
What is The Seven Thunders?  It is dream. It is nightmare. It is dream-walking. It is dream-ending. It is the fulfillment of dreams. And it is the horror of dreams fulfilled.