Her lips tasted exactly like those purple Lifesavers candies. Seriously. I licked them again just to be sure. She giggled. “Snozzberries,” Gene Wilder said, moving to the white door with pictures of unlikely fruits plastered on the top half. I held her body against mine with hands covered in furry gloves, and I rested my head on her hair, which was made of gold tinfoil. The Beatles were singing “Penny Lane” in the background, and my watch was beeping out of synchronization.<\/p>\n
This is the point where you know it’s all a dream, because I hate wearing gloves on the best of the days, but for some reason my subconscious wasn’t listening.<\/p>\n
I let go of her, and her head fell off. Mechanical cuckoos with a multitude of different-colored cartoon eyes came flying out of her neck, making noises akin to annoyed magpies until they roosted on the laser beams of a Seal of Solomon around my bed, at which point they began arguing about whether a love for the Clash classified someone as an old school punk, or if there had to be a continuing dress requirement. I pulled off the gloves and threw them at the birds. They took off, fluttering through the ceiling.<\/p>\n
I looked for the girl’s head, afraid it rolled under my bed, and I didn’t want to look underneath because I wasn’t wearing socks, and you know the monster under the bed is impressed by socks and won’t bother you if you’re wearing even the slightest nylon hose. Which was a bizarre thought for me, since I didn’t like nylons on my women, let alone the thought of them on my own feet.<\/p>\n
The little Buddha on my nightstand offered to look for me, and hopped down in his jade green finest. “No head,” he said, coming out bright red. I used the glow to peek underneath, but then remembered that my bed rested on the floor. I gave the Buddha a hand up and thanked him for the enlightenment. He told me to kill him if I saw him on the road, but I said that was more Coyote’s joke than Wolf.<\/p>\n
I followed the path of golden tinsel, thinking something about fairy gold as it turned into a path of oak leaves. I was barefoot and the leaves crunched under my feet. I identified them as oak in my dream, but I wouldn’t be sure what they were in waking. The trees seemed concerned, and seven black birds (for a secret) followed me as I moved down the hill.<\/p>\n
I heard the singing, playful splashes at the river. Three naiads dressed in lilypads blew kisses or raspberries at me.<\/p>\n
“What do you believe in?” the first asked.<\/p>\n
“The spirit of rock and roll,” I responded. The first laughed and ducked under the water.<\/p>\n
“What is your favourite colour?” the second asked.<\/p>\n
“Blue,” I said, too quickly. She kicked some water at me and then dissolved into a splash.<\/p>\n
“Why do you look for the head of the Family?” the third asked.<\/p>\n
“I am looking for the maiden princess before the Dragon devours her,” I said.<\/p>\n
“Too late, little bird, too late.” The third smiled, showing gruesome green teeth and then sank beneath the surface.<\/p>\n
I ran down along the river. Powered doughnuts like inner-tubes bobbed along it for an interval, as the river smelled more like coffee than loam. An owl with a rosette pattern like a jaguar’s landed on a tree in front of me.<\/p>\n
“What’s your suggestion?” I asked. “If you ask me, `Who,’ I’m going to kick you in the beak.”<\/p>\n
“Google it,” he said. “Google-it, google-it,” and he flew back off.<\/p>\n
I saw the Dragon’s cave in the distance, past the wooden boxes labelled, “Ceiling wax.” There was a game of checkers being played at by a couple of cabbages on top of the crates, and all the remaining pieces were king’d. I snuck around the boxes, looking into the darkness of the cave. I felt very much like I imagined Nietzsche thought I would, as the darkness looked deep into me.<\/p>\n
Do you love her?<\/i> it asked.<\/p>\n
“I love no one,” I said. “I feel like I might have an infinite supply of love ready to be tapped into as soon as I find the one with the real key. I have been tasted, but never more than sipped. I am ready to be drunk.”<\/p>\n
“Well, you are looking for some head,” the cabbage remarked, wryly.<\/p>\n
Keep yours<\/i>, the voice recommended. Do not delve into the dark – it will devour you.<\/i><\/p>\n
I woke up at that. The room was still dark. I looked at my watch, pressing the little function that made it light up. I had been asleep for less than a couple hours. Maybe it was the borscht.<\/p>\n
Doloise was no where to be seen. At the time, I figured I just didn’t see her, and I was still tired. I went back to sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the point where you know it’s all a dream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-three"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}