hic vigilans somniat
The day of the Royal Meet, boats clog the river in anticipation of getting a glimpse of the Queen as she passes by on the royal barge. Ahead of her passage, a sleek craft cuts through the water to make way for the royal personage and her retinue. The craft is rowed by a dozen young sailors with a coxswain at… Continue reading the new queen
...and as I go among the patrons checking to see if they need anything, an old black man speaks up: “I’m just glad to have a place to come where I am welcome for who I am and no one’s judging me for my past.” His fellow ex-convicts nod in agreement and I feel a wave of satisfaction knowing that my… Continue reading dive bar
On a visit to see an old friend at his theatre company in Eastern Europe, sitting backstage looking through old photos of past productions while the performers rehearse onstage. She sits chatting with me, casual and friendly, despite her celebrity. She is undeniably charming and beautiful, even without any makeup and wearing her old blue jeans. I feel a pang of… Continue reading the actress
...and as the throng pushes by the windows, I see an old friend being moved along by the crowd. Close by her, I can see—and only I can see—her husband walks at her side as though guiding and protecting her. Her husband, three months dead now, catches my eye . . . smiles, waves. They move past a post, out… Continue reading siv & dave
...a brief and puzzling walkthrough by an old friend from high school, someone I haven’t seen in over thirty years. And for some reason I couldn’t resist the temptation to heckle him, making up the most ridiculous and absurd things and announcing them to the rest of the gathered people, amusing myself and no one else at his expense. Harmless… Continue reading robert
...and as my wife heads up to bed I think to myself that I should probably clean out the car. It’s a mess, after all. The backseat is littered with rubbish from our trip to the beach. While I’m working I hear a familiar voice call to me from the darkened driveway “Hello Mister Camp!” — genial and comfortable, my neighbor,… Continue reading neighborly
Crowded afternoon at the store, lots of activity and customers. A guy gets my attention, excited to be buying the massive brass singing bowl we got from Tibet. I am excited for him as well, since it’s several thousand dollars. Not a bad way to end the day. I get cornered behind the counter by a difficult customer, raising hell over… Continue reading the end
I raise my head and when the professor calls on me I ask “Are these real numbers?” She pauses and narrows her eyes, hand frozen in mid-motion on the chalkboard where she’d been writing out the tables for the various ratios she was explaining. “How do you mean?” I stand up and go to the front of the class, gesturing to… Continue reading ratio
I hear the door opens as she enters, the floorboards creak as she approaches the bedside, feel her palms on my shoulder as she shakes me awake. “You have to wake up, you have to wake up, you have to wake up…” Insistent, urgency in her voice. I twitch, struggling against the paralytic bonds of sleep. When I open my eyes, I am alone… Continue reading alarm
...and as the pus bursts against the mirror, immediately a small stalk sprouts outward from the center mass, giving life to two tiny toothed mouths . . . around the edge three petal formations unfurl and stretch outward, delicate and pale pink in the overhead bathroom light...
Arguing with two women to whom I am both somehow married. One is younger and very ambitious, middle eastern descent. She is furious with me, holding onto some misconception that I am preventing her from pursuing her career. Furious at the accusation, I point out how my first marriage was nothing but supportive of my wife’s efforts, even to the… Continue reading argument
After my wife woke up, I lay in bed for a long while. The door opens. A large misshapen brute of a man enters the room. Muscular and twisted, his hulking form loomed over the bed. Stripped to the waist and swollen with rage, he paced back and forth, stabbing a rusty handheld sickle down into the bedclothes as he muttered and growled… Continue reading brute
At the gateway of the ramp, I take the ticket from the mechanism and slyly point out that we can go through the first level without being detected. My companion is skeptical but follows along as we pass through the gate without being stopped. On the other side, a woman in uniform stops us for confirmation and I show her… Continue reading parking
(This dream was predicated by the delivery of some cardboard boxes from U‑Haul. I had some old items in the basement that needed to be packed up and so when the boxes arrived I placed them in the back hallway. Later that evening, this is what I dreamed...) ...from one side a spirit approaches me, draped in ivory cloth and… Continue reading the last house
She approaches, clothed all in white and crowned with gold. Her hair is dazzling white, almost difficult to look at, as with fresh snow in the sun. A gold chain hangs think across her shoulders, resting atop the white fur collar of her heavy coat, cinched at the waist with a belt of gold disks. Yet there is a puzzling detail, as she… Continue reading winterly
Waking from a dream of Winterly, I turn in the bed and shift my position to ease my sore back. And back into dreams I go... — For some reason, I am in drag. I am wearing a black bodysuit and corset, covered by a long draped coat in ivory. I wear a white bob wig. I do not know why I am… Continue reading flirting
Armed men have taken over the store. I manage to get out before they lock the doors, but I can’t just leave everyone else there I have to get back in. I have to try and do something, to stop whatever they have planned. I keep going from door-to-door, surprised at how easily they assume I’m one of them. But once… Continue reading robbery
I wake, half asleep, in the downstairs guest room, fumbling for the alarm clock on the bedside table. The clock radio is warbling a doo-wop tune from the 60s, the music is tinny, fading in and out of the radio static. “Let me in...” the voice sings, mellow and soothing. “You can’t resist me... Let me in... Let me inside...”… Continue reading doo wop
Somehow, I’ve been asked to participate in a rehabilitation program for dangerous prisoners. The prison is large and gray and nondescript, and you can’t escape the feeling of being trapped once you’re inside. The prisoners are terrifying. And these are the ones ready to be rehabilitated. My initial assignment does not work out well, since he appears to be more… Continue reading the assassin
In the night, as I move through a crowded back street, I get a message from someone who used to be a friend but is now, after much time and distance, nothing more than a vague acquaintance. “I need your help.” A few minutes later I walk into a one-room bar that barely qualifies as a place of business, let alone… Continue reading friend in need
The department has a new manager and she’s been placed in the cubicle with me, which means I have to shift the sprawl of my stuff in order to make room for her things (which are more important than dusty action figures, artifacts of personal flair, and binders full of meeting minutes no one if ever going to read). Within a… Continue reading Terminus
My daughter is almost nine but we still use a monitor so that we can hear her if she wakes up in the middle of the night. My wife has gone to bed and I am up late, doing some work I brought home from the office. The monitor crackles and my daughter calls for me. When I head upstairs, she is… Continue reading “She won’t rest.”
Dozing on the couch this morning... ....I come into the room and see a baseball cap suspended in the air at about waist height, nothing apparently holding it up. It is not frozen in place, immobile — rather, it drifts and bobs slightly, like a magician’s trick. I reach out to grab it, try to push it down, but something… Continue reading unseen
The theater is crowded with people, waiting for the play to begin. My wife and I sit and wait, looking through the program and studying posters for past productions lining the walls. When the show begins, I am transfixed. I’ve seen Macbeth a few times before, but this is just amazing. The witches scene is easily one of the most unsettling,… Continue reading by the pricking
Here’s an e‑mail i sent to my wife this morning, slowly starting to put together a plan to exorcise the entity that currently occupying our house... What I know (or think I know) about the entity in our house... It is not human. It never was human. It is a conscious, aware entity. It is negative. It is drawn to insecurity, anxiety, and fear. It… Continue reading pest control
...the children come out from the alcoves and holes, ragged scavenger ghosts huddled together and shuffling along the dusty floor, their hollow eyes sweeping back and forth, mouths gaping . . . they are in thrall to an old woman, an older ghost, who herds them like cattle and feeds off of their misery... I stand on the rickety wooden… Continue reading feet wrapped in rags
...in the middle of an utterly boring and banal dream, I pass by a group of young women dancing on the sidewalk and one of them catches my eye. She motions to me, to get my attention, and mouths “Where have you been?” I keep walking, dragged along in the wake of my nonsense dream, looking back as she gestures once more...… Continue reading dancing
My seven-year-old daughter has been sick for a couple of days. High fever, probably the flu. She woke up tonight, sometime around 9 o’clock, frantic and consume dwith a fear that she could not (or would not) articulate. Glassy eyed, staring… Looking from my face to the face of her mother… She would not answer our questions. What’s wrong? Are you… Continue reading sick girl
My wife, her best friend, and I decide to drop acid for the first time. We lay back on the couch and each of us take the squishy pink pill and chew slowly. I only eat half of mine. I’m worried about what might happen if I take a whole one. In time, I stand up and feel my balance shift and… Continue reading Winterly
A kitchen, a house in the country — dry and dusty, very little greenery. A little boy with dark hair and a baby face sits at the kitchen table playing with an old wooden birdhouse. I see a yellowjacket crawl sluggishly over the back of the birdhouse. Inside I see the telltale paper comb covered with more yellowjackets. I shout… Continue reading danger
My assignment for the magazine put me into his inner circle, where I could sit and observe first-hand what his life was like. I had five days with him. It was fascinating. He was remarkably laid back and kind. He answered my questions thoughtfully and, to my eyes, didn’t try to hide any of himself behind a facade. I particularly remember… Continue reading David
“You were crying in your sleep last night,” my wife said this morning. “I was?” “You were whimpering. It went on for a while. I couldn’t get you to wake up.” I remembered then. I remembered waking up, her hand on my shoulder. I remember hearing myself crying in the dark. But I don’t remember why.
Napping this afternoon on the couch, I dream... ...we’re sitting at the dining room table, my wife and I. I hear someone call “Tom” from the back hallway. I turn to see something there, down at the bottom of the steps — small and pale, almost like a child. “Don’t look!” my wife says just as it rushes up towards me... ...awaken with… Continue reading forearms
...as we’re passing through the room, I stop and take note of our surroundings: The concrete walls of the service tunnel, the exposed pipes . . . it’s all so familiar. Then I have it. In a flash of recognition, I turn to my companions — he is tall and dark skinned, she is waif-like and pale — and say… Continue reading almost
Conversation with my four-year-old daughter... “Time to sleep, sleep and dream.” “I don’t always remember my dreams.” “That’s okay. They remember you.” I think this might be the best thing I have ever said or ever will say.
...and my wife’s face contorts in pain, her brow furrowed. I ask her what’s wrong but, before she can answer, a wave of distortion ripples through the air like a mirage. “Something’s happened.” I look out the window and see a mushroom cloud rising in the distance. The television fills in the rest of the details: Every major city in… Continue reading beginning of the end
...lying in bed this morning, I woke to the sound of the bedroom door opening. I hear my wife slowly close the door behind her. I hear her footsteps on the floorboards, approaching my side of the bed. I cannot move, cannot open my eyes. I feel a fingertip on my arm, just inside the hinge of my elbow. The footsteps move away.… Continue reading a sad girl
I dream of flight, from time to time. Even awake, it seems like the ability is just right there and all I have to do is...
Inside the house, people are starting to panic. The sky outside is dark and green, the wind bending the trees to almost impossible angles. We can hear the sirens and, in a house this old, there is no safe place . . . every room has windows, the elderly frame flexes and creaks in the wind just like the trees… Continue reading a tornado, two corpses, and a leather sofa
I am surprised to see a Ferris wheel looming over the downtown district, pale against the darkening sky. As evening descends, we make our way towards the carnival. It is dark everywhere. There are no flickering lights, no music — just the mechanical clack and clank of the rides, the muted murmur of the crowds. (This seems ominous now, awake.… Continue reading dark ride
For some reason, I am holding a bottle of olive oil in my hand while my daughter and I take a walk around the block. (We are not at home, this is not the neighborhood where we live in the waking world. This is someplace else. I do not recognize it from either my dreams or the waking world.) Midway through… Continue reading kitchen door
On my way through the park, I see a familiar figure heading in the opposite direction. He shambles, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun. His hair and beard are wild and ragged as the hem of his overcoat. I change my course somewhat to interest his. He looks up as I approach, a patient mix… Continue reading a moment of moore
...and when the neighbors show up at our front door, they demand entrance and will not leave. Too small to be a mob, but there are enough of them to force their way in. In the entryway, they shout that we are heathens and devil worshippers — they begin opening doors and ransacking the rooms. Books are thrown to the floor,… Continue reading neighborhood watch
...when the comedian pulls up in the Winnebago, I hop in. We chat and get acquainted while his two cats prowl around in back. A few hours on the road and I realize we’re not going to get back home in time for me to help out with the baby’s bedtime. I’m embarrassed to say anything, I don’t want to appear… Continue reading comedy and tragedy
Halfway through my day I stop and reach desperately for a scrap of dream from the night before, a vague memory that my character Jee came to see me. She had something important to tell me. But the dream is gone, nothing left but a sense of something forgotten.
...as I’m washing my backside, someone peeks in between a seam in the shower curtain — old and wizened, though I cannot tell whether it is a man or a woman. They roll their eyes up at me, almost comical, and purse their mouth in a silent “Oooo...” ...and then I wake with a start, my afternoon nap ruined.
...I’m stunned to see the President of the United States at the door. He bustles in before I can get my head around his sudden appearance. He is alone and clearly in peril. He slams the door and locks it behind him, thanking me for letting him in. It is strange to see him scared, completely alone. I wonder where… Continue reading the right to bear arms
...with slow, precise snips of the nail clippers, I remove most of my right toenail, somewhat proud to have done it in a single, broad piece. The skin beneath is tender, painful. I hope my wife will not notice.
We’re living in an apartment complex, a bit run down and seedy. But this is all we can afford. In the apartment across the way, a young couple live with their two small children. The woman is slight, dark haired and sickly. Her husband is darker, brows constantly knotted with rage. His mentally-challenged brother lives with them. It is a sad… Continue reading the apartment across the way
