#1

Through the skeleton-keyhole, dark smoke oozed, forming a cloud monster with two red points of light near the top. I know the lights were just for show, not eyes. The power producing the monster perceives me in a different way. The smoke creature cannot harm me. I know that I must perform a series of empirical examinations and experiments to discover the power behind the illusion of smoke .

#2

In a vast cathedral with vaulted ceilings, I purify my system by consuming rocks and water. People of all ages are gathered in family groups, grandparents to babies. I pretend to have a brain injury in order to walk around naked.

I came to the cathedral in a stolen, silver sports car with the shine gone out of it. I show it to my new friend, a bearded man about 30 years old wearing a pith helmet. He wants to borrow it.

As I doze in on a long dark wood bench my head against the rough stone wall, a woman asks me about my brain injury. I tell her that the doctor said that my brain is like an electrical device shorting out. I demonstrate with a power cable showing her how it was randomly losing connection as the cable is moved because the wires inside were only partially connected.

Then I sat remembering a time when I helped the police with an investigation into the murder of a child. The prime suspect was a French film director. The crime scene was a sandy clearing with a grass hut. They could not identify the body so no solid connection could be made to the suspect. He was set free. This had some vague connection with my fake brain injury and the church.

#3

A pack of dappled wolves chase me through the gloom of evening, threatening but not attacking. They are human as well. I realize if they consumed me I would be lost, but if bitten I would become a wolf like them. Finally I find a yard with a massive cast iron gate. I run in a push the gate closed with a gong-like clang.

The iron fence surrounds a school where they are forcing children to search the for coins, making massive excavations in the chalky earth with shovels and moving massive amounts of dirt up the steep walls of the pits with wheelbarrows on narrow switchback paths. The warden of the school punishes the students when they do not work hard enough by firing popular teachers.

#4

I work as a comic activist, and the generators at our office, powered by Sy Safranski CFC’s, was not working. My boss sends me to the library to research CFC’s. Later I work for Head Start. I arrive late to work and do not get the list of clients I am supposed to visit. At 2:00 in the afternoon, a woman comes in and says, “It’s time to go.” I have to go to RanCo which is a big box hardware store where the old computers are stored. Using a 1980’s computer with green screen display, I have to print out massive lists on 17” by 22” sheets with sprocket holes on the sides,. All I can get it to print is nursing home medical files.