In my dream I was the first to arrive

"In my dream I was the first to arrive. I never am usually."

"What do you mean by that?" Dr. Arnett asked. She sat in her chair, blonde hair in a bun, horned rim glasses focused on me. In her lap lay the yellow legal pad that she
almost never took notes on.

"I mean that usually everything is already going on by the time I get there. This time I was the first." Even when I said it I could hear the value judgements being made in her head. Not professional but who was it who said: "Great claims require greater proof?" Yeah, this was one of those times.

"So when did these 'dreams' as you call them start?" She asked, bringing the clicker point of her pen up to her lips. I wasn't looking at her but I could tell her brows were furrowed. Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea, but who was going to belive me. I thought a psychologist had been the best choice.

"About six months ago."

"Right, about the time you were laid off?"

"Yeah." I could see where she was going. "But, I don't know I don't think that had anything to do with it."

"But you said that its not every night and sometimes you dream them during the day? And it never happens when there's anyone else around."

"Not yet but..."

"What else do you have going on in your life? I mean losing your job can be very stressful. Your file said you're not married, no kids. You had a relatively active social life. Why do you think this has manifested itself with you?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out and I wasn't sure if I should see a shrink or a priest. Uh, no offense to the shrink comment." I sat in the chair becoming more and
more self conscious.

"None taken." She smiled.

"So, why don't you walk me through the first time it happened."

"If you think it'll help."

"You never know."

I proceeded to tell her about the first time "it" happened. Even now I can't figure out if it was a dream or it really happened. I had gotten my pink slip that afternoon at 4:45 on a Friday. 17 years of working there and bam, no "Sorry to see you go." No nothing just a pink slip on my desk after the all employee meeting. Biggs and Phil offered to take me out drinking so we hit our usual watering hole. We commiserate 'cause Biggs lost his job too. Phil bought us round after round and before too long we were pretty sloshed.

We were there till maybe 11 or so. The place started getting full of college kids and too noisy to talk any more so we decided to head home. Dr. Arnett stopped me there.

"So do you have this dream after drinking?"

"No ma'am. Just this first time."

"All right, please continue."

I thought for a moment. Since it had been a nice night out I decided to walk it back home because Biggs and Phil were too drunk to drive and I wasn't in that good a shape
either. The fresh air would do me good and I had all the time in the world right? About 20 minutes later I figured my head should be clearing but its not. It feels like someone has stuffed cotton in my ears, nose and mouth and that same someone is rubbing sandpaper and static electricity all over me.

"Does it always feel this way?"

"No, usually its worse unless I've been drinking."

"Interesting." That's all she said. I know the sound of 'Interesting'. It sounded more like "Right, I'm going to dial 9 and 1 and if you keep getting crazier I'm going to dial the last 1."

So I stopped for a minute to catch my breath. I'm 1/2 drunk and think maybe I'm having a heart attack or a stroke. I look up and see fire flies above me. Only they aren't fire flies. They're stars. First one star starts moving in an arc overhead and then another. Then 10 are moving, all in the same direction. I think, maybe its some sort of air-force jet or something but there's no noise. Then its 50 stars, then 100, then 1000. All moving and they're moving so fast that I start getting dizzy.

Now I know I'm having a stroke or something, so I sit down and put my head between my legs as best I can and try to take deep breaths. I say the alphabet and then say it out loud to see if sounds right. I get stuck between v and w although those two have always sounded funny to me. That's when I smell it. Its always the same smell. I don't know it smells like fog mixed with a flower shop mixed with the thump of a subwoofer when one of those low riding cars pulls up next to you. I know that's not a smell but you know, I'm already at the shrink so sue me that's what it smells like.

There's a breeze that starts up. At first its just enough to make the grass move but as more and more of the stars are moving over head the stronger the breeze gets. I stand up because at the middle of this circle of stars is a bright white light. And its just getting brighter and brighter. So now I'm thinking, "great I get fired and now I'm going to be hit by a comet. This day just sucks." But I figure there are worse ways to go right? I mean how many people's tombstones say "Death by comet" on them?

"That's pretty morbid. You think about this sort of thing often?"

"You asked me to tell you the story, and remember, I had just gotten laid off and was still 1/2 drunk."

"Point taken, keep going."

I continue. At first the wind is just enough to muss your hair, then it gets stronger and stronger and stronger. About ten seconds later it was so strong that I felt like I had to grab onto a nearby stop sign to keep from flying away. I looked around to see if other people were having the same problems but I didn't see anyone else around.

The stop sign started wobbling and before I could figure out what's going on we're both flying up to the sky towards those stars that were zipping around in a circle.

Dr. Arnett stopped me again. "So how did that make you feel, being out of control?"

"I was panicked, how do you think I should have felt?"

"Did you realize you were dreaming at this point?"

"It felt very very real. And except for how preposterous it was I'm still not convinced it was a dream." This last sentence caused Dr. Arnett's eyebrows to knit together.

"You think this was a real experience?"

"It was something. Look, Doctor. I know how this sounds. But I've also been dreaming my whole life. This was... Different."

She scribbled something down on her pad, which she tilted up towards her when she saw me peering over to read what she had written.

"Keep going." She said. "I feel like we're getting close to something here."

I flew up and watched the street fade into lines on a map then the lines disappeared and I could see lakes and hills and in seconds I could see the night half of the planet lit up like a Christmas tree, then the whole planet itself and the blinding light of the sun. I put my arms in front of my face and screamed bloody murder. There was no sense in how fast I was moving but the wind was still whipping around me and the stop sign I had let go of, was whipping around me in circle. I was convinced it was going to hit me so I tried to grab onto it. I must have blacked out because the next thing I know I open my eyes and I don't see the sun or the moon, I see this big white ball coming towards me. It looks like a snow ball coming at my face but it just kept getting bigger and bigger. It went from snowball to bowling ball to beach ball. I could start making out details on it and I realized that I was falling towards the surface of some crazy planet that was all covered in snow. I saw oceans on this planet as I augered in but they seemed to be frozen over. I didn't recognize any of the continents or anything but I saw details on the ground that were rushing towards me much faster than I could handle.

I was screaming bloody murder by then my voice was hoarse. I was sure that whatever part of my buzz I had starting this trip it was gone and in full sobriety I realized I was going to die, not from being hit by a comet but by falling onto a giant frozen mountain slope. As I got closer I saw that what I thought were clouds were actually smoke billowing up from a billion fires. I careened in trying to remember how I left my apartment and if there was anything truly embarrassing that my sister was going to find when someone finally reported me missing.

About 500 feet above the ground I started slowing down. Not like a nice gradual stop you make at a stop sign but rib cracking bone rattling stop like at the end of a badly running roller coaster. The wind was knocked out of my lungs and I flopped into a big circle carved in the snow about a foot wider than I was tall.

I took a few breaths of frigid air trying to figure out if this really was how heaven was supposed to look and I saw these things looking back at me from the other side of the circle. They were tiny, maybe about as big as my big toe and about as stout. They looked like little mice crossed with ants. Plump little things with whiskers, beady eyes and big ears and shells, too many limbs and antennae.

Blinking slowly and trying to figure out how many bones I just broke I saw this little knot of them, they were dressed in rags or something and one of them has what looks like a book being carried in one arm. The rest seemed to be armed with sewing needles and matches. The one with the book was waving its antennae all around and squeaking. The others got down on their bellies and just didn't seem to move.

I stopped for a second to see Dr. Arnett furiously scribbling things down on her pad.

"What do you think Doc? Should I admit myself?"

"I wouldn't do that just yet." she smiled. "But would you mind if I get my tape recorder to record the rest of our session?"

"Sure why not." She got up and went over to her desk and grabbed a little palm sized tape recorder.

"Excellent, Jim please keep going. What happens next? And let me just say that i'm impressed by your ability to keep your wits about you. Are you sure you didn't realize it was a dream?"

"Well hang on, let me tell you..."

I was still on my belly on the snow trying to figure out what the heck this little mouse-ant thing was trying to tell me when I heard it. There was a chittering from behind me. I craned my head and rolled over in the snow to see this smoke ball behind me. It was maybe basket ball sized and just looked like billowing smoke with four red eyes and two inch fangs.

Once again I'm sure I screamed like a little girl and began backing up only to find I couldn't move past the edge of the circle in the snow. It was like there was a piece of glass there that was strong enough for me to lean against and push myself up. Thankfully the snow wasn't too deep but it did make traction difficult and I slid as much as jumped towards the far end of the circle as that smoke thing came at me. it wrapped around the circle a little so it couldn't get at me. Big thanks for small miracles right?

The next thing I knew I heard a little squeak and felt a little crunch under my right foot. The mouse-ant thing with the book had been erasing the line in the snow behind me and I had accidentally stepped on it. As soon as the thing had breached the line I felt my ears pop and heard a sound like when you open a jar of pickles. I reached down and picked the poor squished little sucker up, mainly to see if it had left anything stuck in my shoe. At this point the other little mouse-ant things are skittering off in all directions. Before I had a chance to do anything the smoke thing passes through the far edge of the circle, I guess because the circle was incomplete now. It opened its smokey little mouth and comes at me all fangs and smog.

"What did you do?"

"I did what any red blooded American would do in this situation, once I got done screaming again..."

For a smoke monster it didn't seem to have terribly good traction on snow. Not that I had had a lot of experience with smoke monsters up to that point.

Dr. Arnett stopped me: "I'm glad you still have a sense of humor about this. That's a very good sign."

"Well don't say that yet."

So what did I do? As I had said, once I got done screaming and backing up I spent the next fifteen seconds trying to keep any extremity out of its mouth. That turned out to not be an easy task. I ran around the circle trying not to step on any more mouse-ants when the thing caught my foot. I felt at least 4 of its fangs go through my shin to the bone.

As I said that I hiked up my pant leg to show her the still red scars. It had been about six months ago so the skin was still pink and smooth. The smoke thing was remarkably heavy and I fell into the snow on my back. The thing let go of my leg and made a jump towards my chest. I rolled out of the way and as luck would have it my arm brushed the stop sign. With adrenaline pumping through my body I picked up the stop sign one handed and managed to fend off the smoke thing as it came down. I found out very quickly that either metal or paint, I'm still not sure which, and smoke monsters don't mix. It hit the flat red part of the stop sign and let out the most unholy cry I'd ever heard. It was like cats in heat playing with an angle grinder. It backed off but only for a second and rushed me again. I still wasn't to my feet yet and it caught my elbow here. I rolled up my sleeve to show her 3 two inch scars that were also pink and smooth.

"Not these here." I said, pointing to a cluster of five little dots that had just recently scabbed over. "Those were from a different time and some sort of frog thing. Its amazing how many of these things have teeth. Sharp sharp teeth."

Since Dr. Arnett kept scribbling and not saying anything I kept going.

It didn't get a solid grip this time either so I was able to rip it off my arm and actually heave the sucker a good 20 feet. Again it was the size of a basketball but it seemed to weigh more like a big bag of dog food. It looked at me and I didn't need to be told that it was sizing me up. I jumped up to my feet and grabbed the stop sign, trying to back up all the while and put some distance between me and it.

Apparently it still liked a taste of sweat and bar smoke and rushed me. I think it was more luck than anything that when it got within about five feet of me I brought the stop sign down edge-wise on it and sliced the thing clean in half. It let out another of those cat-grinder cries and then basically just exploded in what seemed to be ash, gray moss and pebbles. It twitched a couple of times and then stopped. I stood there still holding the stop sign realizing how hard I'm breathing. It seems like I can't catch my breath and my eyes are watering from the cold. I dropped the sign as it started feeling incredibly heavy and there was a pounding in my head. I could feel my vision beginning to flicker around the edges a little like a tunnel slowly closing in. I sat down in the snow not caring any more how cold it was and just wishing as I breathed that I could feel like I was getting a full breath of air.

A couple of seconds later I get the feeling of someone stuffing my head with cotton again and I can feel the sandpaper electricity on my skin and I pass out only to wake up on a street corner about five miles from my house next to a broken stop sign post. A police man was tapping me with his foot talking to me and writing me up for destruction of public property and public drunkenness. I had a splitting headache and the sun was beating down on me. I took the ticket and impressed on the policeman that I was ok despite the fact that I had blood on my pant leg and scratches on my arms. He attributed it to injuries sustained when I dismantled the stop sign.

I limped home and took a long shower then made a call to the doctor. Let me tell you how painful rabies shots are. The doctor said it looked like either a raccoon or a possum had gotten the best of me.

"But you don't believe the doctor do you? Look, I know how this sounds but you know the difference between a dream and something really happening to you. Besides, I thought you might take it this way so I brought this."

I handed over the miniature book the ant-mouse had. It was no bigger than a postage stamp but was about 1/2 and inch thick with paper thinner than an onion skin and crammed with tiny pictures and tinier writing. Dr. Arnett's eyebrows arched as she used her finely manicured fingernails to leaf through it.

"So you say this happens to you a lot? We'll call them fugue states for now as I agree I don't think dream is an appropriate word."
"Well not a whole lot. Maybe a couple times a week?"
"And this last one?" She handed the book back to me.
"This last one was different. I've only been to the same place a couple of times but never back to the mouse-ants. Except this last time. Usually it seems like I'm there after the action had started, but this time, this time I was first."