The Book and The Dream


It's getting stranger: the situation with the book. Now, it isn't a big deal - I mean, who really cares if my neighbor across the hall stole my book, but it is just the fact that I fell asleep with it in my hands and woke up with it being in the neighbor's apartment across the hall that is so unsettling.

Anyway, I was in the grips of a good story and had to go out and find that book again. It pisses me off because I bought it for half price at the used book store, and had to pay full price for it at Barnes and Noble the second time.

So, I start reading chapter 4. Check this out! This is Terry Brook's Running with the Demon, from page 45:

"The demon stepped out into the midday heat in front of Josie's and felt right at home. Perhaps it was his madness that made him so comfortable with the sun's brilliant white light and suffocating swelter, for it was true that it burned as implacably hot. Or perhaps it was his deep and abiding satisfaction and knowing that this community and its inhabitants were his to do with as he chose."

He followed Derry Howe and Junior Elway to the later's Jeep Cherokee and climbed into the cab with them, sitting comfortably in the backseat, neither one of them quite aware that he was there. It was one of the skills he had acquired -- to blend in so thoroughly with his surroundings that he seemed to be a part of them, to make himself appear so familiar that even those sitting right beside him felt no need to question his presence..."

Isn't that spooky! I wonder if there could be anyone like that.

Anyhow, it gets spookier than that. As I was reading this book I started to realize that the face I had given in my mind's eye to The Demon was somehow familiar to me. I started thinking where I had seen that face before: and guess where? It was the guy standing on the street corner from the Eternal Order of the Onion. And so as I was reading, and thinking that somehow I had given this man's face to The Demon in the book, the words slowly began to dissolve and all I saw was the Onion. The great crystalline blue Onion! And somehow I managed to fall asleep reading that book again (never fear, the book was lying on my lap when I awoke!) and I had a dream.

I dreamt that I was feeding a baby ice cream. Kinda weird, because I can't remember ever feeding a baby before. This baby was sitting in a high chair with his puffy, marshmallow baby face gazing up at me, and I was putting spoon after spoon of ice cream into his puffy little face. And as I fed him his face got rounder, and puffier, and suddenly he was laughing at me and saying something in French, and I realized that he wasn't a baby any more, he was full grown. Then I suddenly realized who he was! It was Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) from Moulin Rouge! He was standing there staring into my face, laughing at me, and then he spun away from me and danced into a crowd of revelers. He was wearing his white suit just like in the movie. In fact, the next moment of my dream was exactly like in the movie Moulin Rouge!

Then, the spookiest thing happened. I looked up at the moon, to see if it was really as large as it looked in the movie. And sure enough, it WAS. But the worst thing about it: it wasn't the moon as we know it, pockmarked with craters; it was a pure, pearly white onion!

Well, thankfully I awoke sometime later and didn't remember dreaming anything after that. And as I say, the book was laying on my lap. I've started to wonder: did all this strangeness begin after I started reading that book? No, most certainly not. The dreams have been going on for a long time now. But lately, the way it seems... it is almost like the book is somehow connected with the dreams. And I am still defintely going to try and figure out if my book was actually stolen by the neighbor!

:.\TaD/.: