Dear John

First you should know, I was playing Mario. In my dream. Except for the minor caveat that I was Mario, and that this isn't the first time I've been Mario. The first time I could fly. This time, the level I was working on required crouching while walking, so that I would look like the indestructible baddies that were waddling around. Now this wouldn't be so hard if in the middle of the level, Mario didn't get appendicitis. But that's part of the level. See, you have to use the appendicitis as a way to get the Boss to fake wanting to help you, and just when he goes to rush you, you've got to SPIN REALLY FAST and shoot him back against the wall of the cave you're in.

Well, I didn't get the timing right, and got game-overed.

So then I'm no longer Mario, but I'm in a desert. Not any real desert. More like a Legend of Zelda desert. And there's a castle made of sand. And a wizard, but he's kind of a toolbag, and there's at least one goat. And based on a proscribed Epic Occurrence, the castle is about to flood. And when the sand castle floods, the sand labyrinth in front of it will also fill with water and I'll be able to see the Important Pattern (and probably be able to save the world. It usually goes like that.).

Well, there's a problem. One is that the little kid/monster that's hanging around with me and the wizard steps into quicksand. The Sand Castle is equipped with booby traps.

So we have to drag him out. I think he's blue. Like Devin. Hell, maybe he's also Devin and I just hadn't gotten far enough for dream!Devin to tell me his role.

But anyway, he's in quicksand, and the wizard's being a bit of a prick and refusing to acknowledge the fact that little blue monster/kid is sinking rather quickly, and our mini-model of the full sized castle is flooding and showing us what happens (it's just like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Arc where Indy's got the staff and the mini city...) but we can't see it because we're busy getting our compadre out of the sand pit!

And then the goat requires attention, and we're all going to die.

And then.

New dream.

I'm at my dad's garage of employment with Kelly and Sibling. The bay doors are all open. The weather's great.

I go to go outside, and see an army of what are probably ghosts. They're on the other side of the road. And I look around to see what they're waiting for.

And I see these two little kids.

Now, 'little kid' seems to give entirely the wrong idea that they looked at all non-creepy.

They looked fucking creepy.

Because they were mirror images of each other, for one thing. Except for the fact that they actually weren't. But never mind facts, they were mirror images, dammit. They were also in grayscale. Which was just weird. The little girl was wearing a white Victorian nightgown. The little boy was wearing a gray old fashioned school uniform. You know, the little shorts and jacket combo that terrifies people watching horror films with creepy little children in them? Yeah, that one.

And here's where it gets weird. They were walking like zombies, totally slow-mo, toward us. While tearing up books and eating them.

So my logical conclusion is that I must distract them from wanting to eat us by way of throwing pages of books at them so they can eat those instead.

I grab a book. It's a Very Important Book, but frankly, more important is getting out of this situation alive. They also have fangs.

I rip out a page, crumple it, and lob it at the little boy.

He picks it up. He inspects it. His dead white face contorts with rage. Slow motion is no more. He fast forwards into super speed, rushes me, and clamps his fangs around my ankle while I freak out.

Somehow while fucking up my ankle with his teeth, he informs me that I've just destroyed a book and that's Very Bad.

So somehow I get away from his teeth, and I'm running the fuck away while trying to explain that I didn't want to destroy it, I was just scared of him and his evil twin.

And he starts to weep that I've destroyed a book and he'll never get to read it, and he continues following me in zombie/ghost mode whilst nomming pages from a novel.

And as it would turn out, the way he reads is by consuming pages. So I make an agreement with him to provide him with new pages from new books, and I won't crumple them any more, as long as he doesn't kill me.

So then I'm saddled with a creepy ghost-kid bibliophile for the rest of my life.

The end.