The Pure Life of Dreams

April 11, 2025April 11, 2025

Argentinian Alice with the Thick Hair

Siobhan and I stood in the center of the room and looked around. Behind us there was a woman in a yellow dress. She was a local, an Argentine, and when I looked back at her again, I saw that her pubic area was naked and was covered with thick black cotton balls that hid her vagina. The shape of that cotton ball hair was a little off from a regular isosceles triangle because the right side was slightly longer than the left.

Through the door and along one side of the next room, up on bleacher steps, in a corner, sat two couples, one couple on the next step up from the other. The women were pressed against the wall by their men who sat facing them. The couples were naked, and obese, and their blanched flesh hung loose around them, while the man of each couple buried his head in the folds of flesh on the chest of his partner.

(At first I thought the two people against the wall were women but so obese they were I could not be sure – fat pasty white skin dripped from all four people and disguised the shape of each person’s sex.)

When the man on the top step pulled away from his mate I saw a necklace with a thin gold strap and green pendant hung around her neck. He must have been sucking on the pendant, I thought.

Of course Siobhan wasn’t having any of this.

She wandered off into the next room and I would follow soon after. The woman in the yellow dress, would follow with me. I learnt that her name was Alice.

It became clear to me that we should indulge these locals, pay them a few pesos but with Siobhan around, payment would be unlikely. I lost track of her after the next room and had to use the locator app on my iPhone to find out where she’d gone.

The next area was outdoors, but it seemed that Siobhan had disappeared to the main enclosure where there lay a circle of prehistoric stones. I hurried through to find her but was sidetracked once more by a room off to one side, where there were gathered more prostitutes.

As I walked in I thought that we should be offering money to them too, for their nakedness.

This time I wanted to broach one of the women. I walked along the corridor, and it was lined with bamboo walls and bamboo benches on either side. Couples sat on the benches and wrapped their arms around each others’ naked bodies – men indulging in local women this time, for sure.

I returned to the main room and stepped into the enclosure where the stone circle lay, but Siobhan had already moved along. I hurried under a stone arch at the far end of the enclosure, and went through to the next area, where there were trees covered with black monkeys who sat on the branches and looked mischievously down at me.

At first I wondered whether to put away my phone in case the monkeys would steal it, but instead I took a picture.

To one side of a tree was Siobhan, in a grove to the left of the entrance. She was surrounded by the monkeys. I raised my camera and took a picture which perfectly framed her, and the monkeys around her, and the tree with its snaking branches.

As I turned away from Siobhan, she cried out, “Take a picture of me!”

“I already did.” I replied. “A perfect one.”

Picture by Modigliani uploaded by Benoît Prieur to WikiMedia Commons.

September 25, 2024November 24, 2024

The Meet Up and the Rats

We sat at the top of a brownstone, a windowless attic given over to one of the weekly meetups for writing. The room had rows of brown varnished stiff-backed chairs that faced the lectern at the front. And the lectern was mostly used by the organizers so I didn’t read that night but some others did.

June 21, 2024June 21, 2024

The Lion and the Store Full Of Tchotchkes

All the other mini-creatures had been killed and only two remained.

They had to be taken out of the freezer and once they had thawed the mammoth was quite easy to kill but the lion was a different story.

I sat in the back garden, the other side of the walled-in patio and I held the lion within a large Manila envelope that I folded in the middle. His wings were tucked into the pocket either side, and to stop him from biting me I pinched his body to stop him from wriggling away.

The lion could be quite vicious. As he thawed, he expanded and he would nip your fingers right off if he could get to you. I had to tear off his wings but even I sliced the envelope down the left side with my knife he tried to snap and paw – before his left wing was torn right off.

He was still trying to get at me when it was explained that I’d have to do the other side as well, but it was only on my third attempt that I succeeded to tear off his other wing. The lion was then like an insect without its wings held in the remains of the envelope, his head poking out with his lion’s mane and teeth still bared.

I am navigating the antique and tchotchke store after the ~~graduation~~ event.

I couldn’t find a place to lie down so I had gone into the store instead and was wandering around.

Charlie James is there, being berated by a woman because he’s not following her, even though there are goods for sale in his way. I thought she was his wife at first.

And just like Charlie, I too am unable to move. Two tables, both with yellow glass trays, are positioned next to the wall and they are pressed close together in front of me. Every time I try to separate the two tables to get between them, little glass figurines or vases on the trays tinkle like they are about to fall over. So I have to stop.

I look back at the woman and she returns my stare before stepping out of the shop. She looks familiar, like Kim Spencer perhaps, only she has brown eyes.

And through the shop window, a reflection in a mirror for sale, I see Charlie follow the woman out, they are walking along the sidewalk. Charlie follows her on tip toe like a cat burglar, his arms cartoon-raised, two threatening silhouetted arcs, over her head.

The woman wears a delicate white dress that Kim wouldn’t normally wear.

Then I push past the tables into a new space.

Danny Fiere is there. “I heard you retired. I can’t believe you do nothing, but we’ve got something for you if you want,” he says.

I look back at Ned for support but Danny continues, “It’s programming.”

“Programming.” I reply. “It’s the one thing I loved. That could possibly persuade me, part time anyway, out of retirement”.

Photo by Downtown Gal via Wikimedia Commons.

June 23, 2023July 1, 2023

The Frog and Cat – Part 2 Back at the Hotel

After dozing off again, I find one of the frogs back with me in the hotel room. I have to let him lie in a small container of cold water for a while, to let him recuperate.

I put him in a long rectangular Tupperware, and put a lid on it so he cannot escape, but every time I put down the container, he starts hitting the lid with his head, almost knocks it off.

So then I fill the bathtub in the room, it is filled quite high, and I let the Tupperware float in it so that this time, if he escapes, he will only escape into more water.

The bathtub is only filled with water from the tap and is not the boiled, sterilizer water I used for him but I’m sure it will be OK for the time that he needs to get better.

Then I leave the room.

And it is only when I get back that I see the horror.

Artie is floating under the water of the bathtub his small body rotating slowly under the surface, the frog paddling around him, the Tupperware up-ended.

Artie must be dead, I think, as I pull him out. A bit of claw catches my hand and comes away from his paw, lodges with a piece of fur at the soft base of my thumb.

I lie Artie’s limp body, belly down, across the lip of the bathtub. I stroke his back, and press hard, up from his hind legs with both thumbs, push his fur up towards his throat until the water ejects from his mouth into the bathtub. And I repeat it again and again until the water spurts out, until after the third or fourth time he splutters into life, and rolls out of my grip onto the floor.

“Oh Artie,” I cry as he walk away.

He no longer has his buff coat but looks more tabby and smaller than he was before; when he was chasing the frogs.

I leave him to return downstairs where they have the constructors out on the patio. They are mending the tiles, resurfacing them with white squares in a diamond shape, white to match the balcony wall which surrounds the patio. And I want to see how the construction is going.

When I get there I’m surprised to see Artie once more. This time he is lying on his back, his body splayed across the balcony wall. A small but deep gash is visible across the white fur of his belly, bleeding,

“Artie,” I cry out once more as I rush towards the wall.

Next to him sits a contractor and, at the far side of the patio, two more. They wear grey hard hats and are eating sandwiches, it’s their lunch break. And they stare back nonchalantly at my commotion.

Then a second cat bounds out from the French doors of the hotel, across the patio and up onto the wall to my dead cat. Only it’s Artie who ran out of the hotel and the dead cat is not Artie after all, although he shares the same tabby markings and size.

Artie sniffs at the dead cat briefly before leaping towards the two contractors at the end of the patio. He ducks between them as they slouch and chew their sandwiches.

“Catch him!” I yell before he disappears under their legs.

Photo by Eu_eugen via Pixabay

June 2, 2023June 29, 2023

The Frog and Cat – Part 1 At the Restaurant

I’m in Indonesia and we’ll eat over in the restaurant district. But before I leave my small single room for the restaurant, I notice that I have a cut on my belly. It is on my right side, just above the joint of my hip but I won’t have any time to do something about it.

We have arranged to meet at a small restaurant, the near side of the pedestrian zone, the one with the large inviting red trestle table outside.

As we finish our drinks, we notice on the other side of the street, on the second floor, there is an unlit neon sign for another eatery, two lowercase letters either side of three larger Kanji. We are trying to decipher it before we move on to get food. Only it’s already night, and late, and maybe we should just eat here after all.

We go inside and up some stairs to a small room with two bare Formica tables hastily pushed together. The waiters first cover them with white tablecloths, and butt the tables up against one wall; but there is not enough room until we shift the tables back away from the wall and open up the head of the table.

“Reed or Cameron can squeeze in then,” I suggest.

Elaine is already sat down as well as Mum, and Siobhan. And I sit on one side with two others there but I am complaining that I should be opposite.

“It won’t make a difference,” says Elaine from the head of the table.

“But our elbows will knock,” I reply, spreading out my arms to illustrate the point.

There’s an ache in my stomach that I brush off. Then I get up to squeeze into the space on the other side of the table. I can sit the other side of Mum as well, I point out.

As I sit down a group of Scottish dancers come into the room. They are prancing in a highland fling, legs with heavy stockinged plaid socks swirling, arms high. They troupe into the room as part of the entertainment. I can join them, I suggest, but I stay sat while the sound of bagpipes from the other room urges the dancers in.

A Chinese girl sat behind us on a chair flat against the walls, knees pressed together, is talking to a boy in the chair next to her.

“Shhhht,” and I motion to her, forefingers snapped across my mouth, Zip It, before pressing an index finger to my lips. My gesture feels unintentionally harsh.

And when dinner is done, and I return to my room and close the door for the night I return to my cut and notice how the vein underneath now traverses my belly and down to my groin where, on the right side, there is another cut. My groin bleeds slightly, a bright red star.

Then I pull up my shirt and the vein continues in the opposite direction, up from the cut on my belly, across and over towards the left side of my chest. It throbs purple and I daren’t pull my shirt up further to see where the engorged vein ends.

I pick up a glass that I left lying in the small sink by the side of my bedroom door and think to drink the water left in it, but there is a frog is in the glass partially hidden in its purple liquid. There are flecks of white mould as well, and I am about to put a lid on the glass to stop the frog bouncing out but I am too late. The frog jumps from the glass and splashes, a soft rubbery shape onto the linoleum.

“Damnit!” Then I begin to pour out the liquid from the glass, into the sink. But the liquid is already congealed into a messy white shape, another frog just in the nascent stage of growth. It’s a patchy white congealing shape, legs, torso and head barely discernible from the primordial goo, and it too splashes out onto the floor.

Quickly I open the hotel room door to get the frogs outside and kick them with a little poke from my foot until they hop into the hallway.

Of course, Artie is sitting waiting outside. In he comes at first until he notices the frogs crossing his path. And he is about to slip out again when I block him with my leg.

I shut the door, the frogs still outside, Artie inside, but he’s sniffing under the crack in the door, pawing underneath to get to the frogs on the other side.

Image created using Midjourney AI on Discord