Creatures Archives - The Pure Life of Dreams

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 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

April 20, 2023May 2, 2023

Attacked by a Drone in the Old Fort

Attacked by drones in the old Moroccan fort.

Siobhan, Liam, Lizzie and I went on holiday to Morocco or a place like that and after we had arrived and settled into our hotel, we went wandering around the souk. It was nearby and still filled with people in colorful costumes so we took lots of candid pictures.

The souk was quite open plan but still dusty, and had rich ornate rugs swung over the wooden frames of the stalls to protect the shoppers from the sun’s dusty glare.

The locals’ costumes were many striped, in reds and orange, golds and blues, the colors of the rainbow, and you had to be fast to get the pictures but I played with the iPhone buttons instead of the app button and snapped them really fast. I was not even looking to frame each picture so that even if a head got in the way I would still snap it.

I looked at one photo and sure enough I had frozen it in time. The focused head of a man captured through a blur of people. I was proud to have gotten a good picture just like the kids showed me.

And later on we walked over to an old fort which had a broken wall and an old blue door; you could walk around the right side of the wall, to the other side without opening the door. Behind the wall was a moat and a series of steps that went down to the water line and then came back up again to the rear side of the door. And intersecting the moat was another wall that acted as a bridge, that you could walk across the top of, that was quite wide and able to accommodate all four of us side by side.

We walked along the bridge and a drone flew by; and the drone was bowl shaped and black with a yellow trim up by its wings. It hovered briefly over the water before snapping out of sight.

And once we turned back and were returning to the fort’s front wall we noticed the water level had risen, perhaps because of the tide, and the drone was back again. This time it was a bit more menacing. It flew closer to us, just missing Lizzie and I, and then it went after Siobhan who had walked ahead. She was up by the intersection where the bridge and the wall’s steps met.

Siobhan ducked down to avoid the swoop of the drone and dived into the water which now covered the steps. Then she surfaced where the steps rose up close to the door. Only her head and right arm visible, she was holding onto the top step, but also she looked dazed.

Liam and I ran back along the path and I thought to walk down the first set of steps and up the second to where she was. But then I would have gotten my camera wet because all but the top steps were covered in water. I didn’t think it would survive that amount of time in the moat.

Then Liam had an idea. “Why don’t we try the door from the front?”

And so we walked back around the wall. And the door was old with chipped paint and we weren’t sure we were allowed to open it. I turned the heavy round silver knob of the door and we stepped through.

No one stopped us.

“Good idea, Liam,” I acknowledged as I closed the door behind us.

Next to the door sat an old cart leaning with its wheel barrow handles on the path. It was right next to where the steps began, where Siobhan held on.

But there was no trace of Siobhan.

A few bathers were paddling out in the moat but she was not one of them. We looked out across the water, and briefly one woman in the same dark brown bathing suit as Siobhan surfaced, but she had long dark brown hair.

Perhaps she had slipped unconscious while holding onto the step.

We peered into the water but it was murky and there was no way to see anything deeper than a few feet. And this time I thought to dive down to see if she had drowned.

Then Liam cried out.

“Mama,” he wailed in a plaintive voice.

Photo from Wallpaper Flare

October 8, 2021October 22, 2022

A Butterfly and a Baby in Kuala Lumpur

We arrive into Kuala Lumpur by night train. Ahead of us a different train, blue with a Wild West chimney stack, is blocking our arrival, unloading first. Then once emptied of passengers, our own train finally pulls forward, gently hits the dusty posts of the railway bumper.

We step down onto the tracks. A couple, with baby, step down behind us. The young woman unpacks a well-worn suitcase, also from a bygone era, misty camera view of a small case neatly packed on muslin sheets.