Window Dressing
Sometime between deep sleep and waking I revisited a dream.
I was a dachshund again.
Why couldn’t I get the fun dreams? Why was it only the weird ones?
Through the inter-dimensional door and onto a church pew next to my father.
My father dressed as Marty McFly or some parody
An old lady with her poodle and a bored bald man on his phone sat on nearby pews arranged in a C shaped as if this was a waiting room for a dentist or doctor.
But this was a convenience store, with a pegboard full of rustic looking junk hanging around the waiting customers to act as conversation pieces or distraction.
Wooden waiting room juxtaposed with the modern… very modern… futuristic convenience store.
Clearly a dystopia of some sort.
Airplane style security acted as a gate to the merchandise and some rube was getting frisked so they could ask an unseen employee to unlock the soap and maybe a bag of chips.
One lucky customer was having a full blown shopping rage meltdown as if they had just realized they couldn’t steal horse tranquilizer.
They were assaulting nearby merchandise security boxes and chains with a crowbar ineffectually, screaming in between and during strikes.
Everyone ignored them.
The cashier looked away as I realized she existed and applied the file to her nails.
A chubby young women, not quite fat. But my queen would have cruelly mocked this poor cashier hiding behind the dark and heavy makeup. Black lipstick, pierced ears, paint off the ends of her eyes.
But this was not uncommon among the cashier class what was strangest was her crop top.
Made of unwrapped lollipops, perhaps with a net that strung them together. It could not be comfortable, but evidently it met the company dress code.
A little help bell sat at the digitized cash register next to it a sign that said “Take a lick leave a lick!”
The woman worker seemed bored and unhappy. Like she might attack anyone who tried.
Shadows flickered around the door I could not see out of but it was bright outside and people went about business on a busy sidewalk outside.
My dad tapped me on the shoulder, his giant form reminding me that I was a hot dog dog.
I panted up at him, sanding all four legs upon the pew.
“I need to warn you.” He told me sagely. “This is the future, we are all fascists. Remember the rules.”
He pointed up to the full leather and wood rustic and authentic looking kayak hung on the wall. Just above it were written in bold cursive and festive lettering.
RULES ;)
1- THERE ARE NO RULES
2- COM…
Just then the pleasant and mechanical chimes above the entrance door rang and the cashier stood to attention and raised her hand in Roman tribute.
Everyone in the store did not hesitate to follow her in standing and raising their arm.
Only the frustrated customer who may actually be a horse tranq junkie nobody was going to approach refused.
I am a dog so naturally I know a thing or two about social situations.
When in Rome…
Well dogs can only salute by barking or howling. I guess I had the urge to join. I was a dog after all.
But I didn’t need to, it would just be confusing and noisy. everyone ready in salute broke out into song.
“COMMA COMMA COMMA COMMA COMMA CHAMEL-E-ON!”
They, my youthful father included, announced at the top of their lungs.
Again the angry and violent customer, he must have been a customer for security let him in, did not participate.
Sure enough that was rule two.
RULES ;)
1- THERE ARE NO RULES
2- COMMA COMMA COMMA COMMA COMMA CHAMELEON!
There were music notes painted on either end. Those were the only two rules. They were both painted in bright colors on dark and old looking timber.
Cute.
But I am a dog so this isn’t a problem for me.
I woke up.
I can go to sleep and return to dreams I have already had, maybe you can’t but I can.
I was curious,
But life wasn’t that bad.
My mind flickered to all the cool things I could do now that I was king, for what felt like the first time.
But I tried to push them all away and close my eyes, focusing on the strange dream, I needed to know more about that world I had just escaped.
“Hey”
That voice…
Belonged in the mouth of a visual novel anime girl voiced by a woman three decades older.
Women right?
Women’s wrongs.
“Lion?” It continued. A dim warmth telling me to turn and hold my wife. The Queen.
“I have something to show you! Wake up! I promise it is worth it! Your war stained mind will love it!”
I complied, realizing that this was the witching hour and that dawn was not soon breaking.
Soon I was looking out a murder slit thinking about the odd twinkle of a distant village or two. I was in a stoney cold staircase ascending to our bedroom. The only hint of warmth, well, aside from the summer night, was a tapestry map that looked as if it was designed by a twelve year old and passed to a sweatshop crewed by those in their final year before senility.
We didn’t have a flag,
Only a single silver mirror abraded into a pure white sheen.
Not pure white I suppose, but a white shadow. Absolutely not a mirror anymore.
A white shadow on a nearly more brilliant stone wall. Subversion of white.
“Yes Dove?”
I needed a nickname. Something playful.
“Tonight I’ve got an excellent view of the multiverse.” She turned and blinked at me a few times. Smiling in the shadows of our brilliant and reflective candle bearer.
And I suppose the dim light of the silver reflecting just more than a sliver of a waning moon through a sliver of a window.
I guess this was some sort of honeymoon phase for us. We were both content in this moment.
“Multiverse? Why would I care when I’ve got you?”
Was that playful or romantic? I can’t tell, I’m autistic. So was my mom. Is my mom, pardon me.
It runs in the family because her parents were too.
Or well, not to be insensitive, perhaps I mean that my family is very odd, we have not been diagnosed with “autism” which can be very debilitating.
But we were never really normal, even a long time ago.
Perhaps “eccentric” is more politically correct.
Most people are on twenty to thirty year generation, I’m on the thirty five to fifty year generation plan.
Or was anyway.
Makes you appreciate time a bit more I think, when you got more.
Paradoxical innit?
“O Lion of the summit, how shall we ever slake our desires if there is not an infinite destiny for us to conquer?”
Pigeon didn’t fit, parrot felt wrong, eagle, no, peahen.. maybe, she might like that one but I didn’t. Bird of paradise?
Never you mind the memorable part of such birds was the male.
I wonder if she knew
Oh, and it made sense that such would be a filter if it was a point of self-consciousness the response might tell me.
If you know what I’m talking about, you know what I’m talking about now you see me now you don’t
“And the bird of paradise knows of many more?”
“Birds or paradise?” she replied an innocent look of confusion wrinkled upon her face.
I guess we were made for each other because we were both cursed with a tism.
In the modern sense of the word.
Not that I couldn’t spend all day waiting for the second hand of o’clock to do something different, a form of gambling.
Did you know Nikolai Tesla had a gambling addiction?
“The hunger of man seeks both birds and paradise” I put my hands on her hips. “What did you seek to show me?”
“The birds and the paradise!” She smiled and led me out of the building and we walked side by side to her tower, through the secure airlock style steel doors the wound open at a flick of the queen fingers.
Past the empty desk not currently occupied by that old man.
Up the stairs past the libraries and into that room at the top open to the night air
The orb was dimmed now.
Before I had processed that the little mail table I had seen before was nowhere to be found. And the mirrors that ring to the void around the tower by which chamber was exposed to the elements were dark and empty of the light. My queen had approached the orb and not quite caressing and whispered sweet nothings to it.
With the abruptness of a lightbulb it’s flickered and images rendered upon each mirror and from each mirror, a fuzzy glow technicolor and exotic like those cast by an electric party ball from times before my time.
In an instance, the dark tower we occupied had transformed from gloomy fortification to a chamber that was one part temple one part planetarium and one part disco.
“Behold the Multiverse!” the dove whispered