II. Chicken Soup For The Skull

"Hey Sam," I said from the sidecar of the motorcycle we had just stolen. "Why don't we make this motorcycle fly?"

"Oh, that's right, dream motorcycles do fly."

"If you want 'em to."

"Yeah, This dream is so real, I almost forgot they have different rules."

Sam put out his cigar and started the motorcycle. We zipped down the street and when we reached a good speed Sam yelled, "Hang on, I'm taking it up!" And that's just what he did.

Dream flying is a little different than regular flying. As a matter of fact, just about everything is a little different in the dreamlands, but anyone who's been asleep more than once knows this to be a true fact.

In the dream world, time and distance don't have the same authority that they do in the regular one. Also, things have no obligation to make any kind of sense whatsoever. The regular world has a Newtonian undercoat to it, but not so much the dreamland. Again, this shouldn't be news to anyone older than seven.

I got tired of musing about the differences between dreaming-being and regular being so I took a look down, mostly to see how high we were. I like looking down at the clouds in both worlds, but dream flying has the advantage of providing that fun stomach-dropping sensation normally only provided by falling off of things and amusement park rides.

The first thing I noticed when I looked down was that we were flying pretty high. High enough to make everything below look small and weird, but not so high that you couldn't tell what you were looking at. What I was looking at at the moment was a giant snake which had wrapped itself up into a figure 8 laying at the bottom of a giant pool. The pool had sailboats in it. The sailboats had people with animal heads dancing to some weird music I couldn't hear, but knew was weird, in them.

I don't want to know what the animal-headed people had in them. Some things should remain private, even from oneself.

"T.J., look over there," Sam yelled from the motorcycle while pointing to his right. "There's a pharmacy over there. Want to go ask the pharmacist about Solitol?"

"Sure, why not?" I answered. "Who knows when I'll wake up, so I might as well follow the narrative laid out by my sub-conscious until then."

"I hear ya, that's what I always do when I'm dreaming," Sam shouted.

"That's all everyone does. It's all a dreaming soul can do." I don't know why I was feeling so philosophical. Maybe it was something I ate before I went to bed.

Sam landed us in the parking lot of the pharmacy he'd seen. I helped myself out of the sidecar while Sam got off the motorcycle. We started walking towards the entrance to the drug-store but then we suddenly found ourselves walking back to the motorcycle. We were each holding small white paper bags.

"Man, I know it's a dream and all, but that was still weird," Sam muttered as he was looking in his bag.

"What'd ya get?" I asked. "Anything good?"

"Gum," he answered. "Snakemint. What about you?"

"Let's see," I opened my bag and stuck my hand right on in, without fear or hesitation. I felt something rock-like and grabbed it. When I withdrew my hand, it had a rock in it. I held it up so Sam could see. "I got a rock," I declared.

"You sure did," Sam responded with a grin. "Want a piece of snakemint gum?" he offered me a stick. It smelled exactly like snakes and mint.

"Why not," I sighed. "When are we going to get the chance to have this flavor again?" Sam didn't respond as he was too busy blowing a giant bubble.

The bubble got cartoonishly large before erupting with a solid "BANG!" After the noise was done, Sam, myself, and most of the parking lot were covered in gum.

"Hey," Sam said while reaching for my face, "There's a note on your forehead."

"Musta been in the bubble," I suggested.

"Makes sense." Sam then plucked the note off my face and read it out loud. "Go to the Vampire Club in the vampire section of town. Throw the rock at the giant clock. All will be partially revealed."

I just nodded. For some reason that seemed to be exactly what I expected to hear.

"Well," I began, looking at my watch, "This says it's 11:30 in the morning. Dream time is two hours ahead of regular time-"

"-I thought it was behind?" Interrupted Sam.

"My mistake," I said. "You're right. It is two hours behind."

As we got back into the flying motorcycle, I noticed we were no longer covered in gum. Sam flew us back up into the sky. We sailed around without speaking for a few moments. I was enjoying seeing all the crazy stuff I was looking at. Judging by what I saw, my mind was a weird place.

Sam was engrossed in piloting the flying dream motorcycle. While he couldn't do proper loop-de-loops on account we weren't secured in our seats, he came pretty close. All in all, this dream was an enjoyable way to spend the time I normally spend not being aware I'm alive, which is what I usually do when I'm sleeping.

We were having a blast flying around the inside of my sub-conscious when I happened to look down and saw what appeared to be a Halloween celebration of some sort. Sam and I are both huge fans of the day so I suggested that we take a break to check it out.

Instead of answering with words, Sam just pointed the flying motorcycle down and headed to a landing zone near the celebration spot. We disentangled from the motorcycle and I said: "Costumes activate."

I looked at Sam and he was now wearing a tuxedo, his head was a skull. He was smoking a cigar and wearing a top hat. I looked down at myself to find I was wearing a black and red suit, smoking a pipe, and holding a cane.

"Too much," Sam's skull-mouth said.

"I agree," I said to Sam before saying to no one, "Costumes activate again, and make them function-appropriate this time."

"Devil's in the details," Sam said.

"Sure is," I said back. "How are we now?"

Sam was now wrapped in toilet paper and looked almost like a mummy. I noticed I was covered in a bed sheet that had holes cut out around my eyes, for seeing purposes.

"Gotta love the classics," I said.

"Yeah man, let's check this party out."

The party was a disappointment but we did manage to get directions to the vampire section of town from a nice woman who was dressed like a Frankenstein. That was something, at least.

We flew around for a while and eventually found the vampire section of town. The giant clock was a little trickier to find. There were three clocks and they all grew and shrunk at odd intervals. It took awhile, but after we watched them for a bit we could see that one of the clock's biggest sizes was bigger than the maximum size of the other two. So I threw the rock at that one when it was peeking in bigness.

The rock smashed into the clock causing a jarring and annoying tone to emit from it. The next thing I remember is rolling over in bed and hitting the off button on my alarm. I had to go to the bathroom. So I started working towards achieving that goal.

I had to try to not to wake up too much while I was walking to, using, and then walking away from the bathroom. I needed to stay asleep enough to finish this dream. The only way I could do that was to not think too much about what was going on and just pee as fast and as casually as I could and do my best to get back in bed and fall asleep again before I noticed what I was doing.

I checked my wrist for a watch while I was making water and damned if I wasn't wearing one. The only thing worse than a lucid dream is a lucid dream in a lucid dream. That's double lucidity. No one needs that much lucidity. And to think, I had plans for a regular today.