Dream-Lou Ferrigno, Spurs Ticket, Jungle Survival

I had a dream about some different things.

I was with Gene Hackman investigating a crime. It was nighttime and rainy. There was a car in front of me and to the left, a large brick wall, presumably a building. Gene Hackman was looking in the car. I knew then that the victim was Lou Ferrigno. He had a hole in his head made from a projectile from a gun. We were suspicious that he had deliberatey made said hole in his head. He might have wanted to die that bad. Hereafter, Gene Hackman was replaced by Tom Hanks.

We aimlessely ambled around the scene. I felt that something was going to happen. If Lou had been murdered, I felt that the perpetrators were going to return. A Volkswagen drove into the parking lot. The VW was dark blue. It looked like a golf. It was old and shitty. The driver looked like Kurt Rambis. He sped into the parking lot and did a single loop. The ground was still wet and had a layer of leaves. The leaves had been there a while. I was nervous that this blue fucker would spin and hit me. That would make 2 dead bodies. Which is 2 too many.

The next step in the investigation process was autopsy of poor Lou. I materialized in the autopsy clinic. It looked like Club Photo, which is to say a photo factory. There were autopsies going on all over the building. I didn't think to estimate, but I would assume there were hundreds. I was working with two people at first. They were both adult females. One was wearing teal scrubs with a lab coat on top. The other, just teal scrubs. The floor was made of small white tiles. They were wet. On the tile floor was the body of Lou Ferrigno. His body didn't have a skeleton. The body resembled a manta ray in texture. In color, it resembled Bart Simpson.

The woman wearing teal scrubs sans lab coat, as it turned out, was the assistant. The lab coat meant, 'above assistant.' Doctor, I presume. The assistant reached down and grabbed Lou. The top of his head had been removed, naturally, to get to his brain and skull. Some of his hair was still present, his hairline and an inch. Eyes, gone. Teeth, gone. Nose, gone. The assistant grabbed the top part of Lou's head, and I could see inside the skin outer of his head. It was bloody but empty. The 'assistant plus-1,' or doctor, now approached Lou's body from his feet. He had butcher paper from his chest down. She pushed on his chest with two hands. Lou's mouth let out a noise. It was a mixture of a cough and a loud exhale. It sounded like Lou might still be alive. The noise told me a clear thing. The doctor had just emptied Lou's lungs.

The doctor walked off. She had more important things to attend to than Lou Ferrigno's remains, especially now that his lungs were empty.

As soon as she walked off, Lou began to twitch. He then began to slide around on the wet tile floor. I knew that this happens when people die. They twitch a little. Lou didn't want to twitch just a little. He wanted to twitch a lot. He twitched so much it wasn't twitching anymore. He was now doing full sit-ups. In between his sit-ups, Lou would slide around on the tile like a manta ray on a slick boat surface. Lou's eyes were back where they belonged. In his eye sockets. Or at least his eyelids.

While Lou was being mischevious, I thought about how unprepared I was to control an active cadaver, especially when that cadaver once earned the moniker Mr. Universe. The assistant's face was saying something when I looked at in dismay. It said, 'It's my first day and I'm unprepared to control an active cadaver, especially when that cadaver once earned the moniker Mr. Universe.' We were in agreement.

Luckily, at another autopsy station, there was a young lady who knew what to do. She was wearing coffee-colored scrubs. Her hair was black. She was beautiful. Her idea was to speak with Lou, or Lou's cadaver, and request that it/he follow the rules we had set for it/he.

"Calmate."
Se calmo.

"Despiertate."
Se desperto.

"No te muevas."
No se movio.

"Callate."
No decia ni una palabra.

It worked.

After Lou calmed down, I fell through the canopy of a dense jungle. My estimate at the time was 100 feet. This seemed sufficiently extreme. I wasn't alone in my descension. In fact, I estimated that I had 100 fellow fallers. We all looked like shitty hippie kids. I was disappointed in the crowd. I was disappointed in myself as well.

I landed on the forest floor. The trees and shrubbery told me it was a tropical jungle. No one had jackets, and we weren't prepared for any of this madness. Some people had broken arms. Some people, legs. Others, dead. Still others, trapped in an interesting contraption.

Somehow a few people had been caught in cylindrical cages. There were at least two of them. The cages were hung horizontally, which is to say that the face of the base was perpindicular to the plane of the ground. The people were somehow suspended in a Superman pose through the middle of the cylinders, as if they were the central axis. Their hands were bound in shackles in front of their heads, and their feet the same. The bases were constructed of wood. The cylinder, of chickenwire. The contraptions looked like that from which one picks a bingo ball out.

We all got our wits about us. At least, those who were able got our wits about us. We then began to move. We were moving somewhat like a pack. A pack of shitty hippie kids. I didn't know where we were going. On the other hand, I knew where to go. In what seemed like a very short moment, we reached the edge of the jungle. At the end of the jungle was the beginning of something else. The something else was a backyard.

The backyard was fancifully decorated with shrubs. The shrubs weren't like most shrubs. They had been cut into familiar shapes. I don't remember any of the shapes that the shrubs were cut into. There was also a small labyrinth, with shrubs serving as walls. It wasn't hard to get out of. The proprietor of this home was standing on a platform, about 18 feet above us. He was wearing a traditional black tuxedo. The platform was a kind of back porch to his house.

At that point, I realized that he had us drop into the jungle for some sort of entertainment. I felt that that was a pretty evil thing to do.

Next, I was with my dad and brother. We were in a convertable car, talking but not driving. My brother's friend David Mills had offered me a ticket to a San Antonio Spurs basketball game. I had accepted the offer from David Mills. I was excited about going to the arena and seeing the basketball game.

As we began to drive, I realized something. I realized that David Mills and his Spurs game was in Pflugerville. This helped me realize that I was in San Antonio. I knew that Pflugerville was over an hour from San Antonio. Realizing this made me upset and I shared my anger with my brother and father.

I was in the passenger seat with my brother in the back. My dad was at the wheel. Our convertable was white on the outside and tan on the inside.

When I shared my frustrating news with my dad, he began to drive really fast. He was, of course, driving in reverse. We hurdled our way through a pedestrian mall faster than I felt comfortable going. Soon, I was terrified. Going in reverse was bad enough, I thought. At least you could slow down. Eventually, I was screaming for him to become more reasonable with his velocity, which implies speed and direction.

He didn't.

Before long, we hit a jump of sorts. In all likelihood, it wasn't deliberatly constructed for the sake of reverse drivers and their thrills. Regardless, it served as physics commanded, and we went flying. As we went over the jump, I realized that we were probably going to miss the bridge I saw in front of us. We did. My dad somehow made the leap, though, from the open convertable car to the safety of the bridge. I didn't make it. My brother didn't make it.

Can you guess what it is that we fell into? That fucking jungle.

My brother and I both fell through the canopy. He got caught in a tree with broken bones. I also got caught up there in the trees. I looked around and noticed a familiar face in the cylindrical traps. It was a teacher that I taught with at Allan Elementary. Her hands were out in front of her face, shackled. Her feet were in the customary place, also shackled.

Somehow I was able to make it up to where she was. I was now very close to the bridge that my dad and others were on. One of the others was my mom. They were peering over the bridge at me while I approached the teacher. I felt an unavoidable desire to comfort her. I didn't realize how silly this seems given the circumstance. Regardless, I reached in her cage and grabbed her shackled hand. It was exactly the way I remember it in real life. I bent down and kissed the top of her hand.

I knew that the people on the bridge appreciated that I'd done that.