CHAPTER THREE PART TWO

... is now up over at DEAD OAKS.



Enjoy


B

DELAYS

Sorry about the delays, guys. There are no excuses this time. I've been working hard as a gameslinger, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be keeping up with my craft. I've just been lazy.

Maybe a post on laziness tomorrow evening.

GOOD NEWS THOUGH.

Chapter Three (Part One) is now live over at DEAD OAKS.



Enjoy!


B

I'm Sorry About Your TV

Hi,

Bear with me.

You descended into my dreams night after night, waltzing in like you owned the rights to my subconscious and you just needed to check that I was using it correctly. I’ve dreamed of you so many times, I could fill books and books with the ones I remember. If I would ever have an empty night of you, I knew I would wake up in tears, missing pieces of myself.

Which is weird, because I had never met you until you moved in next door.

Strange things have been happening to me. They’re linked. I’ve dreamed of you since I was seventeen, and I’m now thirty-three. That’s more than enough time to rely on your appearance at night. Then they stopped. That’s strange thing number one.

But imagine my surprise that you had just decided to find a different way. I woke up startled and sad, the room around me looked nothing like the one I had been using for years. And then I got my coffee, and saw you climb out of a van from my window, swing around to the back, and take out a box.

You were moving in next door. And that was weird thing number two. But not the last.

The last of the odd started a few weeks ago, and is what I must apologize for. You see, I work late. So late that the only things left open are the ones stuck in 24/7 existences. So late that I wear headphones to watch TV so as not to wake up the people below me. And so late that there is nothing on TV anyway.

But that night you moved in, there was something on that idiot box. I flipped and flipped like usual, and landed on something I had never seen before. The remote battery died mid-station switch. So it stayed.

At first it was just static, you see. I tried everything I could short of pounding it with the lid of the toilet tank. Then, slowly, after about a half hour and right before I was determined to give up, it became clear. The noise went away, and there you were, dealing with giant versions of the guys who drove the big moving truck that helped you move.

You were so angry, so livid at them for breaking a clock. You kept saying, “This is an heirloom!” To which they would reply in a series of barks and grunts, growing bigger and bigger until you could barely see their eyes filled with their hatred above your new home.

And then it faded back into noise, and a loud BANG from a car backfiring sprang out in the silence of the night outside our homes. I went to sleep because the channel didn’t come back for the last half hour I was up.

I met you the next day, you were outside in your garage arranging boxes and the like and I said my hellos and my welcomes to the neighborhood. We chatted for a while, and then you told me about the movers totally destroying one of your boxes, the one that contained a clock your grandfather had made in the early years of the century. That last odd occurrence finally clicked, I heard it click in my brain like a light switch, and I knew that my TV was piping in your dreams at night. The backfire must have woken you up and kept you up for a while.

I didn’t tell you. I was nervous enough to meet the literal girl of my dreams, but more so now because of what had been happening. So I decided to write this letter.

Night after night since that day, I watched you dream from the comfort of my own couch. I’m sorry. That’s a creepy thing to do, but it becomes even shittier when I tried to use it for personal gain. You’re right. I couldn’t have really known you talked to your sister about her dog that day (or that you talked to her at all). And I’m sorry that I changed my hair because you had a dream about the pizza delivery boy. I hope that you can’t blame me, but, I fell in love with you in my own dreams over the years, and I couldn’t help but fall again in yours.

You have to listen to me. I love you.  I do. I’ve thrown my TV out the window – sorry that it landed in your driveway – so I would never be tempted to watch it again. Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up.

I’d rather have a cup of coffee, or walk down our street, or help you carry boxes. I’d rather learn more from you than what you hallucinate during REM. I’m tired of hiding in things that aren’t real, I’m tired of only really knowing you when our eyes are closed.

Even if you don’t believe me, at least this is an interesting conversation starter, right?

With Apologies,

Your Neighbor

330-555-6812

(Call Me?)