The Day I Dreamed I Had a Dream

This is an odd little story I started in September of last year.  I re-discovered it a few weeks ago and decided to finish it. (I wrote this before I ever saw the movie Inception, so any resemblance to that is really just my genius intellect.)  It was fun to write, and I like the idea of it.  It's easy for me to follow because I wrote it, but it will be interesting to see how others manage it.

This story was supposed fit in with The Day I Died and The Day I Met Myself, (Which I believe is still in the process of being written.) but it turned out to be a slightly different writing style--rather rambling and quite a few inside jokes that I'm not sure if they will be amusing to others or not.  I guess you can judge for yourself.




                                                                           The Day I Dreamed I had a Dream

                                                                By Melody Beerbower


    After you've read the title and decided to read on anyways despite it, (I must applaud you for doing so. You must be very pressed for some reading material or else a die-hard fan of the author.

    "But you are the author," you say hesitatingly {This is you speaking}

    Yes, I am the author, as in: this is my story, but THE Author is writing this down.  And she is most definitely not me.
    Ah, I can see I am making this confusing. Let me try again: this is my story, but I am not the one writing it.  I am not the person whose name you see printed under the title.  She is the one who created me and my story.  She is attempting to set it down as accurately as possible, but, as she is human, she may fail at some point in the narrative, even though she lets me be the narrator.
    I fear I have confused the matter again.
    I'm sure you have run across this in other books, where the "I" in the story in not the author at all but a figment of their imagination.
    I do not like to think of myself as the figment of someone's imagination. I seem very real to me...maybe we're all just a figment of someone's imagination floating around in someone else's dream, and one day they will wake up and we'll all disappear, fading into...

    Cut it out.

     Well, it's not fair that I'm the only figment of imagination floating around here. Besides you promised me I could tell this story uninterrupted.

         Carry on.

    Okay.  You know, it came as quite a shock to me the first time I discovered I was created by THE Author, but that is a story for another time.  Let me go back to the first sentence which has been long interrupted and rudely left hanging.)
    After making it past the title (and my lengthy explanation) you may think, "Ah, this is a story about you daydreaming."
   
    Wrong.

    But is says "The Day I Dreamed I had a Dream."

    Yes, well I'm rather ashamed to admit I was night-dreaming during the day, for I was sound asleep.  I didn't have any particularly good reason for being sound asleep that day.  Nevertheless, sound asleep I was.  And I sounded sound asleep too, for I snored.

    I did not! I never snore.

    Sorry, THE Author was fudging things.  I was not snoring.  And even if I was, she should not have written that.  It's not in keeping with my viewpoint.  I was sleeping; how would I know if I snored or not?
    Let's get back to the story.  I was sleeping and snoring--THE Author just reminded me that I own a parrot, and my parrot informed me upon waking that I had indeed been snoring. 
    But parrots are not always reliable.  Especially this one.  Of course he can't help it poor thing; he was abused.  I got him through a charity for abused parrots called Welfare for Abused, Languishing, Neglected, and Unfairly-Treated Parrots, or WALNUTP.  Usually people just drop off the "P" and call it WALNUT.  It's easier that way.
    Poor Percy cost a pretty penny too, but the CEO of the organization assured me I was supporting a wonderful cause.  You don't know how many parrots die daily for swollen tongues and ruptured larynx's from people forcing them to talk .
    I do not know why people would want to force them to talk for it seems the only thing they come up with to say is rude comments about one's weight and eating habits.
    And no matter how hard SHE tries to make me, I am not going to say I'm f-a-t.  (i have to spell it because every time Percy hears me say the word he starts shouting that I weigh 250 pounds, which is mostly false.

   
    How can it be "mostly" false?

    That's THE author messing things up again.  It is fully false.  And we are not here to discuss my weight.
    Back to the dream I was dreaming.  (If you thought, "I dreamed a dream in time gone by", you listen to far too much Les Miserables.)  Let's review what you already know: I was snoring (very quietly) while night-dreaming during the day as I slept on the couch.
   
    You didn't say you were sleeping on your couch.
    Oh. Well I was.

    Why were you sleeping on the couch? Don't you have a bed?
   
   
         Stop being so nosy!  You're just like THE Author prying into my personal affairs, poking about and snooping in things that don't concern you.  Have you ever thought I might like some privacy?  Like not every one needs to know what color underwear I'm wearing...

    *They're Princess ones.*

...I mean who really cares about such things, except on St. Patrick's Day when everyone's underwear is green. THE Author likes...

    *Yes, she oblivious right now.*
   
...to dredge up things from my past I never even remember, and throw them in front of the world like a cheap sideshow at the circus.  It's humiliating.  That's why I'm glad she's finally letting me tell my own story for a change...

    Where was I?

    You were on the couch.

    Yes.

    Snoring.

    If you insist.  I was sleeping and dreaming.

    Night-dreaming.

    Yes.

    During the day.

    Uh huh.

    With your abused parrot.

    Would you let ME tell the story!?

    Yes.        (If you're polite.)

    Fine!      (If you're rude.)

    . . .          (If you've given up on this story and found something better to do.)

    As I lay dreaming, I dreamed that I had a dream. (Stop thinking about Les Mis. and pay attention.)  In this dream I was sleeping on my bed and the gorilla was sleeping on the couch.  I was not snoring in my dream.

    Only a little bit.

    Not at ALL!

    Fine.

    The pillows were soft     and, behold, I began dreaming in the dream. It was a sweet dream full of gum drops and sugar plum fairies, pink slippers and dancing mice.

    How trite.

    You stay out of it.  You weren't in either my dream or my dreamed-dream, and in my dream I wasn't in yours!  Nor was I just a figment of your imagination.  I was Real.
    Everything was grand, until I began to grow donkey ears and a tail.  I decided I'd better leave the Island of Pleasurable Sweets.  Bravely I jumped into the sea only to get swallowed by a whale.  After three terribly smelly days, it vomited--

    Really?

    I can't help what I dream!  Where was I?  so I was shipwrecked--

     Fish-vomited...

    On to an Island where I was captured by a roving band of--

    Indians?

    No, that's too cliché.  It was a roving band of gorillas.  I lived with them for several years.  They adopted me into their tribe, but I had to return to my own people.  So I hopped aboard a boat and sailed back home, where I became an author and wrote about my adventures.  I got to write my own stories and make up my own characters, and was never forced to reveal embarrassing personal stuff like how I'm scared of ants and I can't even do one pull-up though I still wear on at night.

    Hey! That's no fair, no fair at all! You can't just slip into my voice, write something, and slip out again.  People will think it's me.  And I don't wear pull-ups.

    I wear depends.

    That's no FAIR!

    Life isn't fair.

    Well it's doubly not fair to me 'cause I haven't got it. Rrrrr
    Are you still there

    Yes.    (If you are)
    . . .       (If you aren't)
    Aye     (If you're a pirate.)
    Taco   (If you are a smart Alec and trying not to say anything I write.)

    Well, I'm almost to the end of my dream.  But this is a boring part, so you may go to the bathroom now if you wish.  Yeah, go ahead I don't mind.  Really I don't.  It's no trouble.  I mean, if you got to go, you got to go.  I can wait for you if you wish.

 . . .

    It's really just a boring part in my dream.  All I did was fly around awhile before falling down the stairs multiple times.
    Next came the best part of my dream.  I sold my books and became a famous author!  I traveled the world, selling and signing my books for eager fans. At my last stop, I looked up from the book I was signing and I saw him, the most famous author who ever lived: Anonymous!  I reached out a trembling hand to shake his...but it vanished in my grasp as I woke with a start.  I had only dreamed.
    I rolled out of my bed woke with a start once more.  I found myself on the floor by the couch, and behold! I had only dreamed that I had a dream.


                                                             The End