I was in the passenger seat of a car. An old car. I don’t remember who was driving or where we were going. Someone, somewhere outside of the car, shot me seven times. I did not feel the bullets punching into my chest at an arcing angle. I did not resist. I simply died. It was a split second. I was in the car and then I wasn’t. I was as unaware as a dining room chair.
I drive cars I cannot control. I was in a smart car that told me in a disarming computerized voice, “You are having a collision.” I don’t know why I drive these cars with random events. It is much like a driver’s education lesson, where suddenly, the brakes fail, the accelerator sticks or the steering wheel falls off.
My teeth have turned cold and fallen out.
I am at the end of a semester and discover I have forgotten to attend a class I signed up and paid for. Even worse, I have gone through college and discovered I need to repeat high school because I never got a diploma.
I am enjoying a cigarette when it dawns on me that I quit the addiction years ago.
I have a child that I totally forget I’ve given birth to.
Once, my husband set us all up for a family photo and slit our throats. Recently, he was dressed as a Scotsman in a Duster cloak. I asked if he had a dagger in his sock and he turned his back, flipped up a ruffle on the coat and showed me his sword.
George Lightcap, you know who you are, showed up at my dorm door with a pocket watch and advised me that time was running out.
These are all potential stories. They are the stuff that dreams are made of. I am posting them at great risk of being gathered up in a butterfly net by bulky men in white coats.
Mostly, I am posting them because Audrey Shaffer who moderates the Writer’s Chat Room, brought it up as a topic for open discussion in the online chat room.
She asked if chatters used their dreams in writing. I have to say that the ones that do not evaporate before my first coffee refill are fair game for writing. I do let my characters have dreams and use them for discovery. I used a dream of a body in a wall to begin a novel, but, by the time it got to the computer it had changed into a freeze dried teen-ager stuffed behind a Ten Commandments Monument.
Reflecting on this topic, I have to admit, the dreams I do write about, stop coming back. I suppose this post is heavy with potential and morphology.
Thanks for returning to watch my mind at work and play. Till next time, dream it big.
Comments
One response to “Such is the Stuff”
Sally, I LOVE all those ideas. Each one got me hooked in a different way. They really are sources of some great stories, should you use them.
Great blog, but I hope i don’t have some of THOSE dreams now…