75 - A nightmare.

joneworlds@mailbox.org

I have not been feeling well lately. Aches everywhere, especially my head. Ibuprofen helps. Although moving around also seems to help. Even rocking left and right when I sit seems comforting.

Also I have bad dreams. The other night, I dreamed I was back at old Pierce's farm, loading something onto Pete's truck. There's a bunch of little gnomes following me around, but something is wrong with them. Pieces are falling off. A hand, an arm, an ear, a jaw. Then I go around to the flatbed trailer, and I notice that the cab and the bed of the truck are packed solid full of dirt. And Pete has changed too. He is an old man, and his head is swelled up to twice its normal size. And his feet are somehow attached to the ground with all these red threads. And all this is so upsetting to me, that I wish I could just wake up.

And then I do, or so I think. At the foot of my bed I see another gnome, bald and pale, small and misshapen. It scrambles up on the foot of the bed and starts crawling up the blanket towards me. I'm panicking because I can't move a muscle except for my head. And then, it suddenly occurs to me: things from all my dreams can follow me back up. Knowing that is about as terrifying a thing as I've ever known. But I can't even scream.

I turn my head, and by the side of the bed I see there are four women standing there. There's Beth with her hands tied together and an exit wound on her forehead. Ellie with her neck broken and both arms chewed off at the shoulder. A young woman with an alpaca behind her on a leash. And an extremely old woman who is laughing and pointing at me. She throws a pie and it lands on my face. Tastes like raspberry. The gnome is up on my face now, licking what's left of the pie. I close my eyes. I hear a strange sound.

Then I wake up for real, and I am finally home in the back of the motor-home where I belong, all alone. Even the gnomes that usually sleep here are all gone this morning, and this seems very odd to me. And I think I see a shadow behind the curtains, of someone standing outside the window. The shape of a stooped old man in a hooded cloak. But he moves off and goes away.

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