Dream Deprived

Dream deprived eight nights and nineteen naps, Alice sought a succinct stint of ordinary life awake.  She took a housekeeping job at the Breeze Motel.  In two days she had the routine tuned to delightful daydreaming.  Attempting to transfer a fancy over to real dream, she was found by a guest napping in their unmade room and subsequently fired.  With her two-days pay she went shopping - a new pillow, plants, pajamas.  She went out to dinner with Byron.  She ordered cheesecake which they fed each other forkfuls of.  They went out drinking at Tony’s. Alice joked with stewed strange patrons, she played pool (scratched on the 8ball), she danced, she made out with her boyfriend Byron.  She ate three meals a day, went jogging, cleaned up the house, vacuumed, did dishes.  She was like a regular person.

While riding to Anchorage with Byron the tumbling roll of the road and sliding scenery knocked Alice out.  She dreamt.

The almost empty Grid graded wavy and loose.  The map of fluidity twitched stretched shrank.  A sink hole bore down near the middle where a Native man, she recognized but couldn’t name, hurriedly shoveled out squares and stacked them to re-sod.  As soon as the patched ditch seemed safe a new portion would bunch into a hill or drop out.  The man remained calm and worked efficiently rather than frantically, playing patient constant catch-up.

From her cliff-top view Alice awed at the man’s far-flung bounces (buoyant near-flight) to opposite indefinite ends of the Grid.  His shadow expanded as he rose and waned when he dropped.  Her joints pointed toward flight and she wanted to help this determined landscaper.  She knew it was a dream, though and, specifically her first in weeks.  She didn’t want to chance losing the gift of having her gift back.  The man stuck his spade in pebbly soil and took a total sniff of things.  He grew woozy.  Alice could see ropey wraps of purple fog roll over the bleak plat, no longer flat, rife with blocky hills and kettle traps.  Her dream instinct intact, she reacted – launching toward the fogged sleeper.  She felt an initial rising swoop then tight tamping of her left temple, the roll of road, sliding scenery, Byron beside her.   

Bio: Sean Ulman received his MFA in fiction from Southern Maine University's Stonecoast program.  His work has appeared in Willows Wept Review, Tuesday Shorts, 6 Sentences and the Main Street Journal.