Sometimes when I fall asleep I see pictures moving across the back of my eyelids, strange pastel cartoons, usually, where a round-headed caricature of me is trying to escape from a cloud labelled “Future” or “Responsibility.”
My wife says that sometimes she can see the projector’s flickers behind my eyes.
He dreamed of flying.
Every day he stayed home, sequestered himself in his workshop, and pursued his dream.
He considered himself the Noah of the twenty-first century. The global flood was coming, and he would live in the sky.
But he was not this era’s Noah: he was its Daedalus.
“Tonight we shall incur the esteem of our ancestors!” bellowed King Tawnyfeathers as his eager army growled in anticipation.
But his heart wasn’t in this fight. He wished he were lying in his garden, gazing at the clouds, interred in the earth he had cultivated.
Ah, to be a potato…
This story was based on a title suggestion by Claire Martin via Facebook.
He sprang awake, stifling a scream.
“It was just a dream!” he panted. “I’m not standing in front of the classroom in my underwear!”
“Keith, wake up!” shouted the teacher.
His eyes flew open and he blushed as the class laughed.
That was how Keith discovered his embarrassment-induced, false-awakening narcolepsy.