Saturday, April 26, 2008

The Mackerel - A short flight of fancy

I had dreams of flying that night. I flew over the Grand Canyon and across miles and miles of desert until I hit the ocean. I had never seen this particular view of the ocean before. There were lots of boats in the water. Raiding the ocean, at an alarming rate, of hundreds and hundreds of fish. One particular fishing boat was pulling in a net full of fish struggling to escape the sunny air and back into the water. A mackerel, in the mass of fish, caught my eye and he began to talk to me. He told me I needed to cut the net and set them free or a terrible plague would happen. I was not sure what it was about this fish, perhaps the fact that he could talk, but I believed him. I grabbed a machete from the boat and I sliced open the net, spilling the fish back into the ocean. The fishermen were angry and started yelling curses at me as I hovered just above them holding a machete. I was a little alarmed by their shouting so I tried to explain to them. A rifle was pointed in my direction as an answer to my pleas and that was when I woke up.

I, of course, thought nothing of it. It was a strange dream, nothing more. Right? The dream stayed with me, always plaguing the back of my mind. Kind of like when you hear Whitney Houston bellow out "I believe the children are our future.." as you wait on hold to pay a bill and then you can't get rid of the song for weeks. You stand in the shower, washing your hair, singing "the greatest love of all is happening to me!" It's that kind of 'in the back of my mind' I am talking about. I couldn't get a night's sleep without ending with the rifle being pointed at me by the angry fishermen. My waking hours were tolerable I could laugh at the dream in the light of day. Slowly my resolve began to fade and I began to have the dream if I drifed off in to a daydream. It stopped being entertaining at that point and started to be frightening. I began drinking more coffee and sleeping less. I was always exhausted and the dream began bridging the gap between unconscious mind and conscious mind. That was when I started receiving the phone calls. All I would hear would be a narration of the dream. If I hung up they would call back and pick up where they left off. By this time I had stopped shaving or bathing as I was afraid of the water. I was not sure what to expect but I did not want to chance that damn mackerel coming out of the faucet.

It was about then that my boss pulled me aside, into a conference room. I am not sure what happened but 15 minutes later, after hearing him tell me the sequence of my dream, I was standing outside with a box in my hand piled high with my desk belongings. I decided I probably needed food so I went to the local drive through. The voice through the speaker started talking about flying over the desert. I told that voice I wanted a Big Mac meal with a coke. It said something about the talking mackerel in response and I pulled forward. The person handling the cash transaction was that damn mackerel! I handed him my money and pulled to the next window filled with angry fishermen and they were yelling curses at me as they handed my lunch over. I sped away as the fisherman reached for the rifle. I was not looking forward at where I was going and that was when I ran head on into the police car.

I woke up in the hospital.... A doctor came up to me and started telling my dream to me. I screamed at him that I no longer wanted to save that damn talking mackerel! They put me to sleep almost immediately. When I awoke I was in a padded room.

Now you tell me... why would someone employ a mackerel as a psychiatrist?

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