Somewhere only the shadows know

Proof that I am no longer a misanthrope:

I had a dream last night that started out with me inexplicably trying to shave the back of my head. Maybe it was the back of my neck, I'm not entirely sure. I was standing in front of a mirror with a straight razor, trying to contort myself into a position where I could see where I was aiming for. Obviously, this is nigh impossible with only one mirror, so I decide I should look for another, hand-held mirror so I could abuse geometry. It was at that moment that I realized I was calf-deep in a fountain in the middle of some city park. No one around me seemed to think it was weird that I was in the fountain, that there was a bathroom sink and vanity in the middle of it, or that I was trying to shave the back of my head/neck. So I climb out of the fountain and scanned my surroundings for a mirror, a compact, anything. I see nothing. Promptly, it begins to rain. No, it begins to HAIL. Needless to say, I haul ass toward nothing in particular, seeking shelter. I run past a bunch of fairly innocuous park scenery and reach the edge, where I cross the street, dodging (of all things) HORSE CARRIAGES and make my way into a CVS. I take a second to wonder why the fuck a CVS is in the middle of a metropolitan city, and then look for a mirror. I find a nice little compact, and reach for my wallet. I touch emptiness. I drop an F-bomb. I reach for my cell phone. Again, I touch emptiness. Again, I drop an F-bomb. At this point, I realize that I have also lost my razor somewhere and somehow. The store clerk starts to attack me with a broom, since I am apparently soaking wet and dripping all over the carpet. Yes, this CVS is carpeted. I try to fight back, but soon find myself standing on the sidewalk. Miraculously, it has stopped raining and hailing. I reason that my phone and wallet are probably at the same place. I begin to look for a pay phone so I can call my phone, and then die a little on the inside when I realize I don't have my wallet so I can't use a pay phone anyway. I see a woman walking down the street, texting on her phone. I ask her if I can use her phone; she gives me a dirty look. All of a sudden, it starts to hail again. One of them falls on her head and kills her before she can hit the ground. I shrug, pick up her phone, and call my cell. I hear my phone ringing off in the distance, faintly. Intrigued, I throw the phone at the dead woman's body and run toward the sound of my phone. After a few seconds of running down the sidewalk, the ringing stops, and I kick myself because I should have just kept the woman's phone. I look back toward her body, and see that she and her phone have mysteriously disappeared from the front of the CVS. Something hits me in the back of the head. I turn around, and see my phone lying on the ground. I reach down to pick it up, and it jumps backward. Long story short, I make a veritable Looney Tunes ass of myself as I chase my phone down the sidewalk, until I run head-first into a man. I hit him in his crotch, of course, as I was stooped over and pawing for my runaway phone. I hear him scream as we tumble to the ground in an awkward mess. I look up, and see that the man is Al Gore. He's out cold, a little vomit dribbling out of the side of his mouth. I roll him over, and discover that he has crushed my phone. Enraged, I kick his catatonic body. He explodes into a shower of Tootsie rolls and Jolly Ranchers, as if he was in fact a pinata. Right on cue, a flood of tiny children rush out and swarm the falling candy. So many of these children come out that soon I'm crowd-surfing. The children disperse and I find that I am now on top of a boulder. It starts to roll downhill (yes, I am apparently also on top of a hill), but I somehow manage to stay on top of the boulder despite the fact that it is spinning underneath me. I just sit there flabbergasted for awhile, until I hear sirens behind me. A cop is pulling me over. The boulder rolls to a standstill, and the cop steps out of his squad car, walks up to me, and starts to write me a ticket for speeding. I begin to argue with him over the idiocy of getting a speeding ticket while on top a boulder. He gives me a look, and I realize I am in fact driving a limousine. Speechless, I just accept the ticket, and the cop walks back to his car and drives off. I look down at the ticket, and see that it is actually a napkin with a ketchup stain on it. And then I wake up.


The point is, if I were still misanthropic in any way, I would never have asked that woman to lend me her phone.