Sunshine's Dreams

I appeared in Sunshine's dream last night. This is, apparently, how she became pregnant with a Mormon (soon to be named Emily). Here is an excerpt from it, written by my friend Luigi Lucriccio:

Sunshine’s dreams, while often vivid and strange, rarely bring her out of her body in the manner of her current dream; she is floating high above the French Quarter, her hair badly misbehaving, flapping against her face, some of it getting caught in her mouth. She pulls and spits out the hair, but it returns, bringing with it a multitude of other objects: a miniature camera, a jelly belly, a cupcake wrapper and a barrette. When the latter appears, she quickly grabs it and uses it to hold her hair in place. Not in the mood for sweets, she drops the jelly belly and cupcake wrapper and watch as they both descend. The jelly belly falls straight toward the top of a minivan while the wrapper floats aimlessly about in the early morning air. She turns to her right and notices Archibald hovering nearby.

“It’s one of my favorite dreams,” he says.

Although Sunshine is surprised to see him here, she is happy for some company. “What is?” she asks.

“Flying. I dream about it all the time.”

“What do you mean you can’t fly? You’re a bird.”

“I’m an ostrich, and if you’re weren’t aware before, I am a flightless bird. Useless wings,” he says, stretching out his paltry wings, batting them in the air and shrugging his bird shoulders. “The only way I can get to high places is to run really, really fast and hope gravity doesn’t catch up with me.”

This makes Sunshine think about physics, a subject she would normally avoid. “Yeah, what’s up with this? I can’t fly either. How are we able to just hover up here like a couple of loons?”

“The miracle of the rapid eye movement sleep state. Anything is possible.”

“You mean, I can become an ostrich myself?” a suddenly experimental Sunshine asks.

“Let’s not go too far.”

“Let’s,” Sunshine says. She closes her eyes and flexes her brain muscles, but when she opens her eyes, she’s still human, still Sunshine. “Damn.”

“Unfortunately, we’re just passengers, or more appropriately, the marionette of our own personal puppeteer, whoever that happens to be. I’d like to think mine is J.R. Ewing, but, since he’s fictitious, that’s probably not the case.”

“There’s no one controlling my dream!” Sunshine yells, squinting harder, gnawing her jaws together, squeezing as hard as possible to turn herself into an ostrich. When she opens her eyes again, she is not an ostrich, but has, in fact, become the Met Life blimp.

“Well done, Sunshine,” she ostrich says, tipping his hat in her direction. “Now your filled with hot air, although that’s not too much of a stretch.”

“Very funny,” the blimp fires back, although she is no longer sure if she has the proper orifice to actually speak.