Monster Dream

Cool monster dream last night. Lana and I were on vacation, staying in a motel at the outskirts of a large Texas city. I was hungry; she wasn't, so I walked about a dozen blocks to small restaurant. While I was there, Lana actually called me on the store's phone and told me she wanted to go home. As I left the eatery, however, a parade was coming along the main street between me and our motel.

I started trying to find a gap through, when I heard a collective gasp and looked up to see the ball of a water tower flying through the air and then crashing down into some buildings. When I looked behind me I saw massive columns of smoke rising in the distance, and fires burning among the city center's skyscrapers.

The parade was scattering so I ran through the crowd toward our motel. I started along the route I'd come but soon came to a big parking garage that was leveled. I turned into other streets, trying to make my way through, and I knew that whatever the destroyer was it was getting close because debris was flying everywhere. At one point, a giant whip-like tail went whizzing by over my head, shearing off tree tops.

When I found the motel, people were running and screaming, although some were clustered together praying. I started screaming for Lana but there was no answer. I ran inside and down to our room. When I threw open the door, Lana was inside folding clothes with the music turned up really loud. I started yelling at her to "come on, come on". And to "get her shoes." I grabbed her hand and practically dragged her from the room to the outside. Then I woke up.

This dream was almost surely a response to watching the movie "Super-Eight" the other night, although it had elements of "Cloverfield" in it, for sure. I enjoyed!

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Since it's getting close to Christmas, I thought I'd also post my "price list" today. If anyone wants a signed copy of anything I've got around the house, this is the damage. You can email me at kainja at hotmail dot com I hope everyone is having a good December so far.

(2011): Current Prices on Books: Signed copies. (Shipping included inside the USA)

The Talera series: Sword & Planet Fantasy Adventure Series

Swords of Talera -- $12.50
Wings Over Talera -- $12.50
Witch of Talera -- $12.50
All 3 -- $32.00

Bitter Steel: An anthology of Sword & Sorcery short stories. $12.00

Midnight in Rosary: An anthology of Vampire and Werewolf short stories. $12.00

Both anthologies: (Bitter Steel & Midnight in Rosary). $22.00

Cold in the Light: A horror/thriller. $8.00

Wanting the Mouth of a Lover: A collection of vampire haiku. $5.00
Or $4.00 as an addition to any other order.

Write With Fire: A nonfiction guide to writing. $14.00
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Rainbow's Fall

* I come walking across a winter heath with a rainbow arching through gray skies above me. Sharply there comes a splintering crack, like ice breaking on a spring river, and I look up to see half the rainbow hanging down from the other half like a twisted limb. Once imprisoned colors begin to spill down, blues that change the sky’s hue to summer, greens that make me think of bare feet in deep grass, then yellows and oranges that sundown the world. Last come the reds, pouring out like angry blood.

When the rainbow is empty it hangs like a crystal holograph in the sky, until it cracks again and tumbles madly in pieces to the ground. I go on across the heath, through colors that clump and cling like mud to my boots, until I find where the rainbow has fallen. It lies in chunks, like twisted boxcars from a wrecked train.

I enter the first such “car,” and then the next and the next, to find piled within all the garbage that the human race has thrown away over the years: one tennis shoe without laces, a broken tin top, sandwich wrappers, a rusted out stove, a chair with the cane back smashed in, nylons with the toes stripped, clothes stained with tobacco and oil. Further along through the fallen rainbow are older discards: gnawed bones, a misshapen flint, a shattered spear.

When I come to the last section of the rainbow, I cannot enter. I can see dimly through to the other end, and outside stands my house, the goal I have been tramping across the heather to reach. But shadows roil in the space before me, between where I stand and where I want to be. The breeze dies when it enters that place. But something moves. Something lives. I see need the color of black. I hear rage like a pressure against my ears. Something waits, but cannot control itself enough to wait silently. That is its downfall.

I turn and trudge back the long way through the trash.

* This is an actual dream I had quite a few years ago. I’ve tried before to capture it in prose, have tried in poetry. Nothing quite works, but it was certainly an interesting dream.