Munmun(70)

“BE HONEST WITH ME, LITTLE FIVE. WHY DID YOU INSIST ON BRINGING A FRIEND TO WHAT SHOULD BE A PRIVATE SITDOWN BETWEEN FATHER AND SON,” asked Mark.

“I guess I just like pissing you off,” said Markfive, voice squeaking on piss.

Mark nodded, leaned back, his eyes darkening and closing off.

“AND WHY IS THAT,” he boomed.

“Because I know no one else is doing it,” said Markfive.

Mark was munching ravenously now, inhaling dripping breads in a barely controlled panic.

“THAT IS NOT NECESSARILY A GREAT REASON TO DO SOMETHING,” he told us, and snapped his fingers, like a thundering treecrash, Heather came to politely kick us out.

On the way home, Lily sat upfront with Markfive, she was also tipsy but trying to be serious, wanting to talk sense into the headstrong son.

“Sweetie, you gotta play a little nicer with your bros and sisses,” she said.

“Ugh,” snapped angry Markfive, driving toofast and lurchy.

“I just mean, play the game atleast a little bit,” she urged.

“Mom, chill,” he muttered.

“I know the game is terrible,” she said. “But otherwise you’re wasting the only good part of having Mark as your dad.”

Markfive caught Kitty’s eye in the rearview and explained, “For my birthday present, my dad wants to give me solodream sleepmeds.”

“Do you not like dreaming with other people?” asked Kitty sadly.

“No no no, not the drug, the company,” said Markfive. “My dad wants to give me a slice of his actual company, the part that makes the solodream drug.”

“Ohhhhhh,” said Kitty. “Oh wow.”

Lily craned around to look at us and said, “Poor Warner and Blessing have no idea what we’re talking about!”

“Her name’s actually Prayer,” said Markfive, and Prayer said nothing but I could hear her glow.

Lily announced, “Warner and Prairie are sitting back there like, huh, excuse me, solodream, sleepmeds, these middleriches are babbling insanely like they’ve lost their minds, are they about to gobble us up like two little treats?!”

“Mom, be less of a drunken maniac,” said Markfive.

Kitty explained, “Warner, Prayer, solodream is what the bank gives you before Scale Up or Scale Down to keep your Dreamworld separate from everyone else’s, so you don’t damage everyone and yourself, I mean cyclelogically.”

“No no ofcourse I remember,” said Prayer.

I did too, remembered my own private dreamcity, my unpeopled dreamyewess, the outofcontrol feeling of getting bigger than the planet, bigger than all of space, digging myself out of the airless universe and back into the underbank, yellings of no no no.

“Yeah,” said impatient Markfive, “so basically it’s a product with only one customer, the bank, they buy about the same amount everyyear and that’s it, the end, super boring and dumb, it’s the dumbest business ever.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I think you could do great things with it,” breathed giddy Prayer.

“Nope,” snapped Markfive. “No one could. It’s the slice of Mark Drug Co you would give to an idiot to run.”

“Baby, I get it,” said Lily. “But what you’re missing is, Mark’s giving it to you. Two, Three, Girlmark, Four, Girlmarkagain, they don’t have their own little companyslices. They all just work under him. You’re the only one he’s putting in business for yourself.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” yelled Markfive, flooring the gaspedal, and we sped over terrified halfcars back up into Wet Almanac.





DREAMWORLD


The weeks whipped past and my dreaming got wild enough, daves started mentioning it at school, they didn’t even know it was mine.

“Something’s up in Dreamworld, last night someone made me dream my body was a song,” grumbled one surly lifter.

“My whole freaking family keeps getting trapped with Famous Randy inside the thoughtbubbles of a horse,” mumbled another.

It was all the chems turbocharging my mind for sure, the dreaming didn’t even feel like work, I just refused to touch any brakes and let every thought speed around, put away the clips and shears and let the weeds grow wildly.

I got used to ignoring the tick tick tickle of random dreamers trying to dream their way to me, flickering flashlights from across valleys and oceans, tapping faraway doors they think are mine, all the poor and rich Lossy Indicans who want to know who is setting the inkfires, whose breath is making windtrees, who is bursting bubblehills and crashing roadwaves into the pavebeach, who is shifting the mathy grids we’re stuck in, who is carving little shapes in time, rhythms out of walls and air.

Most of these people, did I care about them, no, well yes but did I need them to know, it’s Warner dreaming all this, this wild bananas dreamstuff is copywrite Warner, don’t reproduce without permission, nope.

Now did I care about Kitty, did I want her to know it’s me, well yeah, I mean that would be nice.

But did Kitty notice, notreally, no.

Everynight instead she made her music, she played for her audiences, and my dreamstuff couldn’t reach inside the operafortress.

A couple times I asked her, hey, do you ever leave that crazy castle, do you ever wonder what other people can dream.