Dreams astray

[Author's Note: While most dogs dream of hunting and victorious fights, strays dream of being owned.]

You don’t see any reason why you had to wake up, and leave your bed, and, as such, you go through your day in a foul mood, made all the more foul because you can’t really understand /why/ you wanted to stay in bed in the first place.

At work, people stare at you as you spit angry, bitter words at them, and the shocked look on your face raises feelings of an obscure guilt and shame. But you roll right over those feelings, and /that/ doesn’t help your mood at all.

In the evening, once you leave that loathsome place where you work, you find yourself in the driver’s seat of the car, for several minutes baffled by your inability to remember how to start it, how to drive it, or even where the... key... is supposed to go.

With a snarl, you finally start the car and maneuver it out of the parking garage, silently raging at /why/ they have to make the place so /cramped/. And of course, you are late meeting friends for drinks before dinner at a nice restaurant.

However, you say to yourself, it /used/ to be a nice restaurant, and when you speak to the busboy and the waiter, you use a tone of voice best suited for dealing with imbeciles, for that is how they are acting.

Your friends make comments about /somebody/ being postal-menopausal, which ruins the entire dinner for you. You through some cash on the table, and stalk out of the restaurant like Mr. Hyde looking for a fight.

Somehow you make it home without /too/ many idiots cutting you off or running stop signs. But once through the door, you feel as if you will collapse from the weight of the anger, and the bullshit, and the frustration, all coming down on your shoulders.

You grab a beer from the refrigerator, and drink it while you scan through the channels for something to take your mind off whatever it is that is bothering you. But by the time you’ve gone through all the channels at least once, you’ve had a couple more beers, and you decide that you might as well go to bed.

You pause at the edge of the field, your muscles trembling, as you strain to catch and identify all the /wonderful/ smells coming into your nose, and cocking your head at the /alive/ sounds dancing through your ears. You run into the tall grass, yipping happily, and then back to make sure He is coming too. And there he is, coming out of the shadows beneath the trees, laughing at your joy at being alive and free.

You gaze up into his face and...

[tangled jangled sounds and colors-I-don’t-like and vertigo falling spinning and other feelings that can only be called dissonance]

...you dash back into the tall grass, knowing He is following you and sharing your happiness to be Here and with Him and, oh, you have to go investigate /that/ scent.

You wake in the morning, your tongue feeling thick, your eyes thick with crud, and your throat sore. Obviously, you think, I must have a hangover. And the idea of going in to work makes you sick, knowing that your mood, if anything, is worse than yesterday’s. And you hate even more the thought that you might bite somebody’s head off again, and that isn’t /really/ you, you’re a nice guy, /really/.

So you call in, claiming to have a touch of the flu, and apologizing for the way you acted the day before. Your boss accepts the apology, and tells you to get better, that the office isn’t the same without you.


But, suddenly a day to yourself stretches before you, and you mope around the house, unable to decide on one task or another. You wind up taking a nap on the couch...

Another one of those prickly-sticky things has gotten tangled up in your fur, and you worry at it with your teeth. A couple times you nip yourself, and you give off a startled yelp. And every time you yelp it is answered by a low chuckle, which makes you feel much better. And then He is there, with a metal brush and a comb and a small pair of pointy-metal-things, and He gets rid of the prickly-sticky thing. You give the fur a lick, just to make sure, and then, grateful that He chose /you/, of all the mutts in the world, jump up to lick His face

... and you wake up, drowsy, to find yourself in a big patch of sunlight, feeling much better. You get yourself a cup of coffee, and then, feeling responsible and energetic for a change, start taking care of things around the house.

Later, after the cleaning and laundry and dishes are done, you find yourself feeling a bit lonely, so you get online and chat with some friends for a while. Then you decide to look through your collection of video-tapes and DVDs, and you watch a couple movies.

And as you are laughing along with the jokes, or thrilling along with the suspense, you get the unavoidable feeling that /somebody/ is there, right behind you. And it isn’t a bad feeling, in fact, it makes you feel quite good, although you feel that if you were to turn around he would be gone. So you lay on the couch, half of your attention on the movie and the other half warmly wrapped in the knowledge that he is there with you.

And when the last movie is done, you realize there is nothing to do but turn off the TV, but it is impossible to do so without being able to see the entire room, and he is gone. But it is a bitter-sweet feeling, knowing he is gone because he was there, and you go to bed feeling relaxed and happy.

And in your dream, everything is a big, drowsy patch of sunlight, while a hand pats you on the head and thumps your chest. And your tail thumps against the couch as He tells you, “Good boy.�