They're replacing the trim of the doorframe at the bottom of the stairs. The repairs reveal a hollow cavity and I'm dragged into it. My body contorts and compresses, bones crushing and organs shifting, until I assume the long rectangular shape of the crevice. I wonder how many have been shoved into these small spaces and sealed up. Perhaps we will be rediscovered some day, like that frog in the Looney Tunes cartoon. I doubt we shall be as joyful.
I recall dreams often. They only rarely take the form of nightmares. Sometimes my dreams take the forms of stories. And sometimes they involve this place.
I've written about everything2 before. We used to be a bit of a deal online, due to the connection with Slashdot, which used to be an even bigger deal. The internet overtook them both, giving us Wikipedia and social media and broadly-accessible online postings with degrees of credibility by posters with degrees of credulity. E2 endures, if in shadows, shoved into some corner, behind the trim.
I've compared the site to a once-popular, busy bar where you knew the regulars and other people, some of them most irregular, might drop by. It's 20+ years later and those days have become memory, but the taps are still open. A few old-timers remain regulars, and others stop in now and then, especially during challenging times. We had a real resurgence of them during the pandemic, and we may be due for more. Others shook the dust from their feet and we know little or nothing about what they might be doing now. The history remains, and the occasional newcomer who hangs here long enough learns at least some of it. If the place were real there'd be old photos on the wall, with special honour accorded images of those no longer numbered among the living. "Hey, dust off that picture of Hermetic, will ya, mah friend, and we'll raise a toast." When you retain a connection to a place, even a virtual one, for more than twenty years, it becomes a part of who you are, and seeps into your sleeping.
In real life, I had a reading in the tiny town of Thamesford, at the library which inspired the one in my story, "Hapax Lizardman." I wasn't expected a crowd (the venue was also the break room), and the crowd who showed didn't disappoint. My wife. A couple of locals drawn from the county writing group, a couple from fandom whom I knew from cons and nerd events, the artist with whom I'm working on the cryptid book. Four people had planned to come up from the local SF group, but the driver got busy with work. He texted his regrets. It went well, I thought, quiet after the crowd at ConFusion. I sold one book, and gifted another to the library.
Three of us ate in town, at a Road House that I've passed numerous times and never noticed. We arrived early, pre-reading, so there was a waitress and a couple regulars at the bar. A few more had drifted in for dinner by the time we departed.
Back home I braved the wind and snow to put up a flag for Flag Day. Canadians, historically, have eschewed the symbolic-gesturing fanaticism of certain other nations. The last month has witnessed an upsurge of conspicuous nationalism, due to the threats from the American губернатор. Our flag remains up, even if we continue to live in the shadow of increasingly unpredictable and irrational superpowers.
So all of these things entered my dream life, as they do. It unfolded in phases, stages, because I'm certain that I woke up at least once. Difficult to tell with dreams. The plot, so to speak, follows, a couple mornings after the nightmare about being shoved into the walls.
I'm heading to a small town, Thamesford but in the mountains, somewhere, to get the appropriate papers, the Blue Papers, verified. If these can be delivered to Ottawa, they will help some unidentified people in some pressing matter that the dream deigns to explain.
Jet-Poop, one of the first people I met when I logged into e2 and still a regular, contacts me to say that he will be joining me on the drive, in order to process his papers. I've recently watched a couple old eps of Route 66 on Tubi, and so of course I'm driving a vintage Stingray.
A number of elements drop without explanation. I have a conversation with my sister-in-law. Someone mentions a graphic novel entitled Tremendous Duck (a term which draws some disparate Google hits). I pass a cottage and am told three girls inhabit it who will soon make a history-changing breakthrough.
Someone asks me what JP looks like. I hand over a cartoon image that, for many years, was his home image at e2, a guy with a Spy vs. Spy schnoz. When he arrives, however, he oscillates between his actual self and the young Gary Burghoff. We cruise in the 'vette on forgotten highways through indeterminate seasons.
Complications ensue and it seems doubtful that we will make it. At some point I wake up (unless that was also a part of the dream) and realize that it's a just a weird dream. I review the events, wonder if they holds any story potential. When I fall back asleep I'm in a room in a small-town library, where I encounter a group that includes several people I know from SF conventions. They inform me that, in fact, it is all true and many others managed to get their Blue Papers in on time.
I fall back to the 1990s, when I was workshopping plays with teenagers. Simultaneously, I'm in the near future. Someone's costume requires an ornate walking cane. One gets delivered, heavier than it should be, perhaps impractically so. I realize that the top can be unscrewed, so I take it off to see if there's something inside that we can remove.
An angry face looks up from within the hollow of the cane. We pull out the cylindrical gent and he uncompresses to his original shape. Bones rejoin and organs find their places. He is skinny, but not so skinny that he should be able to fit inside a walking stick.
He's dressed for opera 100 years ago, tux and tails and a top hat that he waves into existence. He tries to be happy, a consummate, smiling performer, but I saw his face when the top came off and know he's molten with anger that will eventually burst forth.
How many others, shoved into these forgotten spaces and sealed up? And what will happen when they are finally released?