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![Dreams of Thunder [FRAGMENT]](http://d.furaffinity.net/art/sylvan/stories/1488278723/1427754331.thumbnail.sylvan_dreamsofthunder.pdf.gif "Click to change the View")
This is not done.
It may never be done.
This story fragment was written based on a nightmare had at a furry convention in the outskirts of Milwaukee in the morning hours of Friday, February 27th, 2015. The world-setting and the characters are owned by myself.
Dreams of Thunder
©2015 Sylvan Scott
Recording dreams, committing them to paper or wakeful memory, transforms each—irrevocably—into strange and surreal things. Within their ethereal context, they are rational. Their logic stands as solid as any mountain. Their revelations go unquestioned and their courses appear straight as any downtown street. But when dawn breaks across the consciousness, they twist like rivers and become incoherent jumbles. Soon, the rising fog of wakeful morning cloaks them and each slinks into dark recesses of half-congealed memory. Thereafter, it is only through the intervening fog that they can be viewed. Sometimes the recollection is more-or-less clear but most often is shrouded in incoherence.
Travis woke to a fading rumble tinged by the hiss and hum of his C-PAP machine. He blinked furiously and rubbed his eyes as if the action could expunge the visions from his eyes. Mercifully, they were already fading. But unlike most nightmares, large chunks of this one remained.
He stumbled to the tiny, beige bathroom. In the dark, he closed the door before turning on the light and overly-loud fan. Back in the hotel bedroom, his roommates slept on. Eyes laden with night’s crust and rimmed in black, he frowned at his blurry reflection. For long moments, he stood and stared.
His brother’s wedding.
In reality, the backyard of his parent’s home hadn’t opened onto vast grasslands reminiscent of a half-remembered road trip from when he had been only eight. There weren’t stormy skies at his brother’s wedding nor were hillocks of plains inundated with rushing rivulets of rain water. The event had been indoors, not in the open and flooded for as far as the eye could see. He hadn’t been asked to participate in the ceremony or ask three questions of both the bride and groom.
At the real wedding, no one had expected Travis to prepare an insufficient amount of zucchini and various home-grown root vegetables for the reception.
There had not been teepee-like poles in sets of three, garlanded in white and each containing a single young woman in a flowing, white dress wearing a crown of flowers.
In the real world, the logical and physical world, his father had been fine. He had danced with his middle son’s new bride, wore a top-hat, carried a cane, and smiled cheerfully beneath greying locks. He hadn’t pitched forward into Travis’s arms, heart beating so hard his eldest son could feel it through bone, flesh, muscle, and chest.
In reality, it had been day of joy: the last he could remember with his father before the brain tumor took his arm, his livelihood, and his life.
Turning from his empty-eyed reflection, Travis stooped to turn the water in the shower to “hot” and got in.
At home, he used showers to cure all manner of ills: headaches, queasiness, political discussions on Twitter: there was little that scalding water over one’s scalp could not assuage. But this hotel had “low-flow” shower heads. The flow was less a torrent and more a spattering dribble. The temperature, even turned all the way to the right, barely woke him, let alone invigorated his limbs and soul. He scrubbed, furiously, but couldn’t scour the memories from his wakefulness. Eventually, he resigned himself to failure. The painful fragments of dream would remain.
He would carry the images—his father’s rapidly-beating and failing heart … the tips of waving grasses sticking up from flooded plains like reeds—through the rest of the day. Hopefully, in time, they would be swallowed up by the bustling world of the convention.
He turned off the inadequate water, toweled himself dry, pulled on his robe, pocketed the meds he had to take later, rubbed gel into his hair, turned off the light, and walked back into the dark room. Careful not to wake his roommates, he got dressed with the clothes he’d laid out the night before. After fumbling for his watch in the dark, he put it on, navigated to the door, and emerged into the bright, unyielding fluorescents of the hotel hallway.
His morning ministrations had taken all of some twenty-five minutes. He wasn’t used to waking up so abruptly. Walking to the elevator and, then, the lobby, he felt dizzy. He stopped next to the door leading to the winter-clad, outdoor pool courtyard to catch his breath. Large paw prints, absurdly huge, led off through the snow. Some furry, dressed warmly in a fursuit, had clearly gone for a walk.
Travis was wearing a plaid sweater vest and, over that, another sweater. The cold hallways demanded it as well as the season. After a moment’s hesitation, he opened the door and walked into the icy, white courtyard.
The way was poorly shoveled. Several stories of worn brick rose on all sides, windows looking in on the wintery tableau. Ahead, the comically-sized paw prints led up to orange caution tape that ringed the boundaries of the pool. Drifts reached its high edges in both the deep and shallow ends. The tracks walked around and, curiously, Travis looked to see which door they would exit the enclosed, unseasonal patio.
They didn’t.
A faint rumble from the clouds echoed in time with the shiver that ran through Travis’ too-thin sweater. The tracks lead around the shallow end, past the aluminum railings sunk into snow, and headed straight to the deep end.
The tracks led through a break in the caution tape and into the pool.
Whorls of shallow drifts covered the slightly-larger-than-human entry hole in the snow. But it’s shape left little doubt in Travis’ mind about what had happened. The only question was when and how long a person could survive buried in snow when the temperatures were scarcely in the positive degrees, Fahrenheit.
He shouted. He called out. He ran towards the nearest door, finding it locked. He pounced and called again.
No one came.
He ran back to the snow-filled pool.
No tracks led out of it. Their deep, cartoony nature belied the danger their wearer was in. He was feeling the cold, himself, now. Travis knew the cold of a Minnesotan winter but he hadn’t dressed for it when he’d come into the courtyard. And while he could run back to the door he’d entered through, by the time he got to the front desk or someone who could help, it might be too late.
It might already be too late.
Still, something had to be done.
He jumped into the deep end, spread his arms as he hit the snow, and sank.
It may never be done.
This story fragment was written based on a nightmare had at a furry convention in the outskirts of Milwaukee in the morning hours of Friday, February 27th, 2015. The world-setting and the characters are owned by myself.
Dreams of Thunder
©2015 Sylvan Scott
Recording dreams, committing them to paper or wakeful memory, transforms each—irrevocably—into strange and surreal things. Within their ethereal context, they are rational. Their logic stands as solid as any mountain. Their revelations go unquestioned and their courses appear straight as any downtown street. But when dawn breaks across the consciousness, they twist like rivers and become incoherent jumbles. Soon, the rising fog of wakeful morning cloaks them and each slinks into dark recesses of half-congealed memory. Thereafter, it is only through the intervening fog that they can be viewed. Sometimes the recollection is more-or-less clear but most often is shrouded in incoherence.
Travis woke to a fading rumble tinged by the hiss and hum of his C-PAP machine. He blinked furiously and rubbed his eyes as if the action could expunge the visions from his eyes. Mercifully, they were already fading. But unlike most nightmares, large chunks of this one remained.
He stumbled to the tiny, beige bathroom. In the dark, he closed the door before turning on the light and overly-loud fan. Back in the hotel bedroom, his roommates slept on. Eyes laden with night’s crust and rimmed in black, he frowned at his blurry reflection. For long moments, he stood and stared.
His brother’s wedding.
In reality, the backyard of his parent’s home hadn’t opened onto vast grasslands reminiscent of a half-remembered road trip from when he had been only eight. There weren’t stormy skies at his brother’s wedding nor were hillocks of plains inundated with rushing rivulets of rain water. The event had been indoors, not in the open and flooded for as far as the eye could see. He hadn’t been asked to participate in the ceremony or ask three questions of both the bride and groom.
At the real wedding, no one had expected Travis to prepare an insufficient amount of zucchini and various home-grown root vegetables for the reception.
There had not been teepee-like poles in sets of three, garlanded in white and each containing a single young woman in a flowing, white dress wearing a crown of flowers.
In the real world, the logical and physical world, his father had been fine. He had danced with his middle son’s new bride, wore a top-hat, carried a cane, and smiled cheerfully beneath greying locks. He hadn’t pitched forward into Travis’s arms, heart beating so hard his eldest son could feel it through bone, flesh, muscle, and chest.
In reality, it had been day of joy: the last he could remember with his father before the brain tumor took his arm, his livelihood, and his life.
Turning from his empty-eyed reflection, Travis stooped to turn the water in the shower to “hot” and got in.
At home, he used showers to cure all manner of ills: headaches, queasiness, political discussions on Twitter: there was little that scalding water over one’s scalp could not assuage. But this hotel had “low-flow” shower heads. The flow was less a torrent and more a spattering dribble. The temperature, even turned all the way to the right, barely woke him, let alone invigorated his limbs and soul. He scrubbed, furiously, but couldn’t scour the memories from his wakefulness. Eventually, he resigned himself to failure. The painful fragments of dream would remain.
He would carry the images—his father’s rapidly-beating and failing heart … the tips of waving grasses sticking up from flooded plains like reeds—through the rest of the day. Hopefully, in time, they would be swallowed up by the bustling world of the convention.
He turned off the inadequate water, toweled himself dry, pulled on his robe, pocketed the meds he had to take later, rubbed gel into his hair, turned off the light, and walked back into the dark room. Careful not to wake his roommates, he got dressed with the clothes he’d laid out the night before. After fumbling for his watch in the dark, he put it on, navigated to the door, and emerged into the bright, unyielding fluorescents of the hotel hallway.
His morning ministrations had taken all of some twenty-five minutes. He wasn’t used to waking up so abruptly. Walking to the elevator and, then, the lobby, he felt dizzy. He stopped next to the door leading to the winter-clad, outdoor pool courtyard to catch his breath. Large paw prints, absurdly huge, led off through the snow. Some furry, dressed warmly in a fursuit, had clearly gone for a walk.
Travis was wearing a plaid sweater vest and, over that, another sweater. The cold hallways demanded it as well as the season. After a moment’s hesitation, he opened the door and walked into the icy, white courtyard.
The way was poorly shoveled. Several stories of worn brick rose on all sides, windows looking in on the wintery tableau. Ahead, the comically-sized paw prints led up to orange caution tape that ringed the boundaries of the pool. Drifts reached its high edges in both the deep and shallow ends. The tracks walked around and, curiously, Travis looked to see which door they would exit the enclosed, unseasonal patio.
They didn’t.
A faint rumble from the clouds echoed in time with the shiver that ran through Travis’ too-thin sweater. The tracks lead around the shallow end, past the aluminum railings sunk into snow, and headed straight to the deep end.
The tracks led through a break in the caution tape and into the pool.
Whorls of shallow drifts covered the slightly-larger-than-human entry hole in the snow. But it’s shape left little doubt in Travis’ mind about what had happened. The only question was when and how long a person could survive buried in snow when the temperatures were scarcely in the positive degrees, Fahrenheit.
He shouted. He called out. He ran towards the nearest door, finding it locked. He pounced and called again.
No one came.
He ran back to the snow-filled pool.
No tracks led out of it. Their deep, cartoony nature belied the danger their wearer was in. He was feeling the cold, himself, now. Travis knew the cold of a Minnesotan winter but he hadn’t dressed for it when he’d come into the courtyard. And while he could run back to the door he’d entered through, by the time he got to the front desk or someone who could help, it might be too late.
It might already be too late.
Still, something had to be done.
He jumped into the deep end, spread his arms as he hit the snow, and sank.
Category Story / Fantasy
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 120 x 117px
File Size 119.1 kB
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