By my friend Alan Loewen. Originally posted to
https://alanloewen.blogspot.com/201.....rFcIuTU8OBAoDw

"I keep having this dream," James said, "where I'm at a concert. The band is six ... um ... women."

The psychiatrist nodded his head and scribbled for a bit in his notebook. "And how do you feel when you find yourself in this arena? Threatened? Afraid?"

James shook his head in the negative. "Not at all. I'm actually happy. The music is incredible and and I'm just enjoying the music with the crowd. I really don't want to leave."

"But you do, of course."

James nodded. "Yes. I always wake up, but ..."

The doctor looked up, his brow furrowed in thought. "What is it you aren't telling me?"

James sighed. "Well, after the concert, the lead singer looks right at me like she wants me to come up to the stage."

"And do you?"

"No. At that point I wake up, but each dream goes a little bit longer and longer. I think at some point I'm going to go to her."

"What else are you omitting?"

James shrugged. "Nothing else," he said. He didn't feel comfortable telling the doctor that the singing group and the audience weren't human, but a panoply of anthropomorphic animals and that the singer herself was a vixen in human form.

The doctor nodded. "It's probably nothing," he said, "but the receptionist will give you some sleeping pills that repress dreaming. I'm sure that will help."

Ten minutes later as James walked down the sidewalk, he felt the bottle of pills in his pocket. As he walked by a public trash can, he tossed them in and kept walking, whistling a catchy tune to himself that he had heard in the previous night's dream.