Soul of a Woman

Enough ranting. Sleep takes hold again, enslavement to the corporeal form overpowers the hulking need to say something, to make some semblence of sense of everything that has gone on and is going on. All of a sudden I'm in a pool at some great big, swanky party, a massive band playing 'the Marriage of Figaro.' I look around.

Total absence of color. Black and white like some old movie. How did I get here? Who are all these people? Judging by their dress I am amidst the upper crust, but the feeling I have is that I am not here for social purposes.

I'm chatting with a large house cat who seems to have no issues with water, pools or swanky parties and I'm trying to get some kind of information from it, the details of which float just beyond my consciousness. Ginger, from Gilligan's Island floats in, her bounteous boobs gloriously bouyant. She sidles up to me, passes me a martini and gives me a little snuggle. That's it: I'm Bond. Nice. I could just have easily become Gary Coleman.

"You're some kind of detective, right?"

"Some kind," I respond, and for the purpose of the dream, become.

"Maybe you can help me, protect me?" She presses her grand peaches up against my chest and I nuzzle her neck, inhaling a delicious scent that I can't quite place. What is that scent?

"You just stick close, baby," I respond, "I'll take care of you." I take a sip from my drink and put my arms around her waist, picking her up a little and she squeals with delight. "You gotta name, or should I just call you Serendipity?"

"I'm Ginger!"

"Of course you are." So smooth, Mr. Bond! "Heh, heh."

"You know, Gilligan's Island?"

"Sure!" I don't care whose island it is. It ain't about "Gilligan's Island" at all at this point, it's all about "Ginger's Peaches" and I'm looking to co-star as soon as possible. Fuck Gilligan, it's MY fucking island. That scent again. What the hell is it? Maybe it's actual ginger I smell and this spicy tiger has the smarts to link the name and perfume. But it's not ginger, is it...no. Somewhere in the distance, a warning claxon goes off, just once.

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" she coos at me, tracing a finger down my chest.

"Nothing," I respond as the oversized housecat floats languidly by again, a sly look on its face.

It whispers at me casually, with a wink: "Beware the smart ones," it mews, "nothin but pain..." I splash some water at it, it hisses and paddles off.

"So, what's your concern, Miss Ginger?" I ask her and place a warm kiss right between her bikinied breasts. Another sip of the martini and it seems I'm getting a little dizzy. I'm pretty good at holding my liquor and damn near bullet-proof at it when a dame's in the picture. A warning claxon again, louder this time, longer. The music is changing, another tune, a strange one for an orchestra to play and like that smell I can't quite place the song, though I'm certain it hovers just barely beyond the range of my consciousness.

"It seems," Ginger says, "that my husband has some asshole poking around his concerns."

"Well, if you're one of those concerns, he could hardly blame a fella for wanting to poke around a little." As smooth as can be expected given that I'm barely able to stand anymore. It's no longer so much a sensual embrace as it is me clinging to her for my very survival. Her laugh is shrill as she escapes my grasp and saunters away, her deep eyes still staring into my being over her shoulder.

The music is overbearingly loud and the tune comes to me, it's some impossibly strange version of a Zeppelin tune, my own drugged up mind supplying Plant's lyrics:

"Been Dazed and Confused for so long it's not true.
Wanted a woman, never bargained for you.
Lots of people talk and few of them know,
soul of a woman was created below."

With the recognization of the tune my lazy mind finally synthesizes the situation: I'm not smelling ginger or even Ginger, it's almonds. Ginger, that fucking whore, has poisoned me.

"Hey, shit, dude!" I spurt at that damned oversized housecat I'd been chatting with, "you gotta help me! Call the cops! Call the Skipper, would ya! Call somebody, shit, I've been poisoned!"

The cat just laughs at me as I slip under the surface of the water and the last thing I hear before resting on the floor of the pool -I'll just rest for a second, just closing my eyes, really- is that cat's laughing mewl:

"I warned you about the smart ones!"

I wake up gasping for air on the floor of my living room and give my head a shake. Reality takes a beating again as I can still hear that crazy, tripped-out version of 'Dazed and Confused' in my mind in tandem with the real version that's playing on my alarm clock.

A hum-dinger, that one. I fire up a coffee and think about that dream, and, being an arm-chair dream analyst, I come up with what I come up with.

-iSenseChange