He had more arms than he should, and while some part somewhere knew that wasn’t right, he didn’t care because each of his arms wrapped around the waist of girl who was doing something that felt indescribably good. He liked how he didn’t have to pay attention to each them, he just had to lie there. Lie there and feel goo- ouch. One of them somewhere must have pulled on his arm. He shook his arm at the offending girl as a warning. Then he went back to just feeling good, just melting away into pure bliss, just – dang! What are these girls thinking!? Argh! But now it didn’t stop; first one then another pulled, and then they were all pulling him, stretching him, hurting him, badly. He yelled, but they wouldn’t stop, and then finally, with a sheering blinding pain, one of his arms came off and he decided to scream until he woke up.
Awake! Breathe. Breathe. Shake it off. Shake it off. But after nearly three months of nightly terror, he knew better; it would be lunch before he felt right again. No, later; it was already midmorning and he was late. Never trust your bad dreams to wake you up on time. He decided the day could wait until he squeezed in a twenty minute run. At least it was Saturday.
As he got out of bed he performed what had become his morning meditation. First spent a few minutes wondering why he was cursed, then cursed him self for negativity and looked for an upside to it all. Today’s positive thought was this particular dream had a few moments of bliss at the beginning; not all of them did, in fact very few. But this was also why he knew such momentary happiness wasn’t worth the pain; even if the pain was only dream pain, it hurt. It was time for the final thoughts of his ritual: what would he give to be dream free? As he was leaving, he was amusing himself with various chicken sacrifices per dream ratios when the phone rang.
He silenced it, shoved it in his pocket and ran. He was surprised any girl still had his number; he hadn’t been on a date since the dreams started. Pound. Pound. Pound. Running always helped him clear some brain space. Five minutes. Was it more than five arms? Run. Go. Go. Go. He hated running late though. Twelve minutes. Twelve different directions. The sunlight was always different later; it made things look – different. Was up one of the directions? Run down. Down. Down. The traffic was different. Two minutes left. Two arms would be enough traffic. Now spriiiiiiiint! But don’t scream.
He didn’t see the woman coming out of the store until after they were both sprawled on the sidewalk, and he heard her yelling at him before he saw her. In fact, he had time to sit up, decide he liked the sound of her voice and even her choice of shoes before his vision cohered enough to locate her face and like that too.
By the time he was sitting down again it was quite late and he regretted not taking more time to enjoy sitting on the sidewalk that morning. He had done nothing on his checklist for the day, and while some part somewhere knew that wasn’t right, he didn’t care. That despite what he had actually done was everything on the sidewalk woman’s checklist because she decided he needed a lesson in running, or in manners, or both, and demanded he run her errands, all ten hours of them. The strange thing was, after being really mad at him, and after being really annoyed with him, and after being mildly displeased with him, she was really very nice.
And to his credit he was really very sorry, and never complained or huffed under his breath once, even when she had him re-mulch her garden. And she must have liked his gardening because when he had his hands full with the wheelbarrow, she had taken his phone out of his pocket and programmed her number into it.
Of course, she added he shouldn’t bother calling unless he had deleted all those other phone numbers. And he knew she would check. And in the morning he knew he would call and didn’t care if she checked, because that night he dreamed he was dancing a wonderful, beautiful dance while a great fish looked on. Despite being odd, the dream was rather pleasant though, and not only for its lack of pain and his only having two arms, but for the one woman he was dancing with.
