It started with a dream. I was sitting on my porch, watching the sunset over the gas station across the road from my house. My house sits on a big hill so I was actually eye level with the roof of “Petroleum World.” Seeing the sun set behind those beige shingles is strangely majestic.
     Several drivers had stopped to refill their thirsty cars with the ether that gives them life. I mean, humans have to drink water in order to survive and do what humans do. Cars in the same way need gasoline in order to do what cars do; else they just sit and rust. I guess you could have an electrical car or something. I’m still waiting for Gore to invent the perfect fuel cell (I mean the man invented the internet for God’s sake (yes, I know what he really meant (is it grammatically legal to have parentheses inside parentheses??? It is in C++…))), anyway it screws up my metaphor. Traffic was light. Then approaching from the right, down the opposite side of the road was a family of Asian decent. Father, mother, son, and daughter, all in a line jogging, wearing gray sweat suits. Behind them was a family of Hippopotamuses, father, mother, son, and daughter, all in a line jogging. My first thought was “There are no Asian families around here.” followed by “I think it’s illegal to own hippos in this county.”
     This was very weird, as I’m sure you imagine, but as I said it started with a dream, and that was it. So I woke up. Perplexed by the memory of the dream I decided to go for a walk and think it out. It was 4am so it was dark, and a little cold. Luckily the moon was out, full moon actually; it helped me see where I was going so I didn’t run into trees and stuff.
     Since I just woke up my brain was not running at 100%, so I started walking down the street, with the image of the Asian family and the Hippo family in my head. I couldn’t place any significance on it.
     At this point I saw another figure walking down the street. As it entered the dim yellow light of one of the much too few streetlamps, I noticed he looked a bit odd. As I got closer I noticed that he was huge, but his skin looked horrible. Wondering who it was and not wanting to seem nosey I asked him if he had the time. I couldn’t think of anything better to ask. He responded with a question, “Have you seen a little coward of a man running from his responsibilities?”
     I said “No.”
     He then went a tirade about how his “creator” had left him and should have taken care of him and how he was now out for revenge. He also said the man had problem with fainting at the most inopportune times. It dawned on me he was looking for my friend Victor. So I told him I did know the guy and gave him the address and wished him good luck. As he walked back into the darkness he said “Oh, its 4:17.”
     “Thanks.”
     As I walked I somewhere made a wrong turn because I became very, very lost. I have a very bad sense of direction and even worse time remembering streets and directions and such so this didn’t come as much of a surprise. The thing that did come as a surprise was that everything was much more colorful than anything I had ever seen in Charlotte. Beside the bus terminal, which I opposed, Charlotte was devoid of life and color. Probably cause it’s one of the largest banking cities in the world, and if you’ve ever been to a bank you know that is boring. Boring but very cost conscious. The money one would have to spend on paint for color would be too much, we could put it to a vote but the townspeople would just put it to rest.
     Anyway, the grass was blue and the trees had white trunks with pink leaves. The moonlight could have been obscuring the colors but I doubt it. My mind and my eyes were fixated on the color issue when I suddenly noticed the road ended. When I say ended it just dropped off. I was on a cliff but I didn’t see anything across the way.
     I decided to turn around and look at the trees some more then walk back the way I came. Then out of the darkness over the chasm I heard a noise. A loud noise, like a horn on ship but just a little higher pitch. Slightly scared I thought to myself or possibly said out loud “Ooh, my ship has come.” But it wasn’t a ship, for this was cliff, not a river. It actuality it was a whale; a big, blue, flying whale. As he neared the edge he smiled at me. I smiled back.
     He floated up next to the ledge and I hopped on his back using his flipper for a gangplank. Then is occurred to me that I had seen this before. Now I remember. In that game, Jumping Flash, actually Jumping Flash 2. The only difference was that there were no mumus and I’m not a mechanical rabbit named Robbit. I love that game.
     So me and the whale took off into the black nothingness. Amazingly (actually at this point little is amazing) the whale says that we have one more stop. We slowly approach a small tree top that is poking up out of the void in front of us. It looks like a coconut tree. I like coconuts. We stop at the tree and a small, furry little monkey gets on. He introduces himself as Cap’n. He even has a little captain’s hat. I ask him what he’s captain of but he goes off on boring story about going to port to find some hot young girl monkeys. Luckily he brought some coconuts and some gin. We took a coconut and cracked it open. We each took a half, halved up the coconut milk and added some gin. It was surprisingly good. After that we just drank straight gin from the coconuts. I soon became tired and fell asleep.
     When I was awoken by the whale I was home and I was snuggled up against Cap’n and for a brief moment very bad thoughts entered my mind. But then I remembered he was a good monkey and wouldn’t take advantage of a cute young man (ok, so I embellished the last part). The whale informed me I had to pay for the trip but all rides were just a quarter. So I put the quarter in his blowhole and stepped off his flipper. He smiled and I said goodbye to the whale and Cap’n and they said goodbye as well and off they went into the night, or by now early morning. I went back to my bed and laid down and fell instantly to sleep. I was soon and very rudely awoken by my mother saying it was time for breakfast.
     We had pancakes with butter and syrup from a bottle that looked like a cabin. That’s so cute. Over breakfast I thought about what had happened and what did it mean. My mom asked if something was wrong. I guess I looked puzzled or just really sleepy. I told her it was nothing. She said since all I was going to do was sit around all day that I should be productive and introduce myself to the nice new Asian family down the street.
     Ahhhh! Could it be, the same family from my dream. I asked if they had any strange pets and she said no. I guess it’s just coincidence. Then there was a knocking at the door. My mom answered it because I was still eating.
     “Honey, it’s for you.” she said.
     “For me??” I asked. I also wondered why the hell she was calling her adult (at least legally) son honey but that could wait. “Who is it?”
     “He says his name is Cap’n and you forgot to take some of the coconuts he wanted to give you.”
     So I ran to the door and there was my little monkey friend, with his arms so full of coconuts I could hardly see his head. “Hello, um, just put them by the door.” I said.
     “You really didn’t have to do this.” I told him.
     He said it was no problem and then asked if I was doing anything. Since I wasn’t I said “Nope, do you have something in mind.”
     He told me he had some friends he wanted me to meet so I put on some shoes and followed him. We spent the entire day at the park playing with the Hippo’s. Father, mother, son, and daughter. We had burgers and played Frisbee. Cap’n is great at Frisbee.

About the Author

The author is obviously crazy. Why do you care to read this? Did you think it would shed some light on why he is so messed up? Sorry, not here kiddo, he’s just all whacked out of his gourd, and that’s that. Cha Cha Cha.