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“Wow, I feel like a new man,” Abe said, stretching, looking at his bicep. Very quickly he looked over to Sano’s privacy bower and saw only two feet sticking out, dainty booted feet. With a quick, searching, scan, he found James Thurgerson rousing himself, and he saw Jason and Lars, the main threats for winning Sano’s affection. Okay, Stoic. It was only a dream, remember? Besides, aren’t you supposed to suffer loss without affectation?
He returned to examining his arm. Where bear claws had dug through skin and into flesh he saw the same baby’s skin as Blake showed on his gut, and, moreover, his fever was gone. He looked at Umezawa, whose chubby little face remained in the stillness of sleep; he looked like one of Raphael’s cherubs, breathing in a slow rhythm. “No…” he said. “Well, I’m all better!”
“Hm?” Sano’s voice carried from her privacy bower. “You weren’t feeling well?” She emerged, not quite shining like the sun, but the glow of the fevered dream, though far removed by a healing dreamless sleep—the glow of the fevered dream was upon her, and Abe found himself unable to tear his eyes off her. Even though the shining of the sun and the purity of heaven’s clouds and snows had departed from her, she was still very beautiful, wrapped in many layers of clothing, so that she looked like a padded barrel of pickled herring lumbering outside to take care of nature’s business.
“So, the whiskey done you good,” Lars said, stoking the fire and getting some of the bear meat ready for cooking. “I told you I was the healer!”
“Eh,” said Abe. “In a way, but I had one bizarre dream, split into two parts. It was the same fever for both of them.”
“Two parts?”
“Yeah, part one before you gave me the whiskey; part two after.”
Sano returned from her dainty business, and snow followed after. A blast of wind carried a flying mass of stinging crystals, so violent was the blast, and after the grove shut the entryway behind her, a fine layer of snow settled throughout the bower and began to melt into nothing. Sano giggled prettily and said nothing.
“Well, tell us about it,” Lars said. “I don’t suppose we’re going to the airplane again anytime soon.”
“What?”
“It’s not important, but we have to go back,” said Lars.
At that, Blake showed signs of life. “What’s that?”
“Abe was about to tell us his dream.”
The entryway opened and closed a few more times as the men took turns relieving themselves according to the rule laid by Blake and Lars. “Sanitation,” they had said during a party meeting. “Sanitation goes hand-in-hand with survival.”
“Why don’t you relate to us your dream,” Lars insisted, “to take our minds off this horrible-tasting grizzly bear?”
“We need to get a mule deer or elk,” Blake said. “But, yeah, Abe, entertain us.”
They arranged themselves around him, and he stood, gnawing on a piece of overcooked loin, then, after a swallow of herbal tea and lemon, he began to tell his dream. He labored to weave the surreal elements of the dream state into the more imaginable details, standing tall to represent the dark forces of the dream, while cowering when he was trying to express fear.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
At the sections involving Sano, he looked away, making no eye-contact with any of the party, and he omitted altogether the detail about Sano taking James Thurgerson into her privacy bower. Very wise. No need to inflame passions. No need to give anyone any ideas, least of all Sano.
When he laid all his effort into the last syllables of the dream, crying out with all the passion of a stage actor, “Mother!” he bowed, and said, “Fin.” The party laughed, and they applauded.
“What does it mean?” Jason said.
“Well, I suppose he’s me,” said Lars. “Take a look: that was mine and Blake’s time of childhood, what with the video games at the arcade, and the rise of split-level ranch houses, but his consciousness remained his own, with the fear of the incineration of Kyoto.”
“I always thought it was neat that Kyoto and Tokyo have the same letters in them,” said Blake.
“Yeah,” said Lars, “it’s very Freudian, and that exchange with Sano and his mother. Where was your father, actually, Abe? In this room? I wonder if Blake is your father, or even the bionic man himself, James.”
Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. Not James Thurgerson. Not my father. And Sano is definitely not my mother. No, no, no.
Abe remained standing, without speaking.
“Very Freudian,” said Lars. “So much rich symbolism embodied in my memories in your consciousness, especially the fears of big corporation world domination. I like it. It reminds me of the greatest TV show of all time: The Sopranos.”
“Oh, come on, Lars,” said Blake. "The Sopranos was never great, much less the greatest of all time.”
“GOAT,” said Lars.
“No,” said Blake, shifting where he sat. “Now you listen to me, that’s the proximity effect talking. It was a good TV show and all, but it was the first of a bunch of copycat high-budget cable shows that glorified bad little boys grown up to be ordinary white dudes in the suburbs.”
“How dare you,” Lars said.
“Not with MASH staring at you, right in the face,” said Blake. “And Columbo, and Seinfeld, and The Simpsons. Cosby. I could go on. The list of TV shows better than The Sopranos is a mile long.”
“None of those shows compare,” said Lars. “Just none of them: all the familial interrelationships, the character development, the solid plotline, the application of Freudian psychology to a criminal mastermind…”
“Criminal mast—now you just wait one cotton pickin’ second, Lars!” Blake said, with a flush of red rising into his face. “First of all, all of those things you listed are highly, highly, debatable—Seasons Five and Six are insufferable. The writers were completely lost. And that ending. ‘Oh—’” and Blake waved his arms, “‘Oh, look at us! Ambiguity! Did we kill him off or did the “Wheel Keep On Turning”?’”
“‘Don’t Stop Believin’,’ I believe,” said Lars.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Blake, practically shouting, while the teenagers laughed at the comedy. “The entire premise of Freudian psychotherapy: what a sham! What a crock! Freud is a fraud!”
“Freud is the father of psychotherapy!”
“Doesn’t matter! He was still a fraud!”
[https://embodimentandexclusion.files.wordpress.com/2023/09/chapter-16.jpg]
“Well, now, just because he acted fraudulently with a few old widows to get their money to further the funding of his important research…” said Lars, “and, besides, who among us?”
“No, Lars, I think actually acting fraudulently actually is the actual definition of an actual fraud.” Blake slammed his fist down on the table, but because it was solid living branches and roots, he hurt himself a little, and winced, sending the teenagers into hysterics.
“GOAT,” said Lars.
“Grrrr…” said Blake. “You’re an idiot.”
“Ohhhhhh,” said Lars, in imitation of the TV show.
“How dare you!” said Blake.
Lars laughed.
The teenagers applauded. Lars bowed. Blake looked sheepish, but not above participating in the farce. He also rose and bowed. “I’m serious, though,” he said. “I won’t abide it. The Sopranos isn’t that good. Just try to watch it. I’ll grant the YouTube clips are good, but that’s what the show should be: an hour long edit, maybe two, from all six and a half seasons, and a decent rewritten ending.”
“Anyway,” Lars said, turning to Abe, who was seated now with his friends, “that was a great dream, wasn’t it? And you don’t think it was the whiskey that healed you?”
“Couldn’t be,” said Abe. “Well, it could be, but I doubt it. You gave it to me and the dream picked up right where I left off, right? It was after I woke up again—”
“You woke up a second time?” asked Lars. “Even after that belt of whiskey?”
“Yeah, it was only after Ume got me a drink of water that I started to feel better.”
Everyone snapped to look at Umezawa. The wind outside blasted away at the bower. He blushed a deep red. “What?”
“Wait a second,” said Lars. “Wait, wait, wait...”
“He had a pretty high fever,” said Umezawa. “How could I not fetch some water for him?”
Jason sighed.
Lars said, “How did you know he had a fever?”
“I felt his forehead.”
“Yeah, it was soft and warm,” Abe said.
“Soft and warm?” said Blake.
“Yeah,” said Abe.
“Huh...I remember the same sensation when Lars was hovering over me before I passed out for ‘surgery.’”
“Did you touch Blake?” asked Lars.
“Yes,” said Umezawa. “I thought it was a shame that he was suffering. I was glad he got to sleep through all that.”
“Well, Ume,” said Lars. “You’re our healer.”
“Me?” Umezawa said, beaming with joy.
Sano gazed at Umezawa, blue eyes wide, unblinking, crowning an otherwise blank countenance
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