No Dogs, No Masters/Witchspin/The Mutant Calicoes Beneath My Garage/Ghost Dad/And the Suns Became as Red as Blood ...

My mother and I joined a plethora of anarcho-communist/anarcho-syndicalist organizations, all of which catered to cat lovers in particular.

* * *

Had a bi/transerotic dream which included witches and werewolves in powdered wigs. I remember nothing coherent about it.

* * *

There was a hole in the floor of my garage. The hole led down to a cave/hollow beneath the foundation. All my cats which had gone missing over the years had gotten trapped down there, where they survived and bred. After nearly twenty years of inbreeding, they were almost all calicoes, and while a portion of them remained attractive animals, another portion was mutated/deformed; one cat had three heads, another had a teeny-tiny head as a result of getting their head permanently stuck in a bottle cap as a kitten.

* * *

The ghost of my father began manifesting about the house. He stayed in bed for the most part, sick as he had been in the months leading up to his death. Though he'd periodically talk to us, I got the sense that this was no sapient Earthbound spirit; this was just a spectral recording, a semi-interactive ectoplasmic hologram, and his true soul had moved on to the next phase of its existence.

* * *

I was in my kitchen, washing dishes, when the power went out. After about a minute, the overhead light came back on, but the rest of the house remained without electricity. I looked outside the window; the sky was black with thick cloud. Showing through this otherwise solid blanket of black, haloed in red, was not one, but two suns.

Exsphinxtion/Up in (SUV) Smoke

I was taking a casual stroll, minding my own business, bothering nobody, when I crossed paths with a Greek sphinx.

She gave me a friendly smile, then proceeded to attack me. I took off running to get away from her, but she was incredibly swift, so I really had to pump those calves to keep ahead of her.

I soon came to a tall flight of dirt steps which led to a Greek temple. I ran up those dirt steps, telling myself not to look back, that if I looked back I'd see the sphinx right behind me, falter from fear, and be swiftly overtaken, so I forced myself to keep looking ahead.

Unbeknownst to me, the sphinx had circled around, and before I could reach the temple, she was before me, rearing up, ready to take me down with her claws. I tried warding her off with a baseball bat, but she was too massive and powerful; I was dead meat.

* * *

Just north of my house lies a large empty field. Seated inside my sister's F-150, I was parked on the edge of this field, just staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. That's when two SUVs came driving through, racing each other at breakneck speed. One of them passed too close, knicking a headlight. After the SUVs were past, I leapt out of the truck, yelling after the one who'd hit me. When I went to check the Ford for damage, I found it hadn't so much as a scrape, luckily.

A small pack of wild dogs came running past, following the SUVs. Fearful they'd get run over by those careless assholes, I followed them, trying to persuade them to leave the area. That's when I found amongst them Cheech, my dog who'd gone missing this April. Around his torso had been secured a plaid bandage. Apparently he hadn't been killed by coyotes as the family and I had believed, just injured then nursed back to health by some good Samaritan.

Getting my family to assist me, I picked Cheech up and carried him inside the house, taking care not to jostle him too much because he was still healing from his ordeal. At this point, I began suspecting what was happening wasn't real, just a dream. Then I awoke. Cheech is still gone, almost certainly dead, and I miss him.

R. I. P.

Cheech

March/April 2004 — 25 April 2019

The Infamous Lake Country Wildfire of '17

I, my parents, and my sister were out visiting neighbours when a wildfire sparked off to the east of us. It was so intense, it sent a veritable pillar of flame into the sky, a thick blanket of gray smoke unfurling to cover the firmament. The fire was very close — several hundred metres away at most — and due to its ferocity, it was believed it would grow beyond control and overtake our homes before fire fighters could arrive to contain it.

Fearful for the fates of my pets and belongings, against the warnings of all others, I took off in a dead run for home to collect who and what I could in the short time allotted. Something then happened to me, something which knocked me out cold. When I came to in the hospital, weeks had gone by. From my family, I learned that our home had been caught in the fire; all our possessions had been destroyed and one of our dogs had died.

The dream then jumped forward in time ten or twenty years. I found myself cutting across the grounds of the UBC Okanagan campus, where I crossed paths with one of the female students.

(She was the spitting image of Keegan Connor Tracy.)

I inquired if she knew of the infamous Lake Country Wildfire of '17; she said she did. I then asked her if she'd like to come with me to visit the old neighbourhood; she said she did. Together, we made the trip on-foot to my old neighbourhood. The townscape had transformed considerably since the 2010s. For example, where there had once been a small church now stood a series of Arby's restaurants.

(Arby's had transitioned from a chain of sandwich restaurants to a Dairy Queen clone in the intervening decades.)

Arriving on the site of where my house had stood, we found no remaining trace of it. In its stead were several white houses and sheds, some enveloped in clear plastic, all smouldering. There was even a Chow Chow lying on a front yard who was ashy and smoky.

(He was alive and uninjured in spite of this (I suppose some dogs are just more fire-retardant than others.).).

My companion pondered on how the area could still be smouldering after all these years; I gave an existential answer about how the location still retained the memory of that fire in its soil or something poetic like that, but I knew what was happening was truly the direct result of a recent wildfire.

The Mini-Bear/My Bisexual, Polyamorous Girlfriend/The All-Girl Lacrosse Game on My Front Lawn/Illya Woloshyn vs. Pat Roach

The family and I won a miniature, cat-like bear by way of a call-in radio show. We initially planned to donate the bear to a zoo, but upon seeing how well our dogs bonded with it, we decided to keep it.

* * *

I got myself a girlfriend.

(She strongly resembled the actress Emily Holmes.)

My mother didn't like her, as she was both bisexual and polyamorous. While I tolerated her promiscuity, I got the sense our relationship wasn't fated to last.

* * *

Two all-girl lacrosse teams were out on my front lawn, playing a match. I recall the colours of one of the team's uniforms: red jerseys with black shorts.

* * *

Illya Woloshyn

and Pat Roach

were out on the streets, surrounded by an audience of hoodlums, engaged in a fierce battle-royale-to-the-death. Illya was using a baseball bat as his weapon of choice while Pat was using an oversized carpenter hammer.

All Dogs Go to Heaven (And Sometimes Come Back)

Dreamt that I was visited by the spirit of my dog, Sheba, who's been dead since 2011. She appeared to me as she had appeared throughout much of her life — chunky, but without the mass of tumours which had developed on her chest in the years preceding her passing. Accompanying her were the spirits of several other dogs, some of whom I recognized, others I didn't. They hadn't come to haunt me; they just wanted me to know that death was not the end.

R. I. P.

Sheba

c. 2000 – 2011

The Entreé: My Pet Squirrel

Had a dream that a wild squirrel to a liking to me, so I decided to adopt it as a pet. It was afraid of the dogs and wary of the cats, so I took care to keep the squirrel close to me whenever they were around. I kept the squirrel for a number of years and the two of us grew very close. Then the squirrel died of old age.

Instead of giving the squirrel a decent burial, my family took it, skinned it, then baked it for dinner. Suffice to say, I was incensed. I took my roasted squirrel and proceeded to go on a violent rampage.

Then I was killed by Kandarian Demons.