Nothing But a Dreamer

I blame it on the kink in my creativity. Because there was nowhere for the pressure to go, that oozing creativity overflowed on my bedpillow Monday night. I had been restless, due to the snuffles in my sinuses. I slept a couple of hours in the recliner. I watched TV. I went to bed and watched the red numbers on my digital clock change from one numeral to another. About forty-five minutes before get-up time Tuesday morning, I dozed off.

When I awoke, I had an entire novel in my head. Let the record show that I have no desire to write a novel. Especially one in the suspense genre. But the characters and plot were plain as day. No flaming globes of Sigmund for me. No sirree, Bob! Here's the gist of it.

Setting - a town in a western state such as Arizona, New Mexico, or Colorado, sprawling across a dry, desolate landscape. Specifically, a factory and a rooming house owned by the company.

Characters -
A broken-down factory worker with emotional baggage, perhaps alcoholism, plus or minus a broken heart.
A new-girl secretary who wants to do her job by the book.
A proud sanitation engineer, the kind of gal who wears her name stamped into the leather of her belt.
An old lady office worker who falls asleep on the job every day.
A gaggle of teenage Native American boys who live in the rooming house.
The town sheriff, who seems to know something below the surface.

Plot - factory workers are being slowly poisoned so the factory can be buried, and a nuclear reactor built on top of it so nobody will ever dig it up.

That little forty-five minute dream had everything but the names of the characters, save one. It even had the kitchen sink. BrokeDown was scraping eggs into it, rather than eat them, because Sheriff had brought them to his room at the boarding house. And had told him, "I forgot to bring you your ICE CREAM last night." Meaning that he had given it to every other factory worker, ice cream made from last night's snow, that fell after the factory had shut down early at 8:00 due to "routine testing" in which gas clouds were released. Gas clouds seen by BrokeDown as he high-tailed it to his old Cadillac in a hurry to get away from it. Gas clouds that panicked NewGirl so much that she left her new coat on her office chair, rather than go back to the gassy end of the factory to retrieve it.

Management didn't seem too vested in the workers. They left a memo on a strip of manila folder for Tina the sanitation engineer to carry out the old wooden Coke case. She was the only character with a name, perhaps because of the rest of the note, which said, "Tina is tIny." Just like that.

Why can't I have a dream with USEFUL information? Or one in which I am like Kathleen Turner as Joan Wilder, off on adventures where I inhale a bale of marijuana and chug some whiskey with Michael Douglas, shortly after slipping down a mud slide after Michael threw away my suitcase and chopped the heels off my shoes?

Alas, I AM like Joan Wilder. With the sniffles, in her apartment dotted with notes to buy tissues and toilet paper.