Mikey Gluesniff: I Had A Dream

 

I was in the dream.

(an excerpt of the journal of Mikey Gluesniff, a hobo who came by his name honestly...)

March 7th, 1937

I had the dream again. Shorter than usual, and deeply unsatisfying. My after-supper glue smelled delicious, but then I got lost. I tried walking. Still lost. My trousers felt heavy, like they were wet, so I knew the old penny farthing was not going to be an option for getting to my brother's wedding in time. That was a shame, because who doesn't love a giant wheel and a tiny second wheel? There were no trains. Anywhere. Trains did not exist. I asked. Everyone looked at me with pity, and shrugged and shook their heads. Except this one old man; he laughed and laughed and repeated "train" over and over, like it was the punchline of his new favorite joke. It started to rain.

When the snow stopped, I left the printing press showroom (no idea how I got there) and went across the street to Pittsburgh, for one of their famous crusts with the bread cut off. They were all out. That girl was there, like she always is - ten years old and dressed for school, lecturing passersby about their oral hygiene and bookkeeping. I could do without the bookkeeping talk, you know? Anyway, I turned around and was a child again, myself. I was sketching my latest yacht design, and when I finished and held it at arm's length, it was a naked lady, and the cops came and took it away. I got dizzy, so I closed my eyes for a minute.

My head hurt. Not like a headache. More like someone was scratching my scalp with nails. I fell down some stairs and went to a humdinger of a party in an abandoned warehouse, thrown by a man nobody knows. There was dancing. Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick was there, but for some reason everyone kept calling her Jane. Someone offered me a smoke and said they knew what trains were. Thank goodness, I said. But I blinked and the fool turned into that goat, again.

Always the goat. 

The goat says I need to lay off the glue.