Everland

By Vinny Lo Verme

Living the daily routine became boring to Jengo Wood, a custodian at the Brooklyn Museum. Jengo, a native of Carmel, Indiana, began to realize life in New York wasn’t as fascinating as he originally believed. As life becomes increasingly meaningless for Jengo, he discovers a new obsession: dreams. After meeting a mysterious man, he begins to embark on a journey he was not quite ready for. The decisions he makes will make a profound impact on the people around him and also open up skeletons that have been locked in the closet for many years. Soon he will find himself on a deadly path that will make it difficult for him to decipher the difference between what is real and what isn’t... his dreams and reality...and whether he is dead or alive...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9781312103108

Book preview

Everland

Everland

~ Jengo Wood ~

By Vinny Lo Verme

Copyright Vincenzo Lo Verme 2010

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-312-10336-8

ISBN 978-1-312-10310-8 (ebook)

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to the actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Additional copies of this book in both physical print and digital form are available at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/LoVerme. Books are available at quantity by contacting Vincenzo Lo Verme via e-mail: [e-mail]

Foreward

You, like many others, may be holding this book in your hand with little knowledge of what you are in for. When in high school, there was a commercial I saw for the novel Insomnia by Stephen King. It was a hefty novel of over 700 pages, but I dove right in. And as the years passed, I never found another soul who saw this same commercial, and was unsuccessful finding it on the internet.

I would go on to read many more novels by Stephen King and his work became a major influence for my love of reading and writing novels. For that, I dedicate a part of this book to him. Because of his writing I may never have been able to honestly enjoy reading a novel, nevermind writing one.

It is with much difficulty finding but one person to really thank here. My parents, my wife, my BEST man, and how could I forget…my #1 fan. Maybe one day when I have an extensive collection of novels like Stephen King and other great authors, I can dedicate a novel to everyone who has had an influence on me…

But for now…I want to introduce you to Jengo…and take you on a journey to Everland…

You dream …

I dream …

Now let’s dream together …

CHAPTER 1: THE LUCID DREAM

JUNE 2007

The sound of the alarm clock may be one of the most aggravating things that someone can hear to start their day, yet it’s how most of them begin. The birth of a new day comes to many with an alarm symbolizing a return to reality. Jengo was no different. There were no agonizing buzzers, no radio station, CD player or even a telephone alarm; just the voices of sports talk radio hosts. 6:05 that’s the time penetrating into his eyes. But that’s not the time the day starts for Jengo as he sat up, gently touching the snooze button before returning onto the bed, lying on his back and closing his eyes once again.

Quickly his eyes began to move rapidly. Almost instantaneously he had returned to his dream world.

If you don’t get up you’re going to be late for school, his mother said. Jengo sat up and rubbed his eyes. He was in his room when he was a child back in Carmel, Indiana. I’ll make you some toast quickly now so you won’t be late. Apparently his mother thought he was still a child too.

I’m dreaming, he said to himself. This isn’t gonna last. He walked into the kitchen scratching his head. He quickly inspected his body to notice he was an adult all right, not a child. Jengo instantly knew that he was in the 11th grade, how he could tell this he didn’t know. Maybe it was just some type of intuition that he had, like how you just know something is happening or something is true and you just can’t prove it. Nevertheless, he wished that breakfast was ready for him like this every morning.

Eat your toast and hurry up, his mother said tossing a plate from across the kitchen, landing perfectly on the table in front of him. To his surprise and delight, not only had the toast already been buttered but there were scrambled eggs and bacon also.

Now we’re talkin. He goes to put ketchup on the eggs (whoever doesn’t put ketchup on scrambled eggs is crazy), grabs his fork and knife when he is no longer in his kitchen but in the school cafeteria, alone and the fire alarm is going off. His mother has transformed into his boss and –

-its 6:14, the alarm clock blazed into his eyes yet again. He sat up exactly the same way as he did nine minutes earlier, gently touched the snooze button and sat up wiping his eyes. He had a sense of hunger, wishing that his mother would magically show up in his shithole apartment with breakfast waiting for him.

I can do without my boss though, he said to the room. He looks one more time at the alarm clock. 6:15. He made himself up to his feet and took a walk barefoot into the bathroom. Jengo passed through his crummy apartment, barely taking notice to the half eaten Chinese dinner from last night on the living room table, sink filled with dirty glasses and packs of empty cigarette packs lying around on the floor.

Well, that caught his eye a little. Every day he thinks about how he started smoking, high school. High school in suburbia was like nothing else, who was the most popular, who was still a virgin, who was (or wasn’t) sleeping with the prom queen.

Well I wasn’t, he said applying toothpaste to his three year old toothbrush.  I went for her little sister. A small smile crossed his face as he begins brushing his teeth. Her name was Little Ellie Parker, Samantha Parker’s freshman sister, three years younger than the rest of ‘em. Samantha was the prom queen. She was a royal bitch by his standards. What better way to get back at her then by nailing her fourteen year old sister huh? The sisters hated each other too, that was the funny part.

He also got into his share of fights with Samantha’s boyfriend at the time, David Marks. Jengo always hated punks who relished in bullshit.  Men pretending to be macho and always hiding behind popularity and being able to say they had the popular bitch for a girlfriend, A bitch like that, Steve said. Thinks she’s all that but she’s not worth shit. I wouldn’t be surprised if she don’t put out for him.

That very conversation is as vivid a memory that he has. Seventeen years ago in the lunch room cafeteria, sitting with Steve Bitrelli, bullshitting about their hatred of the cool kids at school, and head master Samantha Parker.

The two of them laughed and gave each other a high five. A distant memory, Jengo thinks as he buttons up his shirt looking in the mirror.

Suburbian high school, was what he loved to call it. A Suburbian was what he was, a word he figured he made up for someone who grew up in the suburbs. He hated that fucking town he lived in, Carmel, Indiana, a town about sixteen miles north of Indianapolis with no more than thirty thousand people while he grew up there in the eighties.  He didn’t loathe anyone more than Samantha and David, who both (surprisingly enough) went to college at the University of Indiana, home of the Hoosiers, about another fifty miles south of Indianapolis in bumblefuck Bloomington, Indiana.

Now he lived as a minority in a low rent apartment, surrounded by West Indians and other immigrants.  There weren’t many white people here, but the variety was just what Jengo enjoyed.

And the people were so much more interesting here compared to Carmel, Indiana. The people here tell you when they have a problem with you and just tell you to fuck off.

Those are the type of people he liked being around.

He locked the door and left his apartment in Brower Park, Brooklyn. Just about the time when the two of them returned from Hoosierville, Jengo was intent on getting the hell out of there. His mother had become knee-deep in her booze and smoked almost two packs a day trying to figure why her darling husband never came home before midnight on a Saturday night. He had a father who had broken his left arm on the job for years and clung to his worker’s comp checks from now until eternity.

Last he heard David Marks took the job he was destined to have, police officer. His father was the great Chief Marks, who was ecstatic that his son was carrying on a great tradition of Carmel police chiefs. And when he graduated in four years with a whopping 2.2 grade point average, you should’ve seen the party they had for him!  Fuck that, he said as he swiped his metro card and passed through the turnstile at the Kingston Ave. Station. He took the number 3 train every day to Eastern Parkway to work at the Brooklyn Museum.

Jengo had a soft spot for art, finding peace in artwork. Of course, he didn’t have any artistic bones in his body, possibly why he found such a love for it.

Lost mah job, lost mah money, lost mah wife, Jengo could hear the old black pan-handler shouting with a slight West Indian accent. Hook a brutha up wit some spare change. I aint no bad brutha! Thank you, as someone dropped him some change. He took out his newspaper to look at the headline, Will Hillary WIN?

A woman president seemed to be interesting to Jengo. Why not? Probably find a way to fix up such a screwed up society. He began to read intensely, sipping his extremely hot (and crappy) freshly-ground New York Coffee. The train abruptly came to a halt and the pan-handler shook his old McDonald’s cup in front of Jengo. Man help a brutha out! I aint got money for no hot coffee like you do brutha! His breath sent an aroma Jengo had never fathomed could smell so utterly horrible and so utterly terrible. The pan-handler’s smile also showed many missing teeth and a wide variety of different food substances in his disgusting beard. The man must’ve been lucky enough to get some spare change.

Searching deep into his pocket Jengo took out a few pennies, nickels and dimes. Extending his arm out, he dropped it into the pan-handlers cup. See what you can do with that pal, he said. The pan-handler smiled and told him that God, whoever and wherever He was, would never forget this deed. Jengo smiled as the pan-handler continued to give his tale of woe and how God watched over all of us.

II

The Con Edison Education Gallery is a very exciting place that can be used to help us learn of an artistic value that is not common amongst the average artist, the young female tour guide said. It usually requires some kind of…machinery, car parts or even the use of computers. It not only requires artistic creativity but the brains to and knowledge to create this, but art with tools you wouldn’t normally expect to see from an artist.

Her name was Sally Winfield, an art major at Brooklyn College. She was about 5’4 with straight dirty blonde hair that extended to the small of her back. Jengo watched her give the tour to a group of eighth grade students from the area. Now if we continue this way, she continued. Follow me kids, I’m going to show you something really cool. It’s right this way, through the Museum café. If you boys and girls get hungry later – the words faded from Jengo’s ears.

She’s about half your age mon, said Therron Du Bois, the melodramatic (and usually over aggressive) West-Indian custodian with a thick Haitian accent.  Why you bother with her? It does you no good. Plus you a janitor boy. Work mon.

Therron was an interesting name. It’s a name he was extremely proud of. It is a strong Haitian name that means ‘untamed.’ Therron believed that he was a direct descendant of wild animals, especially the lion. The king of de Jungle, he said to Jengo a few days back. Is who I be. I am not a mon who can just be controlled like anyone else. But I learn to control temper, because like lion I bite deep and hurt badly with sharp claws.

Jengo usually didn’t believe anything Therron said due to the fact he believed he was, for lack of a better phrase, clinically insane. But at times he could be quite funny, even if he was being serious. Either way, Jengo still thought that Sally was gorgeous today in her little green blazer and skirt.

She would’ve melted in my arms a few years back, Jengo said. An army couldn’t keep her off of me. But look at me, I’m a fuckin’ janitor. Jengo shrugged and mopped the floor almost effortlessly. The best times were behind him. Endless possibilities he was promised during his youth came to a complete halt a few years back. It had been extremely frustrating when day after day his mother had told him of all the potential he had, and how he should work harder to make something of himself. As he stood there at the Brooklyn Museum off Eastern Highway, mopping the floor as schoolchildren flooded in for art tours, he was beginning to believe that she was right.

Jengo began to believe that mother’s just knew everything and now accepted it. It was difficult to be rebellious as a kid, what child didn’t like the fact that parents thought they knew everything! Probably because they actually did know everything; that made him shake his head. His friend Steve had always –

Jengo! His train of thought had been interrupted by the sound of the security guard, Marshall Watters, a big African-American fellow who always found a way to talk about his days of playing football at Syracuse. If my knee hadn’t gotten torn up back in ’89 I woulda been a starting linebacker for the Bills, he loved to preach.  Make sure kids aint touchin shit they aint supposed to and – Jengo put the mop against the clean pale peach wall. It was approaching noon and more and more groups of school children were making their way in. It was obvious, big Marshall Watters was getting hungry and was ordering lunch.

Man I’m in the mood for some Roast Beef. I’m goin’ on lunch in fifteen, what you want Jengo?

I’ll take a B-L-T, he said. Light on the mayo.

You got it.

Jengo picked up the mop again as the guides recommended to the teachers that they wait outside in the Pavilion Lobby. The first start on our tour will be ‘The Arts of Africa.’ Will everyone from IS 187 please make their way to the lobby; your tour will start in just a moment! That was Janice Jones. A native of Kingston, Jamaica, moved to Jamaica, Queens (of all places) when she was a child with her parents over thirty years ago.

Life certainly looked much different here for a white boy from middle-America.

Hey Du Bois, Jengo said.

Yeah?

How long has Janice been working here?

She been here way before I got here. I been here for over fifteen years man. Smartest lady I eva met. I dunno how she handles all dis shit.

She must love her job, Jengo stated.

Yeah she must.

At least that’s one of us, Jengo thought to himself. He just watched her as she handled the barrage of students, wondering how someone can be so engulfed in history and art and all that academic shit, for lack of a better term, and then just prances around and gives tours to these schoolchildren.

Prancing is not a fair term to use, another part of Jengo’s mind said. And it wasn’t.  He could see the stress as she worked, and for the first time he came to the realization that you can still be stressed out even when you’re doing something you enjoy.  That idea had never entered his mind before and it made him observe her even deeper. Within only a few seconds it seemed she had all those children eating out of her hands, listening intently to every syllable of every word that was projected from her mouth.  It was quite unbelievable.  Just a few seconds ago these adolescent monsters were a bunch of out of control, energetic mongrels that cared nothing for the Arts of Africa. But now they were spell-bound by her amazing knowledge of African Art.  Even Jengo wanted to put the mop down and join in with the group, sit down on the floor and listen to every last word she had to say.

She was a true keeper of knowledge; similar to the only teacher he ever enjoyed working for, Mrs. Easton, his 11th grade English teacher.  She was an elderly lady who had to be in her fifties (I wonder if she’s still teaching or even still alive for that matter) and made authors like Shakespeare and Hawthorne extremely interesting. In all honesty, those were the only books he ever read for class, only because she helped him and the rest of the class understand it in ways no other teacher could.

These people had a purpose in the world, to help educate others in a realm of their mastery.  These people did something for society.  Jengo felt like his life was worth more now than before because he had encountered this amazing woman and is blessed to be working in the same building as she did.  But the real problem he –

JENGO!

Jengo left from his daze and looked to see Marshall standing a few feet from him, holding his sandwich wrapped in aluminum foil. Put your mop down, get in the back and let’s have us some lunch!

That Marshall was always ecstatic when it was lunch time.  Man that guy loved to eat. Jengo placed the mop back into its bucket and rolled it into the Janitor’s closet, away from the children and other visitors. Marshall patted him on the shoulder. What’s the mattah man? Yo mind, he hesitated for a moment, trying to find the right words to complete his thought. It seems…lost

Jengo smiled and took the sandwich from Marshall.  He took a few steps and placed it down onto the table. Shit, Jengo said. I forgot to ask you for –

Don’t worry, Marshall said. I got your root beer right here bro.

Ahh thanks.

I know you man, you forget just about everything. Yo mind wanders like no man I seen before. You aint takin any drugs are ya?

Jengo shakes his head and takes a sip from his root beer. Ahh how he loved root beer. 

Like I said boy, Marshall said taking a huge bite into his hot roast beef sandwich with what looked like the usual, melted jack cheddar cheese, lettuce and tomato, with tons of mayonnaise Like I said, your mind is all ova the place. Tell me what’s on your mind son.

I don’t – 

Ahh don’t feed me that load of crap! I know somethin or otha from mah psychology courses from college. Marshall takes another large bite, chews for a couple seconds, drinks it down with a massive Mountain Dew and gives a hard swallow. Over the last few days I seen you standin there starin into outer space. There’s somethin you just aint happy about, somethin that’s got your mind workin O-T. I hope you getting paid time and a half for that!

This brought Jengo a good laugh and slapped Marshall’s hand. Jengo chewed on his B-L-T and pointed at Marshall. You know me man, he said with a smile.  You know me all too well.  I can’t explain it.  I don’t know if I’m not happy, I don’t know.  Something about, I don’t know the further and further I get from thirty, I mean the scarier it gets. Marshall gave a snicker under his breath.  What?

When was the last time you got laid? It wasn’t as though Jengo took offense by this question; it was just a question he didn’t expect to hear. I mean, you don’t got a wife. I see the way you droolin ova that blond.

Man, I used to be a stud in high school.

But you aint in high school no mo’.

III

Whether or not life was meant to be lived this way surely hadn’t been left up to Jengo.  He can’t believe that he followed a course of events which inevitably led him to this very moment. The six-pack in his hand was to be the only thing to keep him company tonight, which is until Leroy made his way home.

Leroy was his roommate; a young Rastafarian who smoked enough reefer to get Jengo stoned even with his door closed sleeping in the room next door. The smell was embedded into the house so bad that God Himself couldn’t remove it on the first try. But when he stepped foot inside of his house he didn’t see him there, but young Sally Winfield, the tour guide from the Brooklyn Museum telling a group of school children about why you should say no to drugs.

He dropped the six-pack on the floor and the bottles did not break, nor did they even make a sound. Holy fuck, he said. I’m dreaming again. These dreams are so…vivid.

Indeed they were, but before another moment could pass through his dream, he awoke, sitting up in his chair staring at the nightly news. He looked around, wondering where Leroy was, and why the place didn’t smell like cheap marijuana.

That’s because he moved out months ago, he said to the empty apartment. I don’t have a roommate, that’s why I’m behind on my rent. He shook his head and grabbed his box of cigarettes from the table.  He sat up, took one out and searched for a lighter on the cluttered table. With a cigarette now firmly placed in his mouth he said, I swear one day I’ll fuckin’ get organized. I swear to fucking Christ.

The table seemed to be filled with a combination of endless junk, bills and magazines. I fucking hate magazines. That was a present left behind by Leroy, apparently he hasn’t told Vibe about his change of address. At least that fucking smell is out of here, and thank God for that. He feverishly looked for his lighter when a report on the news caught his eye. The name of Dr. Reginald Daniels was written across the screen, right below the image of a middle-aged doctor seated with his legs crossed.

"The power that sleep can bring can only strengthen the subconscious. Now, psychiatrists debate whether or not we can consciously access the subconscious level. That is to say, that when we are asleep it is very difficult for us to be aware that we are actually dreaming. But some people may be confused, because as a matter of fact, when we are sleeping we are not using our subconscious, we are using our unconscious mind.

"This brings forth a conflict between the conscious, the sub-conscious and the unconscious. There is a certain part of your brain that is working while we are asleep and not while you are awake. In a recent discovery, we here have developed a drug that is currently being tested to bring the unconscious and the subconscious together to bind with consciousness.

With this drug, we should be able to not only help, who I like to call ‘dreamers’ but also people who struggle with REM sleep and people who have extreme difficulty remembering their dreams.

The reporter with the amazing make-up job, perfect brown hair, red striped tie and stunning blue suit returned to Jengo’s television screen. There are still many tests that have to be done on this product before it is available on the market. It has not been said if human testing on this drug, which has been dubbed ‘everland,’ has begun, nor whether or not this drug actually works.

That’s some sick shit, Jengo said. He shook his head and made his way into the kitchen and lit the stove. He used it to light his cigarette, then immediately shut the flame. The sweet menthol taste penetrated into his lungs before he exhaled.

IV

A few hours had come to pass, along with half a pack of cigarettes. Jengo found himself sitting intently in front of his personal computer with an ashtray packed with cigarette butts and three empty bottles of beer.  He had suddenly found himself completely obsessed with dreaming. For years he never remembered a single dream and didn’t fathom giving his dreams a second thought. Lately, he had found himself actually recognizing his dreams and immediately waking up once this happened.

The search for answers was on. There is no sign of this ‘everland’ drug on the internet, he said to the computer. Jengo had also found himself searching online about the side-effects and purposes of different hallucinogenic drugs. He found it amusing the federal government was responsible for LSD and had thought it was a ‘truth serum’ back in the 1950’s.

He let out a cough (covering his mouth of course) and quickly grabbed for a cigarette. One left.  He shrugged and lit the cigarette. Rubbing his eyes and running his fingers through his average length dark brown hair, he caught a glimpse of a technique someone had done to remember dreams more vividly. When I wake up, he read out loud. The first thing I do is write down everything I remember from the dream. It doesn’t happen every night and I can never write it down as clearly as I remember dreaming it, but it works. Sometimes I just wake up during the night when I have a really intense dream. He finished reading, took another drag and put out the cigarette. Interesting, I need to find a notepad.

So Jengo searched around his apartment for a notepad as he downed his final beer of the night. I feel like a fucking loony. That was the truth.  He looked through books and notepads he hadn’t looked at in months, hoping to find one with enough empty pages in it to recall at least a few dreams. Last thing he needed to do was buy a notebook for this shit. How insane would that be?

After a good ten minute search, he stumbled upon an old notebook. Curiosity set in and he opened it up. It wasn’t actually his book; it was good old Leroy Brown’s notebook. Leroy had also been a college student while he was Jengo’s roommate. He couldn’t remember for the life of him where he went to school, nor what he majored in or if he even went to class, but this was a book he had used for some class.

Philosophy? That shit’s too deep for me, he said to the book. But this will do. So he turns to the back page, writes the date on top and stares at the blank page. He bit his upper lip three times and looked back at the computer screen, resuming the post that –

Alice Green from…Flushing, New York?

had posted on –

May 8th 2004. Oh look, another post on…May 19th.

I find my dream recollection clearer and clearer! I did some more research on this and found out ways to actually control your dreams! I don’t know if I can do that but I read somewhere that when you actually do recognize dreams and control them they are awesome! If anyone else does this you can check up my profile on friendspace.com and e-mail me!

- Alice Green 5/19/04

Well, I think I’ve read enough of this shit, he said to the computer screen. I’m getting all worked up over this dream bullshit that I’m not even going to get any sleep.

So Jengo shut down his computer, took a stroll into his kitchen and dumped out the cigarette butts and ashes into the garbage pail. Coughing a few times, he found his throat to be extremely parched. He poured himself a tall glass of water, drank a few sips, filled it back up again and made his way into his already unmade (when was the last time it was made?) bed.

After setting the glass down on his dresser, he made sure his alarm was set. 6:05 am. That’s right, 6:05 am. Before he shut his bedside lamp he took a long and hard look at the open notepad and red pen sitting beside the alarm clock.  6/05/07.  I’m losing my mind, he said just before shutting the lamp.

Little did he know just how accurate that statement would become in only twenty-four hours.

V

It was clear to Jengo, standing alone in a dark cave that he was the central character for his dream.  Now that he could recognize that he was dreaming, he felt more like a character in movie than the person doing the acts. In this current dream, he didn’t even know if the perspective he was seeing the world from was indeed his own!

That’s a scary thought, he said and he instantly fell to the ground. I’m thinking…and speaking to myself in a dream.

That’s not all you can do, a soothing female voice said to him. There was no one, just that voice, echoing over and over for what seemed to have been an eternity. A light slowly seemed to make its way into the cave and objects began to illuminate throughout the room. First thing he could see was a dinner table, with chairs. He could slowly make out more distinct features, a candle, china, plates. His sense of smell kicked in.  There was food, Chicken.  It was there, hot Chicken Marsala with mashed potatoes and string beans.

He was now seated at the table, without a recollection of sitting down or even walking towards it. Is there anything else I can provide for you master, the beautiful female voice said.  The voice sounded familiar, but it couldn’t be Sally Winfield’s.  He wanted it to be really bad, he wanted for her to call him master.  That would be a dream come –

True, he said out loud and there she was. She stood there in a French maid’s outfit with a devious smile that begged to adhere to Jengo’s every deep and darkest desire. This dinner smells amazing. Did you make it?

I can make you whatever you want.

Jengo then found himself no longer in the cave but in the lobby of the Brooklyn Museum, naked to the bone with Sally Winfield. They just stood there, staring at each other. Every step he took towards her she seemed to instantaneously take a step back. Jengo became completely puzzled. The smile was still firmly planted on Sally’s face, almost as if this was a sick joke. He then began to run towards her and she backpedaled at the same speed. The angrier he became, the faster he ran. The same distance always came between Jengo and Sally.

Jengo became completely confused and began to sweat profusely in his bed. In a flash she disappeared from existence and he stood alone in the center of what was no longer the Brooklyn Museum but in a courtroom, still naked on the witness stand. He was on trial for statutory rape. Of course, no one had told him this, he just knew this. Seems like the force is strong with this one, he thought like Yoda from Star Wars. The judge was his old English high school teacher, Mrs. Eaton. How could you do this? I was your favorite teacher and you disappoint me so.

She was of age, he shouts to Judge Eaton. She was dressed in her teaching attire, not like a judge.  I swear it! But he was on trial for having sex with Little Ellie Parker. But that was almost twenty years ago!

He could hear shouts from the jury and from the spectators to castrate him. CASTRATION! and GUILTY! were all he could hear as his buddy Marshall Watters was the bailiff and executioner coming with a large butcher knife to perform the operation. Jengo tried to run but his legs were as heavy as bricks and his body was as cold as ice and the New York Yankees now had the lead in the American League East.

What?

He sprang up in his bed as the sportscasters talked about the New York Yankees, for the first time all season, had sole possession of the American League East. He slapped the snooze button (he was so used to doing that), put on his desk lamp and grabbed the notebook, dropping his pen to the ground.

Fuck! He shouted in anger of his clumsiness and fear of losing all recollection of his dream. Remember, he said. Remember!

The amount of unnecessary and unbridled stress that was pressed onto Jengo’s shoulders was unprecedented.  He probably didn’t care about something so much since he moved to New York; no check that, in his entire life. The pen was now in his hand, and he held the notebook in his lap and just began to write everything down as he remembered it. Feverishly and without haste, he had over three pages worth of the worst looking, manic notes in history.  He started with where his strongest memory placed him, in the cave, where he recognized his dream first. There was nothing before that, nothing. The smell of the food, oh God was he hungry. His penis was hung like a horse recalling Sally in her French maid’s outfit.

Then the disappointing sex scene that never took place, to the courtroom, to the –

His alarm went off and the sportscasters (they liked to be called sports ‘reporters’) were discussing how well the Yankees’ pitching rotation was performing.  This caused him to actually create a streak on his paper. Fuck, he shouted slamming the clock radio. I don’t want to forget any of this shit. For the most part he remembered the essentials of this intense dream.

When he was finished it was 6:19. Fourteen minutes it had taken to write the recollection of his dream down in the notebook. Exhaling, he stood up and yawned. Ironically enough, he had never awoken so abruptly before and never felt more alive. Jengo couldn’t wait to get to work in the morning and ask Marshall Watters if he remembers his dreams at lunchtime (or if he ever thought about chopping off Jengo’s dick!).

He did look at it as a sign to find a way to talk to Sally Winfield, one way or other, for better or for worse. Marshall was right, he needed to get laid.

VI

It was Chinese food today. Marshall, Jengo and Therron sat around in the workers’ cafeteria.  Therron loved Chinese food, always ordering the same thing: Spare Rib Tips with French Fries, extra hot sauce. Jengo still relished in New York Chinese food, always changing up orders and eating it as often as he could.  There was nothing like that over in Carmel, hell he couldn’t remember just how many Chinese people he saw in the state of