Sic Semper Tyrannis

Pure, Simple, Fantastic Part VI.

VI.
As you were out to sea, nearly drowning, the plastic militiamen were swept away on a most strange and unforeseen adventure. Like most adventures, theirs started in the jowls of a beach-combing sea-mutt. While you were submerged beneath the waves, this scampish young dog with matted hair the color and consistency of wet diapers came running from out of nowhere- on a bee-line course to your collection of bellicose figurines. With equally quick swiftness he had shaken the bag loose with his muscular neck and snatched up the first things to drop out- your precious ‘Duke’ and ‘Rock n’ Roll.’ And as stealthily and mysteriously as he had appeared he disappeared up the beach again with two new playthings in his mouth.

“Wow,” I said. “You sure do speak dramatically and insightfully for a crusty old anonymous guy on a beach.”

Quoth the seaman, Well, I’ve seen many things in…

“…I mean,” I interrupted, “You speak like some people write. It’s almost as if you could serve as some kind of ironic, archetypal narrator in a metatextual short story.” I myself was amazed at my well-developed vocabulary for a ten-year old.

The dog-I shall thenceforth call him Cerberus- ran at full speed away from the waves, towards the dry dunes. He weaved in and out of the staggered clusters of anonymous vacationers- around and even between their tanned, coconut-scented legs. All the while he kept in his tight jaws Duke and Rock n’ Roll, chomping down on them as if they would serve as his final meal in the near future.

Cerberus ran.

And ran. Like a salivating running machine, his tongue hanging out. But still he held on to Duke and Rock n’ Roll. Until the time came for a rest and he slowed to a trot. Trot slowing to a walk. Walk becoming a sleepy stumble until Cerberus collapsed on the wet sand of the beach, finally laying down for a spread-eagle nap, loosening his death-grip on Duke and Rock n’ Roll for the first time.

I sat in rapt attention listening to this odd man’s even odder tale, wondering the same thing that most sociologists would wonder at this point: where are the parents? Well, when sociologists have dreams of their own, perhaps they can have parents in them!

Immediately after hitting the ground, the exhausted dog fell into a deep slumber. Caressed by the sound of the gulls overhead, the steady whoosh of the wind and waves enveloping him in their peaceful anesthesia, he drifted far, far away into a dream world of his own…

All men are great in their dreams, Sigmund Freud once said, and dogs are really no different. Beneath their fur and tails and collars and keen senses of hearing are hearts of flesh-pumping blood. But Cerberus was different. He found himself running in slow motion through a watery world of fire hydrants as plentiful as trees in a human’s dream world. He ran without ceasing, without tiring. Yet in his heart was the vague sensation that he was failing. Failing his dog-wife. His dog children. Even his loving human owner and wife were disappointed in his actions. It was the unceasing pressure in his head- the instinct that all of these dogs and people were ultimately let down by his failures. These vague feelings plagued his dreams and had even begun to spill over into his waking hours. Many were the hours he would sit on his haunches, staring at the gray old wooden fence of the backyard where he lived. As if that fence would move or speak some word of worldly wisdom to him.

But it never did.

It was unchanging, consistently fulfilling its unceasing purpose: to keep him in the yard…

“Wait a minute,” the dream-me interjected. “How do you know what this dog was dreaming?”

Sometimes you can just tell, the mysterious salty dog in the overcoat finally replied after sitting in silence for an uncomfortable few seconds. As Cerberus lay in his unquiet slumber, dreaming his dreams, a lone seagull circled overhead crying out in that lonely way that seagulls and coyotes do, as if someone will answer. While uninterested in the strange lump of mottled fur on the sand, the seagull noticed two small plastic novelties right nest to the dog’s mouth- your ‘Duke’ and ‘Rock n’ Roll.’ Attracted to their bite-size proportions the seagull swooped down to disencumber the dog of the out-of-place toys. For fear of waking the dog and betraying common wisdom involving sleeping dogs, the bird gingerly stepped around in the sand, pecking at the machine gunner and sergeant just long enough to arrange them for transport in his beak. And just as the dog exhaled an unconscious snort, the seagull was up in the air again with what it thought would make a lovely breakfast for the kid-gulls back home.

posted by Mike @ 7:31 PM