Hypocrisy Took My Leg

I usually don't post stories I've written — actually, I don't think I ever have posted stories I've written. Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that I wrote a story a while back and I happen to still like it. So, since I like it, I thought others might as well.

The length isn't too bad, so don't worry about that. I hope you enjoy the short-story — emphasis on 'short' because it only takes about 5 minutes to read. 

 

“Hypocrisy Took My Leg”

 

            Sometimes it amazes me how ridiculous and unrealistic dreams are when you’re awake, but while you’re in that dream, everything seems logical, everything seems necessary.

            I dreamt last night that I was given a 4-wheeler by a chef. But as I began pulling away from the bakery with the chef, he started after me pushing a snow-blower and trying to capture me in the snow-blower’s blades.

            Now that I’m awake, this thought seems utterly preposterous; it seems so ridiculous that I’m afraid of talking about it even. However crazy this dream may sound, it is what happened—and I experienced every moment of it with my heart racing and my adrenaline kicking.

 

I’ll start this dream from the beginning:

 

I’m in a small shed—there’s old rusted machinery in each of the four corners and my family members (although they aren’t my real family in real life) are standing around arguing. The wood on the floor creaks with a distinct haunted sound and I take every step with caution waiting for the floor to collapse sending me to…whatever happens to be below me.

            My family member’s arguments seem distant, like their voices are down a long hallway even though each of them is standing only about 8 feet from me. But finally, their voices hit me with the regular audible tone—I jump back a little but land quietly on my feet; I don’t want the floor to give.

            From listening to my families arguments, I understand this “shed” I’m standing in is really a bakery of sorts: a bakery used to make pancakes and French toast. But the bakery uses special means of making these baked goods (even though pancakes and French toast aren’t baked goods), they use the old rusted machinery to cook the pancakes and they use cardboard to make the baking mix—cardboard because of its cheapness and apparently great taste.

 

            I tell the chef standing behind the counter I don’t appreciate his pancakes…although when I “tell” him this, I don’t speak words, rather he reads my thoughts just as normally as anyone would understand regular words—I don’t think strangely of it. The chef grimaces a little at these “words” and tells me to leave his bakery; he doesn’t “want complainers around…”

            I’m walking out of the bakery when he calls out to me. As I turn around, it takes me a moment to find him because my vision is blurry—there is a cloud of fog around the corners of my eyes and my vision is extremely narrow. When I find his face, I lock onto it and wait for him to say something, but again, we both speak through thoughts: “How are you getting home.” The chef asks; although his tone isn’t like a question, he states it like it is fact; like I don’t know how I am getting home. He knows this.

            “I haven’t thought about it.” I roll my eyes and lose track of where he is in the room again; when I find him again, he is standing in front of me handing me a wire—most likely a paperclip which has been uncoiled.

            “Hot-wire my four-wheeler and drive yourself home.”

            I grab the wire and manipulate it into an animal shape—I’m amused at my creativity. “You sure?”

            “Get out of my bakery.”

 

The four-wheeler is red and average in size—not too big, not too small; “just right” as Goldilocks would say. It has gas can attached to the back along with instructions on “How to hot-wire my four-wheeler”. The instructions have a strange photo of the chef’s face on it; he is saying to me: “Go ahead, take it.”

 

So I do.

 

            When I start out I’m on a dusty path; many types of tumbleweed are blowing around in front of me along with wisps of dandelion seeds grazing past my head. I think it is quite peaceful.

            The cornfields growing near the path have voices: “Turn around. Just look back to your left or to your right. You’ll thank us.”

            I do, and I find the chef—with a stern face—pushing a snow-blower very slowly in my direction. He doesn’t say anything, and I can’t read his thoughts for the first time. I try not to think any thoughts myself for I worry he will be able to sense my fear. Instead I think confident thoughts—or confident lies rather. I begin to think I’m throwing him off and he’ll leave me alone.

            A cornstalk falls in front of me on the path and skids around in the dust trying to get my four-wheeler to flip. “I thought you were going to help me, Cornfield…” Again, I don’t say this, but think it—I know the Cornfield will understand me.

            “She isn’t one of us. Ignore her.” The Cornfield thinks back.

           

            Worrying about the cornstalk, I fix my attention forward, dodging and dicing my way along the path at a speed I can’t control. The speed fluctuates randomly, going from fast to faster to slower to slow to faster. I’m hitting the throttle but it doesn’t do anything.

            Finally, the cornstalk leaves my path and slides back into the cornfield. I hear the cornfield apologizing but I know they don’t mean it.

            I turn my neck to the left and realize I have an odd kink in my neck. It feels like I have a needle poking me so I grab at my neck and find that I do, in fact, have a needle sticking from my neck. It protrudes like a branch off a tree. But because of my fear of needles, I don’t pull it out, I just turn to the right to look behind me and I find the chef again, only closer this time.

 

“Don’t think anything. Don’t think anything. Don’t think anything.”  

            “I know you’re thinking about me.” He thought.

            “I’m not, I’m really not.”

            I have so many thoughts in my head I can’t control all of them; they are like unruly kindergarteners who won’t keep their hands to themselves. I’m about to put one of them on timeout when—

 

My four-wheeler stops. Completely stops. For some reason I think of my drivers-ed teacher, “Don’t hit the ‘brick wall’.” I don’t; I stopped behind the line. What line? I’m not sure…maybe the line in the dust?

 

Now I can hear the snow-blowers blades; I can hear their circular motions; I can hear their hypocrisy. “We’ll do what we’re supposed to.”

            I see the chef behind the snow-blower. He is moving slowly but consistently, and I realize I’m not moving at all.

            I hop off the four-wheeler and start running. But I find I’m wearing Sketchers shoes and they are the heaviest shoe in existence—how inconvenient. Also, the sun is out and makes the dust hot and the dust begins to heat up turning the rubber on my Sketchers into melted tar. I begin sticking to the dusty path.

            “Don’t think anything. Don’t think anything. Don’t think anything.”

 

            I can feel my adrenaline rising, but my shoes are still stuck. Never do I think to take them off because my mom bought them for me and she would be angry if I lost them.

            The chef takes each step carefully, almost like he is planning where each foot will land, and how each toe will be configured when it hits the dust.

The snow-blower is getting louder; I can smell the gasoline and exhaust.

           

            The chef is now ten feet from me.

 

            The ground vibrates from the blades spinning; the ground shakes like an earthquake. The exhaust is hot; it feels like the chef’s empty words.

            “Don’t think anything. Don’t think anything. Don’t think anything.” I roll my eyes again and the fog around my eyes covers the chef’s location; I can’t find him.

            “You have to think.” The chef’s voice is audible this time—he is speaking directly in my ear. His voice is faintly above a whisper as he says this. “I know you’re thinking about me.” He’s happy at this thought; he feels special now; he feels he belongs.

            The snow-blowers blades begin to inch onto my skin. The wind from the blades ceases and is replaced by the cutting of my flesh.

            The snow-blowers cry out, “We’re doing what we’re supposed to.” But I still feel they are hypocrites; a sort of calming comes over me for a moment. I know they won’t do it; I know they won’t follow through—snow-blowers have always been unreliable.

            My flesh tearing is agony; I can still feel it through the unreality of my dream. This agony is tangible, I can’t turn it off. It is like the four-wheeler—I have no control over it.

            The blades burrow through my skin and enter my bone cavities. The ferocity of the blades shakes my body.

 

            Both the chef and I are silent. Neither of us is thinking.

 

            The blades stick on something. Bone? Ligaments? I’m not sure. Something jammed them.

            “We’re not doing what we thought…” The snow-blower sounded disappointed, although this event seemed inevitable from the beginning.

           

The four-wheeler came to life again. The motor erupting startled me for a moment. But this startling feels good; it compels me in a way.

            From my mid-shinbone down, my leg is gone. I notice this but do not care much about it. For some reason I think, “It will grow back.”

            The sun retreats on the horizon and I free my foot from the sticky tar. I get on the four-wheeler and the random fluctuating speed begins again: faster, slow, fast, slower. But it doesn’t matter because the chef is in my dust. The snow-blower is in my dust.

            “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” I think. Another thought follows it, “Hypocrisy took my leg.”