WHO: PJ Swift (THE JIM HAWKINS) WHAT: It involves floating pink Jello and talking rocks. And sleep. WHEN: Evening and night of Sunday, September 7, 2008 WHERE: PJ and Casey's dorm room in Port Orleans B (the co-ed one) RATING: PG-13 for a reference to mild prescription drug abuse
He wouldn't have noticed if the same thing weren't happening to himself, but Peter had seen a few people on the KingJournals blogging about how they had trouble sleeping, weird dreams, stuff like that. Maybe it's something in the water because the fact that Peter's dreaming at all, or at least remembering it, is enough to concern him. The content of the dreams isn't anything to sniff at, either. Weird stuff: pirates, robots, aliens, pink Jello. He wonders if he's turning into a Hot Topic-style hipster without realizing it. Maybe the robot dreams would stop if he shelled out the $15 to go to the barber and get a real haircut.
Like he could afford it, Peter thinks one evening as he trudges into his room after mopping up the entirety of West Diner and rearranging the tables and chairs near-single-handedly. Hooray for Sundays. He gets to perform this wonderful task even at the threat of multiple hurricanes. Peter doesn't bother acknowledging his roommate as he grabs his toothbrush and towel and heads to the bathroom down the hall. Besides, Casey's busy with something in a tank. It looks furry. Probably a tarantula.
Peter takes a quick, silent shower, brushing his teeth while he's still in the stall. Upon returning to the room, he climbs up onto his bed and promptly falls asleep. Maybe tonight it'll be different, he thinks, in his last conscious moments before drifting off, maybe he'll get his full eight hours of uninterrupted, unencumbered sleep. It isn't. Sunday night is just like Saturday, and Friday, and Thursday, and so on into what feels like infinity.
The dreams started fairly inoccuously, with him sailing on a clipper ship, leading a crew of pirates to a great treasure. Peter isn't sure where the idea comes from, since his greatest exposure to piracy is watching Hook. That doesn't even really count, since it's technically about Peter Pan, who wasn't a pirate at all (Peter was supposed to have read Treasure Island in high school, but he just used the Spark Notes there). He thought it was strange at the time, and blamed the slight overdose of NyQuil he may or may not have given himself that evening. He discontinued the medication, but as the nights went on, the dreams got stranger and stranger.
First, people and places he knew started showing up. One night, the dream started at the Benbow Noodle-ya, and he was talking to Dr. Carlson, about what, he can't remember. When the two of them got to the docks and were ready to board the ship, the doctor suddenly turned into a dog. For some reason, that seemed perfectly normal to Peter, as the ship was captained by a cat, with a talking rock as the first mate.
Every night, Peter wonders how it's possible for his mind to make this shit up, but no night did he wonder it more than the night it all started happening in outer space. It's unusual that Peter should dream of outer space because he was never really into that kind of thing as a kid. He wasn't any more interested in it than he was in pirates, at least. He never wanted to go to Space Camp on the mainland, and he never attached glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling of his room. No, as a child, the only unattainable thing Peter cared about was his father. Other than that, his interests were more accessible, like the ocean that he can see from his window at home. Maybe outer space is some sort of strange stand-in for the sea, like an interstellar stunt-double.
Maybe. Tonight, Peter stands on the deck of the ship, held fast with gravity due to the same inexplicable force that allows him to breathe amid the stars. Of course he's mopping the deck; he can't escape the terrors of his labor even in sleep. Then, he hears a deep whine and forgets the mop and bucket. Rushing to the side of the ship, Peter glimpses a pod of blue whales floating through space as if it were the most natural thing in the world. They're gigantic; if they had mouths in the conventional sense, one would be able to swallow the ship whole.
A miniature space whale floats by his head and Peter reaches out to touch it, but it giggles and turns into the glob of pink Jello with which he's become so familiar. The Jello makes a face at him and then darts off. This being Dreamland, Peter has no choice but to follow the floating Jello to the galley, where it dives into a barrel of fruit. Peter follows, and he watches through a hole in the barrel as Juan Plata, the head chef, talks to the rest of the crew about stealing all of Peter's tuition money.
Peter wants to jump out of the barrel and tell Juan that he'll never get away with it, but instead, he wakes up. As he comes to consciousness, he realizes two things: first, that he's sweating like a whore in church, and second, that half of his body is hanging dangerously over the edges of the lofted bed. Peter rolls over and stares at the darkened ceiling. If he wanted to, he could reach out and touch it. But he doesn't.