The future. A middle-aged man with a chubby, childish face has been persecuting me and my three friends. He stalks us and sends us threats; the messages are coded using images and names from classic films and novels. He wants us to GIVE one of us to him!

For example, right now we're high in a tower, looking out a picture window: clouds billow above, and the city rumbles and honks below. I lean out the window and hang over the lip to see, looming in the sky, the white words SURRENDER DOROTHY.

And my friends say it! "Dorothy?" "Who's Dorothy?" In all innocence. They don't even know the film! Our adversary overestimated us--they're culturally illiterate, all of them.

Which of us IS "Dorothy"? The others assume it's the lone woman in our group, of course, though her name's Leela, not Dorothy. But in the LAST scene the literary metaphor was PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, and the message then was: SURRENDER DARCY! So it's obvious who he means: the tall skinny man in our group who's intelligent, proud, and terribly reserved. Mr. Darcy if there ever was one...

Now our tormentor zooms around the building on an antigrav sled like a stubby surfboard, circling and gradually closing in like a shark... At least he's not green and cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West, but air-surfing always makes me nervous.

I'm working in a room apart from the rest, and see him hovering closer, closer... ready for a grab? I let out a falsetto "EEK!" of warning--and shatter the dream.

I wake to find my dreams were, as usual, wrestling with my real-life problems in symbolic form. My friend Leela really is being stalked by this nut, though he didn't pull that Oz stunt.

I get up and go to Leela's suite, and we walk out to breakfast, down the steps between high terraces in this great castle by the sea, arguing all the way. I tell her "As far as I'm concerned, this world is dominated by benighted hi-tech ignoramuses." I'm playing my role as Dr. Who all the way, manic and whimsical, and though Leela's playing Loyal Companion, trying to follow my reasoning, learn what I have to teach... I won't explain a thing.

I honestly don't know why I patronize her so--this gorgeous girl who follows me so loyally. And here at home she's a Princess. Wearing a princess's prerogative: a wildly provocative gown showing off her thin, athletic body, baring her high little breasts, bouncing in anger as she stomps down the winding stairs and balustrades.

I like teasing her, but have I gone too far? Is this fair to her? After all, the fight against the Darcy Stalker has made her castle-home a shambles. The stained glass in the rear suite of the palace, the chapel they call The Tardis, was shattered when someone jumped through in one of the kidnapping forays. Those lovely windows are her childhood memories: she grew up in The Tardis, and now they're ruined.

My response?

I spot another woman on a nearby terrace, in a nurse's uniform, and hop off after her, yelling "Oooh! SEXY!" in delight.

Which drives Princess Leela NUTS.

I wake again to find...

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• The sky-surfing is from a story, "Free Ways" by Lee Marrs, in an early issue of "Women's Comix."
• "Surrender Darcy" = in The Wizard of Oz, the witch skywrites "Surrender Dorothy"... but here it's Mr. Darcy, from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Now, Jane Austen's Mr Darcy just got cold if a woman criticized him. But instead, I do surrender the Darcy inside me! I give up all inhibitions and indulge my whims. And my whims are cunning: for example, my wandering eye is deliberate, I think--I'm warning Leela there are other girls I could go for, warning her "Is your anger really worth so much that you'd risking losing me?" I know how much she cares, though I'll deny it, and use it against her.
• Broken windows in castle: from Key out of Time, by Andre Norton--in it, a battle smashes the castle windows but saves their world.
• Leela does overdo her fussing about broken windows! The stakes are high--we're fighting a war after all! Glass can be replaced. Not Leela. Not me.

AND YET... TWO WEEKS LATER

I'm watching the real BBC-TV series Doctor Who. His friend Leela (not a princess--a tough, knife-wielding barbarian girl) often instinctively senses danger that the Doctor blithely rushes into. If I give up my Darcy coldness and reserve, what I become is... reckless! Leela in my dream has a point; I should trust her instincts. Our struggle may be transforming my personality and spirit... but they can also wreck my earthly palace: my body!

• the palace = my body, then.

Maybe I shouldn't... surrender Darcy.

YEARS LATER

Well. There are choices, besides being proud, cold Mr Darcy or manic, reckless Dr Who. There are less extreme models. There is, for example... Leela.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites