It was the strangest nightmare, let me
tell you. But the weirdest thing about it was that it seemed
more real than any dream I'd ever dreamed before!
I dreamed I saw these strange little creatures. They were
all different colors. Some were red or green or blue or yellow,
but there were lots of them and they were slimy with a dingy
glow. And they were slithering in through my open bedroom
window! I watched in horror as they slopped across the floor.
It was so gross! Not only were they disgustingly slimy, but
after every few feet of slithering they seemed to make squishy
gassy-sounds, which left puffy grey clouds floating in the
air. It wasn't long before I had to hold my nose - they smelled
even worse than they looked. Fortunately the stinky-slimeys
seemed to be heading to the other side of the room. Straight
for Dude's bed!
He went on snoring, in the same creepy way he would be doing
outside the dream, completely unaware of anything. The smelly-blobs
slid up the side of his bed and slipped under his covers.
"Oh, Man!" I gasped. "Don't aliens smell anything - how can
he sleep with that awful smell all around him!"
The next thing I knew the slimers were slithering back down
the side of Dude's bed and across the floor towards the window.
That's when I noticed they were carrying his watch. They were
so tiny that it took about fifty of them to carry it.
I don't know why (maybe it's because in dreams you can have
more courage than you do in real life), but I jumped up, ran
across the room and slammed the window closed.
The dingy colored slimy blobs stopped. Then they started bouncing
up and down angrily, squeaking at me and making more of those
smelly gaseous-sounds. I backed away slightly as they slimed
past me and slid under my bedroom door. The cloud of stench
remained behind. I dashed across the room and held my nose
as tight as I could. I opened the door with my free hand and
tiptoed after them into the hallway. I knew every creak on
the stairs so I knew I wouldn't wake everyone in the house,
but that smell was so bad I was afraid it was going to wake
everyone, even outside of the dream.
The dull glow of lights trickled down the stairs, but I was
in hot pursuit. It was gross squishing in their slimy trail
with my bare feet, but I made myself go as fast as I could.
They squirmed across the kitchen and under the back door,
but I was right behind them, gasping and gagging for air.
I chased them down the porch steps, and just as they wriggled
onto the grass, I grabbed Dude's watch and yanked it away
from them.
That's when they got really mad. They all turned at once and
started to grow bigger and greyer and smellier. Then one,
a dingy, gooshy yellow one, leaped up and slimed me.
"Eh-oooh!"
It oozed all over me. I could feel it seeping through my skin.
Suddenly I felt scared and I knew that yellow slime was making
me feel this way. It must have oozed into my blood and was
gunking up my emotions with yellow-bellied fear. I ran backwards
and hid behind a tree, but they were after me.
The squeaky, gassy, exploding sounds they made got even louder.
A festering red slimer leaped at me, and it oozed over my
hair and down my back. As it seeped through my skin, the red
ooze made me feel angry and mad.
I stomped my feet and gritted my teeth at the blobs that were
coming closer. But before I could do anything about my anger,
a bloated blue blob leaped at me. Its slime made me feel helpless
and hopeless. I backed up against the backyard fence. They
got closer and closer.
Then suddenly I saw Dude standing behind them. He looked at
me and then he looked at the slimy creatures. "Uh, like, Yo,
um, er, chill, Man," he whispered to me. "Like um, well, like
um, don't be, you know, like afraid."
I don't know why, but I knew in a flash that Dude was going
to save me. I suddenly felt calmer and less afraid. I was
suddenly sure that he was a good alien who'd come to protect
us Earthlings. At any second he was going to reach into his
pocket and pull out some totally lethal space weapons and
blast those blobs to smithereens. I just knew he'd do something
totally awesome. I could feel it.
Dude took his hands out of his pockets slowly. "Here it comes!"
I thought.
But his hands were empty. "Like, um, well, um, Peace," Dude
whispered to the slimers. "And um, like you know, uh...Love,"
he continued, saying the garbled words slowly and quietly.
The slimy creatures slowed down and stopped in their tracks,
as if they were being massaged with a relaxing back rub. I
stared at them and looked back at Dude. He spoke to the creatures
in a calming voice, reminding them how much they missed their
families and friends, and urging them to go back home. He
spoke to them in that painfully awful way of speaking I just
wasn't ever going to get used to. The weird thing was that
I could actually see his ridiculous words floating in the
air. They weren't the best choice of words, that's for sure,
but as they drifted and floated, I could see how gentle they
were.
Actually, it didn't seem that strange to see his words floating
in the air, at the time. You sort of expect weird things like
that to happen in dreams. His words were like sweet little
glowing lights. As they floated across the yard, the soft
glows wrapped around the slimy blobs, making them softer and
more delicate looking. The blobs got lighter and more transparent
and they started to float. They got lighter still, until they
just drifted up into the night sky. One by one they drifted
out of view and disappeared with a tiny, peaceful little "swish"
sound.
A stray glowing word wrapped around me as I watched, and I
suddenly felt different. I felt warm and fuzzy. I felt light
and happy. I felt good. I wanted to dance. (And if you knew
me, you'd know that I would never be caught dead dancing.
So I must have been feeling really good!)
More and more of the warm lights wrapped around me, and I
noticed I was floating up into the tree branches. I looked
down at Dude. He was smiling. All the creepy blobs were gone,
and I felt like I didn't have a care in the world.
Then all of a sudden the backdoor slammed open. Looking down
I saw Ellie in her pajamas, rubbing her eyes as she looked
up at me. "Oh my gosh, Junior, you're floating in the air!"
Then she looked over at Dude and her face turned pale as a
ghost. "Junior, it's an alien!" she whispered, unable to move.
Dude turned to me. "Um, well, Yikes, like, um, er, that is,
uh, Man, quick, you gotta, you know, I mean, like toss me
the syncronomoter-watchy-kinda-thingy like, um, you know,
fastish like, Man!"
Instinctively (because it sure wasn't in response to what
he said - I had no idea what he'd said), I dropped the watch
down to him. Meanwhile, I floated back down to the ground.
Dude quickly put the watch on and whispered, "It's okay, Ellie.
Everything will be alright..."
As Dude said those words, I couldn't help noticing that they
made sense. At the same time I also noticed that for some
reason I was squinting and holding my head sideways. And for
some reason I was holding one of my feet up off the ground,
too. I stood there watching the gentle glow of his words as
they wrapped around Ellie. She rubbed her eyes and then stared
back at Dude and me. She rubbed her eyes again and shook her
head.
"Junior,
what are you and Dude doing out here?" she finally whispered
in between a yawn and a hiccup. "And why are you standing
like that, Junior? You look like a blind flamingo!"
Slowly I lowered my foot and let my head return to a more
comfortable position. I couldn't wait to hear how Dude would
get us out of this.
"Um,
well, like, well, we were like, you know, sort of like, um,
well, chasing away some well, bogus critters that were out
here, like you know, making um, well, you know, like trouble,"
Dude said.
"Hmm..."
my sleeping brain whispered to me. Somehow it had noticed
the connection between the flamingo-like position I had been
standing in at the time when what Dude said had made sense.
"Well,
you better get inside. It's late." She shivered. "And it's
chilly." She turned and went in through the door.
It was chilly. I had goosebumps all over! That's when I realized
this was no dream. I turned to Dude. "What's going on, Dude?"
Dude sighed. "Like, I, you know, um, er, well, Man, I... well..."
I squinted my eyes and turned my head to test out my theory.
"I, well, sorta, well..." It didn't work. Maybe it needed
the whole flamingo-package.
I raised my foot. "I guess I'd better tell you everything,"
Dude said perfectly understandably. I was right. For some
reason when I squinted and turned my head just so, and raised
one foot off the ground, I could hear Dude the way everyone
else must hear him.
"Come
on, we'd better get inside," Dude said in perfect English.
I hopped after him on one foot, my head bent and squinting,
just in case he had anything more to say.
