Dreams of Children Dancing and Fire

You are my wife and that is my son. There are children dancing and fire.
I know honey. There was nothing you could do. The fire spread too quickly.


There is a corner of my room I enjoy more than the others. It is in this corner that I think about sentences. Not just any sentences, my sentences, or, at least, sentences that I have thought about. There isn’t much else to do, not that I mind. I’ve thought of a sentence with three Buffalos, three buffalos, and two buffalos. I’ve thought of a sentence with eleven hads in a row. I don’t know if I’m the first person to think of these sentences, I’m sure I got them from somewhere, maybe the Voice told me once.

Sometimes I think thinking of sentences is like waiting for paint to grow or grass to dry, though why people grow grass colored paint is beyond me.

I prefer my plain concrete walls.


I like this corner because it’s the one that protects me the most. The rip is at the other end and the man in the wall cannot see me here. Mind you, I have nothing against the rip, nice people step through when it opens wide and food plops in when it opens narrow. I was even allowed through it once, though I don’t remember much. There were people I didn’t know and the room was bigger than mine and there were tables and people and space.

The Voice told me I would be spending more time in that room, the one through the rip, but then I wrote on the walls with a metal knife and the Voice changed Its mind I guess. It told me not to stab things, though I insisted I was simply writing.
I like it in my room because it’s comfortable and safe and small and lonely.


I think of sentences that I have heard.

One is of a girl with brown saucer eyes that sits in the corner away from the window. She looks and looks and sees but doesn’t. Something blocks her vision and I want it to go away and I want her eyes to be clear but they don’t.

I don’t really want to hear why.


No, it’s not the rip I stay away from. I stay away for the corner by the rip simply because the tray hits me and scatters food which must then be cleaned by Candice, who claims to be Janet, who dresses like a nurse and is always clean. I stay hidden from the man in the wall. He’s thin and dresses in a white robe that hangs loose over his shoulders. He looks sick, though I don’t know for sure. I think he wants to talk to me; he’s always looking at me. I don’t think he ever looks away. Sometimes I think he’s old, but maybe that’s just because he’s sick.

He has a white wristband like mine, though I don’t know what that means.

Mine has my name on it in small, blocky letters: FRED BECKS.


It’s in this corner that I can see the tree. When the wall opposite the man who watches me disappears, I can see it. It reminds me of something, though I can’t remember what exactly. Something about an open field and trees like the one opposite the man who watches me. There are others not like that one as well. They have broad leaves and long trunks. I think this one’s leaves are thin and prickle when I touch them, or maybe it isn’t those that prickled but the ones on tree in the playground. Tress like the one opposite the man who watches me were good places to hide because its branches hung low and the needles kept others out, though I’m not sure if that one’s the same, though it might be.

The tree people hid under hung over a neighboring yard.

A dog would get upset and complain.