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Euless Pope, Lisa's uncle, had a bike that he was carrying around, or riding. It was a strange bike. It was kind of shaped like a centaur, which reminded me of a beast in all the Tomb Raider I Gold I have been playing the last few months. The bike's metal frame was brown-colored and looked as though it may have been covered with a tight layer of fur that was very short brown hair, or maybe it just looked like that and resembled brown fuzz. Whatever the case, the bike was definitely not your average bike. Euless was apparently just holding onto the bike for me or he was giving it to me. The bike had two wheels but then it also had two limbs that stretched out from the neck where the handlebars usually are. These limbs may have been more wheels but they kind of looked like arms, two and a half feet long and curved at a place where an elbow would be at; they kind of looked like branches. Above this was another rod where the head of this thing was probably at, although there was no head, just the thin metal rod that could have been perceived as a headless neck. I suppose I was riding this strange bike around but then I was also playing it like it was a musical instrument and I came to realize that it was actually that and not a bike at all. I kind of wrapped my arms around the different tubes and shit, trying to hold it like one would a baritone, and I get the feeling that that is what type of instrument it was. So there I was, holding this weird baritone-trombone, instrument thing that was also part bicycle as well. I was with a group of guys and I get the feeling we were all high-school age. I think I was in the school band and this centaur/bike/baritone thing was my instrument. There were four of us guys total and we came across Bif, the guy from Back to the Future. He was dressed up in a PE shirt and looked just like he does as the PE teacher/coach on that show Freaks and Geeks. We were outside in an open field and there were other people/students dotting the landscape around us. Bif the PE teacher lined the four of us upon a slightly-raised platform or hill and gave us a good looking over. He explained to us that the groups of people that were gathered in this field all had fires that needed to be lit and he was assigning the job of starting all their fires to us four guys. I still held my instrument in my arms and said to Bif, "But I'm the entertainment you asshole!" I acted like your typical smart-ass problem child and was acting pretty bold, saying this to my teacher. The guys with me were shocked that I would speak to a teacher in this manner. What I meant by this remark was that since I was playing the music around here then I shouldn't also be expected to light the fires as well now should I? I could tell I had that sarcastic, snarling look on my face just like Boris By-Tor had when Mike Cheney asked about the pine tree growing out of his head and he replied: "What do you think I am, weird?" Biff, however, didn't day anything back to me but he did look at me with a blank, contemplating expression which suggested he most certainly was considering some kind of disciplinary action against me. It never came, though, and I was surprised I got away with it. Anyway, what he was asking us to do was to go around to each group of people that were dotting the landscape and light their fires for them. Apparently there were campsites or other similar patches of earth in this field and groups of people, whether they were our classmates or just families there to camp, gathered at specific spots and each had a two-foot round fire at their spot. I pictured one such site and there was a teepee there and a person standing just on the outside opening of it. He or she (I'm pretty sure it was a he-an Indian chief type of person) had a blanket wrapped around himself and stood there expressionless in front of his fireplace spot. The fire was surrounded by rock and had sticks piled up in teepee fashion, waiting to be lit. After the meeting with Bif, the four of us guys walked around from site to site to check on the fires, to light them or just to walk around and see what the hell Bif was referring to. As we walked to each site, however, we saw that the people were able to light the fires by themselves and they didn't need our help after all, so I don't know why Bif assigned this task to us; maybe just to show he had authority over us so he decided to assign us a meaningless task, just like some boot camp youths do when assigned scrubbing the bathroom floor with a toothbrush. The people were able to light the fires by just touching the top of the mounds with the tips of their fingers. When doing this, the fires lit by themselves. I remember looking down at one or two as we walked by and saw the virgin orange flames of a young fire lick through the kindling stacked within the rock circle.
Lisa, Crispen Howe, Sarah, and myself were on the side of a mountain. The mountain wasn't the lush, green atmosphere of Mt. Rainier; it was more like a large dirt and rock pile, kind of like something that reminds me of what I saw in Arkansas once or twice or more. There were switchbacks on the side of this mountain, wide enough for an automobile to travel on and they even looked like they had been made by a bulldozer, carving the side of the dry, pale, rocky mountain away and leaving a flat, slightly-sloped incline in its wake. The four of us were standing on one side of the mountain and looking across to another part of it, 100 yards away. Crispen Howe had a rifle and we were all looking through the scope of it to the other side of the mountain. I don't think we ever did shoot the rifle. I remember looking through it and seeing the round, magnified view with the crosshairs and seeing the landing across the way, a section of grass below the shade of a tree at the ledge of a switchback. The next thing I recall is standing in that same area, under the shade of a large, wide-branched tree. I was standing there with Lisa, Sarah, and a real evil man. I don't know who this guy was but he looked normal enough, about my age and wearing your basic jeans and T-shirt type of clothing. We were standing there under the shade of this tree and looking back along the switchback that led to the spot where Lisa, Sarah (or whatever kid it was), and myself had been standing earlier. When we looked back we saw Crispen Howe walking along the bulldozed, car-wide switchback, about halfway between us and the spot we had been at. He was to our left and walked in our direction from 70 feet away. The valley stretched before us and Crispen was on the switchback on the side of the mountain to the left. He looked at us and looked like he was walking cautiously, as if knowing this guy that stood with Lisa, Sarah and I was an evil guy and he had to be careful. I can't remember much of Crispen after seeing him walk along the pale dirt and rock path. The mean man indicated to the three of us standing here with him that he was going to kill us and eat us, but I thought of an idea to get of us out of this. I never really considered just telling the guy, "Over my dead body," or making it clear that he was going to do no such thing to me, my wife, and kid, but apparently he was intimidating in some sort of way and it forced me to succumb to his evilness. I told the guy that instead of killing and eating us that I would go out and catch an animal on the mountain somewhere and he could eat that instead. He agreed so Lisa, our kid, and me went in search of an animal. We were walking along a trail in the middle of the woods somewhere and sitting across the middle of the path about 20 feet in front of us laid a large cat of some kind. I think it was supposed to be a domesticated cat but it was nearly the size of a bobcat, so it was actually too large to be a domestic kitty but not quite large enough to be a bobcat either. It was a light golden-brown color and just laid there on the path. Of course, I saw this cat as a way out of our predicament with the man as the thing I could offer to him so he wouldn't kill us, so I picked up a rock and threw it at the cat. The rock hit it in its hindquarters but that was about all it did. The cat got up and scampered away into the woods. We walked along further and came across a second cat which was the same size as the first; large but not quite bobcat-sized. This cat was a different color than the first; it was more of a grayish, silver color, and I got the feeling that this cat was the first cat's mate or friend, like they were a couple or something. Now desperate and not wanting to lose another animal so we could escape having to be eaten by the mean, evil man, I pounced on this cat and grabbed it, making sure it wasn't going to get away. I immediately grabbed a rock, maybe a little bigger than a softball, and started hitting the gray cat over and over again in its head, wanting to make sure I killed it. The first cat I had seen earlier, the light golden brown one, was on the path just several feet in front of me and as I smashed the rock over and over again into its friends' head, it meowed long and loud at me in howls that cats only use when they are in great agony or terror. The cat looked at me and continued to meow very loud, hissing with its mouth with sharp teeth, but it never got any closer to me than a few feet because it knew that if it did then I would probably have gotten to it as well. As I smashed my rock into the silver/gray cat's head, I saw every detail of its head being smashed to bits as I did it and this turned out to be one of those gross, detailed dreams that I have form time to time. The cat below me meowed in fear as I first started swinging with the rock but then it stopped as I killed it. However, I continued slamming with the rock and I watched as the rock crashed its head in, squishing its face into a mush that blended with its shattered skull and red, gray brains. I continued hitting even after this and eventually I reduced the head to a pile of mush that ended up becoming detached from the rest of its body, so I had actually decapitated the cat with a rock. This didn't faze me at all but the cat in front of me was pretty pissed. Lisa knelt on the ground several feet behind me on the trail. She really didn't say much but I could tell she didn't really like what I was doing, but she knew it had to be done to save ourselves so she watched, saddened. I knew that Sarah was on the path several feet behind Lisa but I don't know how much of this she actually saw. The next thing I recall is being in the kitchen in the house where I grew up at on the top of South Hill. I was standing by that drawer in the counter where I used to steal matches from, the one the sink is attached to, and the gray cat, the one I had killed with a rock, was walking around the kitchen. It was two to two and one/half feet tall and had no head because, of course, I had chopped it off with a rock but the cat was still alive. The sight was bizarre. The cat's neck splayed out in a red mess that looked as though it had healed so it was not wet with blood or anything, just red and splayed like a flower or like the head had been recently blown off with a shotgun. I think the cat may have even rubbed against my legs as it walked from the sink side of the kitchen to the door side. I had the feeling it was trying to sniff, as cats always do, but since it did not have a head it couldn't. There were some other people in the kitchen but I don't remember who or how many. One of the people there mentioned that cats are the only animals that are able to survive without a head. Apparently, in this dream it was made clear to me that cats didn't need brains to function, that you could cut their heads off and even though that was an inconvenience they could still walk around and go on living, even though they could not see, breathe, or anything like that. I thought that was rather strange and was amazed to learn this little tidbit of information.
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