Jerry’s Secret Pig Patrol · A dream detour · Thursday night
Shanna’s Dream: The $60 Snortcade
Fictional dream chapter · The nap, the green ears, the stairs, and the $60 came from the real trip. Everything else is made up, and no real money is involved.
After Thursday’s nap, Shanna’s dream began with a noise.
Beep. Beep-boop. BEEP.
She sat up and felt two green leaves standing upright behind her ears. They were attached.
“Mark. This isn’t funny.”
Blue waved a clipboard at the foot of the bed. She looked straight through him and followed the noise.
“Even in her own dream,” he muttered.
She passed the egg chair. Red woke with a start, slapped his own nose with the bug swatter, and hurried after her. Yellow brought snacks. Rainbow carried a small folded luggage tag.
The beeping came from the creepy stairs.
At the bottom, rainbow light flashed beneath the door.
“That,” Shanna said, “is not a bathroom.”
“It was on Tuesday,” Red said. “Management changes quickly.”
On the other side stood Angie in her hotel slippers, with Mark behind her.
“I heard beeping,” Angie explained. “I have no clue. I just followed it.”
“I followed her,” Mark said.
“Excellent,” Shanna replied. “Three adults. No leadership.”
The hallway smelled of fattening coffee. They rounded the corner together.
Blocking the only way out stood an arcade machine taller than Mark. Its lights blinked pink, then blue, then every color in the rainbow. Across the top, in flashing letters, it said:
WIN TO WAKE UP
Below that, in smaller print: Insert $60.
Angie squinted at the slot. “Sixty dollars? That’s what the parrots cost.”
“It’s a dream,” Shanna said. “It’s pretend money.”
Angie was not convinced. “I spent ALL MY MONEY at the shops.”
Mark had already found a pretend sixty dollars in his pocket. He looked pleased about it, the way a man looks when he’s confident he’ll be photogenic even while losing.
Then a voice came out of the machine. It sounded exactly like a small, stressed pig with a clipboard.
“Rules. Pick a pig. Catch your own color. Ten points and you wake up. Wrong color, you lose a life. Rainbow globs are worth three points and a spare life. Nobody asks what the globs are.”
Shanna looked around. “Who said that?”
“The machine,” said Angie.
“What are the globs?” asked Mark.
From somewhere behind the machine, very quietly, Yellow said: “Don’t.”
Shanna looked at the screen. It wanted her to choose a pig.
“Why are all the characters pigs?” Shanna asked.
Behind the machine, Blue sighed. “So close.”
“Pick the blue one,” said Angie. “He looks like he needs a vacation.”
Blue looked toward Rainbow. “Finally. Someone understands my situation.”
Pretend money spent so far: $0
Choose your pig:
Drag on the game or hold the big arrows. On a computer, arrow keys or A and D work too.
The machine let out a long, satisfied snort. A strip of paper curled out of a slot that hadn’t been there before.
Shanna tapped the bottom of the receipt. “Four passengers? There are three of us.”
Behind the machine, Rainbow folded his luggage tag.
“Accounting,” he whispered, “is a wonderful thing.”
The arcade machine slid sideways with a squeak, revealing one more door.
Shanna reached for the handle. Behind her, someone very small and very proud let go of a happy snort. She turned around.
For half a second, she could have sworn she saw four colorful pigs lined up in the hallway, waving.
Then she blinked, and they were gone.
“I didn’t see anything,” she announced, to be safe.
She opened the door.
Shanna woke up in the dark.
No beeping. No arcade machine. No sixty dollars missing from anybody’s pocket. The leaves were gone from her head, and her nose felt perfectly normal.
She rolled over and went back to sleep.
She didn’t notice the single green leaf resting on her pillow.
Out on the egg chair, Red’s eyes snapped open. He looked around, checked that he was still holding his swatter, and whispered to nobody: “Did anybody else hear beeping?”
Blue made one final note on his clipboard: Friday. Last day. Shanna: one color, and one very strange night.
The Snortcade, the beeping, and the leaf on the pillow were Shanna’s made-up dream. Friday’s real vacation day is next.