Designer Dreams by Bob

Issue #42 Keith’s SciFi Musings September 17, 2023

Bob was just this guy. Lived over on Selden Street back when the neighborhood was the Cass Corridor, not this Midtown bullshit. Sorry, but…anyway.

We Are Speaking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

So about Bob. Bob had this very interesting business, and it was located inside this small, square pink brick building with no windows. Green door. No address numbers on the front, which always made me wonder how he got away with that. Probably because whoever woulda given Bob a warning notice was a patron. And if you were one of Bob’s patrons, you’d pretty much let him get away with whatever he asked you to let him get away with. Anything. Just so long as he let you keep coming back for those dreams.

And oh. Those dreams…

Bob sold dreams, man. But not just the regular sort of dreams where you go to sleep at night and find yourself working out whatever issues have been chasing you all through your daylight reality. The sort of dreams where you might or might not remember wherever it was you went the night before. Or the sort of dreams where you remembered them too well and would be ashamed to tell anyone about because of what those dreams might say about who you really were.

Naw. Not like that.

What Bob sold was custom-made dreams for those of us committed dreamers who took dreaming seriously. Those of us who spent more time asleep than we ever did awake. When you bought a dream designed by Bob, you got a dream made only for you and you alone, made mostly to your specifications, but with some leeway built in to let Bob do his thing and create a few illuminating sleepytime surprises and eye-openers that were always fun. Because Bob was nothing if not an artist, and somewhat of a psychiatrist as well. He was a head guy, Bob was.

I remember the first dream I ever got from Bob. I was kinda scared to use it at first, so Bob let me use one of the guest couches inside his place so that I didn’t have to dream alone and he could keep watch. I wasn’t the only one there.

“Never lost a dreamer yet,” he said.

“Promise?”

“I do. And take your time, but not too long. Otherwise, it will begin to lose its shape, and that’s how the nightmares begin.”

So let me tell you about the nightmares…