Nazi, Monkey, Seance: A Dream

He was walking around the room, in an intense, angry, brooding manner, but no one was paying him any attention, anyway. His uniform was midnight black. On his left arm, a red and white armband with a black cross in the center completed the portrait of a brooding, dissatisfied individual who was perched, always, just on the point of exploding into some violence.

However, no one wanted to pay him any mind, or seemed to even notice that he was in the room. Perhaps he wanted it that way, since it would make it easier to eavesdrop.

Near his chair, illuminated under an even pool of light, sat several people at a Ouija board. The nature of the communications they were receiving is not now known, although what is known was that they were successful in breaking through to something mischievous. It is, by the way, in the nature of many spirits communicating in such a fashion to utter mischievous gibberish, or to engage in shenanigans, and perhaps that is why this particular spirit kept manifesting in the form of a gibbering monkey.

This monkey must have been causing mischief for the assembled sitters for quite some time, for one large, blond women turned to me, put a finger to her lips, and whispered, “He’s back again. This time, he takes the form of a monkey. Next time, he’ll be something else. Don’t be fooled though. This is a devil in disguise.”

Indeed, even as she said this, I looked over at the window, and could see, perched in a recess that should, under normal circumstances. have held a pot of flowers, was a little black and grey chimpanzee. Very small, with beady, menacing eyes, and an occasional flapping of the arms.

I could have none of this right now, but remembered that I needed, quite badly, to go and get my laundry. So I started out, dressed in a suit jacket, a bowler hat, a nice shirt, tie, and sporting a white moustache, goatee, socks held up by garters, and fine leather shoes. Apparently I had grown very old, and very thin in the last few moments.

I began my trek to the laundry on a strange, decaying, paved road that wound around at an impossible angle, along a sidewalk that eventually disappeared into a rocky curb. I found it easy to balance upon this curb, even though it was smaller across than a large beam of wood. I grumbled and cursed as I went along.

Suddenly, standing outside myself, I could see that, though I was dressed to the nines, so to speak, I gad forgotten to put on my pants, and was thus wearing only my multicolored boxer shorts, with the nice shirt tucked into the top of them. I don’t know if I ever rectified this situation, but I doubt it.

It was night, or some facsimile thereof. But there was a good moon.

Finally, I made it to the large building wherein the laundry was situated. I went to ahuge metal sink, very white yet very old and full of dirty water. Just above it, a plexi-glass door, that looked exactly like a microwave oven door, waited for me to open it. On the other side, the laundry workers passed the dirty boxer shorts into the hole, where they were heated up by some method to which I was unfamiliar. I took out a pair which I identified immediately as mine, and thrust them down into the dirty water of the sink. I suddenly found myself holding a bar of Ivory soap and the end of a garden hose. I somehow managed to juggle all of these, scrub my underwear, and make them disappear upon my person in some fashion that I now find baffling.

Somewhere along the line, I must have stopped and had a conversation with a cowboy. And I wonder now: Why is it that I, a patron of the laundry, was required to wash my own dirty underwear in public?

Later, I woke up speaking German.

–Tom Baker,

2008. No copyright.