“Jeez, Barry, I thought you were *dead*.”
“*I* thought I was dead. Inside the dream. Bass had a rock the size of a small schoolboy’s head. Hit me with it right in the kisser!”
“*3… hours, Barry. *Three* *hours*.” She sits back in the chair a bit. “Anyway, *why* was she trying to kill you? This Bass woman.”
“Man. Bass man. Ernest T.. Haven’t you ever seen ‘The Andy Griffith Show?'”
“Of course I have, Barry. I meant *man*.” Why did she say woman? she thinks to herself. But this is not about her. This is about *him*. She turns her attention back to the freakishly long dream which he for some God awful reason couldn’t wake up from. It was like some kind of temporary *coma*.
“I think,” he answers Wendy’s question, “he was jealous of me.” The laugh track ended there, he knew. Time for something serious; time for *death*. In the show!
“Why? Why Barry? Why was he jealous?”
A common love, he understood. Helen. Helen Pettry Crump, also known by the schoolboys and even some of the opposite shore experimenting schoolgirls as Helen Pretty Rump. And now Ernest T. was a 33 year old schoolboy himself. Always looking for a potential new bride. Watching her from the back with the others, he knew he’d found one!
“Ernest T.!” she called to him one day, whirling around from the blackboard, surprising him. “Solve the following equation.”
Suddenly there was no schoolroom, no teacher. Just a rock. He thought long and hard about what’s on it but couldn’t reduce it to nothing. This was *something*. His blood began to boil inside him again. I’m going to *take* this rock… or a smaller version thereof… Aaaaaaand.
“And that’s all I remember, Wendy. Swear to God.”
(to be continued)
Sunklands 