Strange Dreams

I don’t typically remember my dreams- only snippets or vague recollections remain. But this one stuck with me:



I awoke in bed, one Sunday morning. I could hear some birds outside, as I had let the bedroom window open for the fresh, cool air. Closing my eyes, my head cocked to one side as I picked out screams, hollering, and sirens in the distance. As I wondered what was up, I stretched out my hand to scratch Fred- my dog-’s ears. I felt her hair and searched, still facing the window, for her ears.
When my hand found them, they were hairless… and round. My hand stopped, and my eyes popped open. My head sprang up from my neck like a Jack-in-the-box.
There was a naked red-headed woman curled up on the foot on the bed, asleep.
I was absolutely still as my mind raced along with my heartbeat. Who the hell was this? I didn’t remember getting drunk last night, nor going out. After staring at this unknown woman’s bare back in complete puzzlement for some time, I coughed slighty, trying to get her attention. Nothing. I tried again, nudging her gently with my right foot. To this, she yawned widely, smacked her mouth a few times, and moved her head onto my leg- still with her eyes shut.
Enough of this, I thought. “Hey!”
Her head jerked up, and she pivoted her face to look at mine. With a wide, warm smile, she said “morning.”
I stopped again as her eyes locked into mine. I recognized those eyes- the same light chocolate eyes that had looked at me every morning for the past several years. They were Fred’s eyes.
Panic. Shock. “Who are you,” I exclaimed.
This woman with my dog’s eyes, stretched her limbs, and looked at me with a confused look. “I’m Fred,” she stated matter-of-factly.
“Fred who?”
“Fred. Fredders? I’m your dog…?”
“Uhhhh, no. No, you’re not. You’re neither a dog nor my dog.” Panic again. “Fred? FRED?!? Come here, girl!”
“I’m already here. Will you walk me now?”
Enough of this, I thought. Tossing the sheets over the woman, I jolted from bed and dashed for the living room and the TV.
“STAY,” I yelled- just to be on the safe side.

What had occurred was all over every channel, every show was pre-empted with the news. Some were calling it a miracle, some- terrorism, some- alien invasion. Like normal- no one seemed to know the why’s. All they, and I, could gleam was that at once all the world’s pets had become human.
Only the pets, wild animals still remained wild animals. And no matter what kind of pet it was- cat, dog, hamster, turtle, horse, goldfish, whatever- all had turned into people. No livestock either (thank G*d), only pets.
Not just newly formed people but, as my brief experience had already taught me, newly formed people with basic understanding and ability of speech- appropriate to whatever their owners spoke. If you lived in Japan, your pet cricket was suddenly a person who spoke basic Japanese.
Not only that, but the pets had turned age-appropriate. Fred, as an example, was 3.5 in human years so she now appeared 28 (1 human year = 8 dog years). This was confirmed a little later when my sister called, wildly upset when she and her husband were woken by her cat- now a naked, 80 year-old man with calico hair who was scratching on their comforter.

While I sat stunned and watching these events of hysteria on the news, Fred came out- walking upright like a normal human, went to the door, took her leash in her mouth, and knelt next to me. My eyes couldn’t help but be diverted from the TV.
“Uhhh, yeah?”
“Ah needth ta go,” she mumbled, leash still in her mouth.
“Go where?
“Gooooo!”
It sank in. This nude chick wanted me to put a leash on her and take her outside so she could piss on the lawn. I couldn’t stop my mind from its automatic sarcastic thought of “it’s a pervert’s wetdream”.
As I took the leash from her mouth, I noticed for the first time she was wearing Fred’s collar and tags around her neck.
“Can it wait?”
She whined, “not long,” and began bouncing slightly.
I won’t go into the details but we managed get her situated in the bathroom and everything taken care of. Needless to say, it was not the most comfortable thing for either of us.

Once done there, I handed her some sweats and a tshirt. She looked at these for a moment until I mimed putting them on. She got the idea.
We sat on the couch. Well, I sat- she curled up very Fred-like.
At this point, some of the initial shock had worn off and I took stock of what this “new Fred” was like:
Same eyes. Same eyebrows. Short red hair- more the length of dog-Fred’s shoulder hair but the same color. Caucasian (I recalled Fred’s tummy as a puppy was as pink as they came) about 5’7”/5’8”. Kind of a long nose. Ears very close to her head. I had already noted she had the body of a runner- not thin but lithe (hey, she was naked in my bed and I didn’t know she was my dog). Medium length nails- white though, not dog-Fred’s brown.
I reached out slowly and felt the top of her head. The odd skull-fin dog-Fred had was missing. As my hand retracted, human-Fred’s head followed it, sniffing.

“What do you remember,” I asked.
“You said we were going to the park to play catch today.”
“No- when you went to bed last night.”
“You said I had stinky breath, kissed me on the top of my head, and told me to sleep at the foot of the bed. I wanted a pillow," she said with a pout.
This was true. “Nothing after that?”
“Oh, I had a dream about rabbits. Chasing rabbits!” As she said this, her butt started shaking. I thought she might be trying to wag.
“So you know nothing about this?”
“About what?”
“Why you’re suddenly human,” I shouted, getting aggravated.
She shrank back at my tone. “No,” she said softly, eyes down.
I sighed. This was not her fault. Couldn’t have been. “Sorry,” I said sheepishly. Sheepishly. I wondered if somewhere, somebody’s pet sheep had just awoken as a human with a white afro-perm of hair.
She smiled and inched closer. “That’s OK. What now?”
I sighed again. “I don’t know. I guess we should watch the news and see if there’s anything useful on it about this.”
OK,” she said again, stretching out from her side of the couch to rest her chin on my thigh- just like dog-Fred. It made me… uncomfortable.

We watched TV for a while longer but got nothing out of it. No hard facts, no 800# helplines, nothing from the government as what to do (barring the typical Hitchhiker’s line: “Don’t Panic”)- just theories about how it happened, why it happened, and what it would mean to the economy. Would these new people have rights and the ability to vote in the next election? What would this all mean to welfare and unemployment? And whether spaying and neutering was now such a good idea (my mind “uh-oh”ed at that one as Fred had had her operation several years previously).
Human-Fred rotated her head on my thigh, looking up at me.
“Feed me,” she said.



And my alarm went off.
I've often wondered what would have occured if my dream had continued....
And "no", ya pervs- not in that way.