Chapter Three: A Dream Filled With Mystery

I’m in the dream again. It begins and ends the same way every time. I am inside a huge, dark space sitting in a recliner from the 21st century. The seat is made of leather and surprisingly soft to the touch. I’m wearing a Victorian-age night robe with a drooping hat. In my hands are my two favorite childhood books: How to Skin a God and Winnie the Fooh Goes AWOL. I’m wearing soft, bullsheep slippers that coze and surround my feet. Every dream begins with me screaming a profane curse to the many gods. But, the statement is soon hushed by the other being across from me: a man dressed as a tiger.

He wears a beautiful holomask of a tiger that glows a bright orange. He wears a golden tuxedo with black lines gnawing at the hems of the suit. The lines are short and jagged like a pair of teeth gnashing into the golden tuxedo. The Tiger-Man is sitting on the edge of a folding chair. He has a notepad, and the hologram eyes seem to be watching me curiously. Every time it starts like this.

The tiger is my therapist.

He appeared when I was 8 years old. I was having a terrible day. For a reason long-forgotten, I was piss-ragingly-mad at my parents, and my godparents, and fell asleep with fire coursing through my veins. I woke up in the dream wearing the same lordly ensemble as now. In the early days, when this first started happening, the Tiger-Man was more . . . bestial. But over the years, he changed into a sophisticated, doctoral feline. He never tells me his name, so I just call him Tyga.

“Good evening, Sphinx. I hope you had a good day,” he says in a deep voice that resembles a purr.

“Good evening, Tyga. To answer your hopes, no I have not had a good day.”

“And why is that, Sphinxy my boy? You’ve always been very chipper when the boss allocates you a new job or mission.”

“Mmm yes, I should be more chipper. But, it’s very hard to be chipper when half your ribs are broken!” I pout and lean back in the chair.

“Don’t worry. They are being treated right now, at this moment,” Tyga says as he writes some archaic symbols on the notepad.

“Well . . . am I being treated by nurses?”

“Yes.”

“Are they beautiful?”

“In human terms? Yes they are, and they’re treating you and the other ruffian, Rex was it, with the utmost care.”

“Well, that’s something to cross off the bucket list.” I can’t help but smile and grab my forehead.

“What is?”

“Being operated on by humanoid doctors.”

“A strange thing to be on this list of buckets.”

“Well, you’d want to be operated on by something less metallic than a cold, unliving robot if you had a body!”

“Yes, I suppose I would. If I were in your situation.”

We sit there for a moment. Or maybe two. Until finally, the tiger and I recline a little, the air between us thick with fog.

“Why did ya summon yourself here, Tyga? Don’t you have something better to do?”

Tyga looks at me with the most serious eyes I think I’ve ever seen. He puts a

black glove to his maw and strokes his holofur. He closes his eyes and purrs a little.

“I came to warn you, Sphinxy boy. Because right now in the Von Gash estate you’re safe, and as your therapist, it’s my duty to change that.”

“Oh, great. Another foretelling of my future. Which part of my body am I going to lose this time?”

“Don’t be an Emo-Prick to me, ya little Space-Hoppa-Demon-Child. For the past God-knows-how-many years, I’ve looked over you and kept your mental state mostly – I stress,mostly – intact to the best of my ability. So shut your trap and listen!”

A boom shakes the dream space as Tyga stands. He charges forward with a killing intent in his eye. The tux rips across his growing frame, and fur begins to break out of the faltering hologram. The holomask shatters into golden sparks as his fiery mane erupts through the fractures. Tyga roars and lunges toward me in my recliner. The suit finally falls to the ground. The human projection is lost and replaced with a mammoth-sized tiger. The therapist I know as Tyga has changed into the anomaly called Lord Stripah – my own personal, living, breathing therapeutic beast of eternal knowledge and cuddles. This is the untamed and insane form of Tyga. The form from when I first met him. The sudden change shocks my bladder into failing for . . . about a minute.

“You alright, dude?” I whisper in my shame puddle. Immediately, the beast stops his approach and stalks backward into a web of golden holothreads. His therapeutic – more humanoid – form reappears as he slides into his folding chair. The golden holothreads dissipate into darkness.

“No . . . no, I’m not Sphinxy boy. Something’s happening in the world of spirits and anomalies, and it’s been getting me all riled up and excited.”

“What’s happening?”

“A rift . . . so big and destructive that you and your friends will have to gather every firearm, explosive, laser, nuke, and device of destruction just to keep it at bay.”

“You had me at firearm, my friend.”

I spring myself forward with my calves of steel, and seamlessly prop my chin on my hand displaying the most brown-nosing grin I can muster. Tyga is an anomaly – a spirit of creation and emotion made from the basic laws of chaos to run this little shindig known as existence. If he’s afraid of a rift, it must be one of the biggest, lethally insane rifts this side of Saturn. That’s bad news jack and I smell some sweet mayhem madness movin’ and groovin’ my way.

“This is just a warning, Sphinx. Just. A. Warning. Oh, and don’t let me forget, a premonition for that sack of bunnies and fart jokes you call a brain. Beware of the lizards who covet the stars.”

I open my eyes wide and drop my jaw . . .

I have no clue what that means. So I question him:

“What type of homeless junkie dealer gave you that kinda premonition? What in all the stars is that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve already said too much . . .”

“Oh come on Tyga! Don’t be that guy! You know you just said some half-assed, godly, space-haiku gibberish, and now you’re just trying to run away from your ineptual debunked fortune-telling.”

“Goodbye, Sphinxy boy.”

“Sit and spin, ya orange cat with a rag for a suit. I hope you burn in hell!”

“But Sphinxy boy, how can you possibly burn someone so cool?”