CoffeeEmporer
TMF Poster
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2007
- Messages
- 78
- Points
- 6
Another fun tale from your truly. Because sometime dreams are weird all by themselves, and sometimes when your brain is on fire they become something else.
**************
The illness came on fast.
Adam had known the possibility of getting sick was pretty high given that Allison had fucking sneezed directly on him, but even by the time he had reached his 1-bedroom apartment he was already feeling the effects of the flu work on his body. It wasn’t the virus we all know and loathe, but it wasn’t nothing.
He hung his coat with a groan, availing himself of its currently staggering weight. Sluggishly carrying himself to the kitchen, he focused on his next objective. A hiss of running water greeted him as he switched the faucet of his sink to cold. He grasped at the cabinet door above him, fumbled with a glass, and swayed as he filled the vessel to the brim with water. His mind slowly gave way to the next tasks on his feeble to-do list:
Bathroom, medicine, bed, sleep.
And so he did just that, stripping out of his sawdust ridden jeans and stained, faded flannel with a motion similar to that of a paddleboat being tossed in the midst of the thunderstorm. Only his boxers remained when he finally found himself in between the sheets of bed. Wrapping himself in his comforter, he blearily blinked his eyes once… twice…
And then Adam fell asleep.
********
Adam was nowhere.
He knew that with an utmost certainty as he found himself floating amidst a void of inky blackness. He neither stood nor moved as his body heavily drifted in this strange place. No recollection of his arrival graced his memory, leaving him trapped with only his present experience to derive any explanation from. But there was none, as there was nothing and nowhere to be found. He was simply here, in the moment.
And then he heard a hiss. It was like the static you hear when a broadcast tv channel wasn’t coming through, crackling and incessant. It was low enough in volume that it didn’t overwhelm Adam’s hearing, but instead caused him to feel that it was coming from an area around him. Near him. He strained his ears, searching as he would for the dull hum of a lost phone on vibrate. And then it hit him.
It was his phone.
He found his arm suddenly able to move and used that newfound freedom to reach into his right pocket. He found there the unmistakable features of a smartphone as he rummaged through the clothe container carefully, withdrawing it up toward his face with a pace that would make a tortoise look concerned.
When his hand finally did reach its destination, he found himself hearing that iconic hiss clearer than before. It took a few moments after that to register that the screen of the phone was flashing with the iconic snowy cascade of static. But somehow Adam knew that the static was out of sync with the visual blizzard that poured into his field of vision from the inky blackness that surrounded him before. It was… delayed? Maybe distorted? Or possibly drifting?
He stared on and on and on and on and on and on and on.
And then the broadcast began.
A flurry of tone and tunes rang out from the phone, enveloping his senses completely as a small song of welcome played. Slowly, a man appeared before him as the music grew softer. He was not tall, yet not exactly short with dark hair that had just begun to gray. He took up the screen as his gaze went out toward the audience at home. Dressed in blue jeans and a flannel carpenter shirt, very similar to his own, he began to speak.
“Hi, I’m Bob Vila.”
It was Bob Vila.
The background behind the strange celebrity cameo slowly began to fill into Adam’s vision. Filtering in like the trickle of light through the leaves of a shady tree, he saw a warm yellow merengue, two story farmhouse come into focus. It looked as if the early 1900’s home was recently restored as everything from the exterior trim to the wrap around porch looked as new as the day it was first built. Standing amidst a clear blue sky and green fields, the picturesque domicile almost radiated in the midday sun.
“And today we’re looking at the latest addition to this beautiful turn of the century home that recently was given new life.”
Bob Vila continued to narrate, his dulcet tones wafting around as shadows began to descend over him. The sight of the home with all its Rockwell aesthetics began to impose itself over the entirety of Adam’s gaze as well. He imagined what it would be like to be there, to feel the wind sweep over the fields, rich with the perfume of the earth. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, like a master vintner surveying his field. For a moment he even thought he could feel the warmth of the sun.
Adam opened his eyes and found himself on the steps of the porch.
He turned his head to the left, then to the right, and finally back at the porch. Sunflowers as tall as skyscrapers surrounded the perimeter of the property, surrounding it like a green and golden ocean. Adam took each step slowly, noting the rocking chairs squeak as they went back and forth by themselves. Finally, he found himself facing the front door. He leaned forward, preparing to knock as he heard the sound of laughter faintly coming from the other side.
“Let’s take a look inside,” he heard the voice of the master carpenter ring out from all around him.
The door opened by itself. Adam crossed over the threshold and found instead of any living room or entryway, there was the interior of a large rural barn.
“Well, hey there viewer!” A new voice suddenly chimed in.
In the middle of the barn, standing upright with her arms above her head, a well-tanned brunette looked towards Adam with an iridescent smile. Wearing a black and read flannel and blue jeans, she had her wrists bound with rope that ran up to a pully that hung from the rafters. The taunt position accentuated her figure, from the delicious curves of her hips to the wonderous fullness of her stomach. She did not look uncomfortable, presenting herself with an almost helpful sort of cheerfulness as she continued to speak.
“You ready to see how these new features work?” She asked with a mischievous smile that brightened her honey-colored eyes.
Adam went to answer, but soon realized that he could not speak. Or maybe he no longer had a mouth? He wasn’t sure to be honest, but quickly found himself not caring as he nodded toward this beautiful woman. She giggled in response as she looked excitedly back and forth, seemingly at no one as she shifted her cowboy boot clad feet anxiously.
Adam knew what was about to happen and grew anxious himself, eagerly hoping to see how things would play out next. His eyes grew wide, like the moment you know you’ve caught sight of a shooting star. Only one thing could happen next. He knew it in his soul like smell of sawdust and paint primer, like the heft of a 2x4, like the feeling of a job well done.
She was going to be tickled.
From every inch of the barn, they quickly began to appear: Pairs of rawhide gloves. Pairs of gardener’s gloves. Pairs of winter gloves. Floating lazily in the air as they approached the seemingly undisturbed bound woman, their empty fingers wiggling playfully as they drew closer.
“We’ve gone ahead given the pully system a kick in the pants to help allow for ease of movement and creative bondage positions. We’ve been lucky enough to be able to reuse a lot of the original components through the efforts of our wonderful restoration teameheheHAHAHAHAHA!”
The woman began to laugh wildly as the gloves descended all over her. They crawled over her underarms, goosed her sides, and teased her neck. The flurry of hollow fingers cascaded across the terrain of her upper body with unabashed enthusiasm. Adam watched eagerly as the woman was quickly reduced to hysterics.
He listened as the woman struggled to continue hosting the strange home improvement show he found himself witnessing through forced laughter, each informative sentence punctuated with giggles and guffaws. Tips on staining wood intermingled with hysterical squeals brought on by the animated gloves, bringing a strangely delightful combination of two of his greatest passions.
The gloves continued their work for several more minutes, each one running over the course of her body like a master carpenter inspecting their work. The gentle squeezes that ran over the contour of her thighs, threatening to burst the seams of her tight blue jeans. The insidious pokes and prods that wormed their way through the gaps in her button up flannel and the gentle caresses of her sensitive neck continued to unrelentingly torment the bound woman.
Eventually the mysterious hostess reached the end of her narration, bringing the laughter to an end as well as the gloves retracted from her to their original places amidst the barn. The woman, still tied to the pulley system, stared towards the direction of Adam once again and smiled brightly, her tear-stained cheeks blushing with the warm tinge of delighted exhaustion.
“Alright, let’s check out the bathroom now!”
The world shifted again as it had when Adam walked through the earlier door, finding himself suddenly within a beautifully curated bathroom. From the white semi-gloss finished cabinets to the shining porcelain bathtub with cast iron black feet, it shined with the natural light that filtered in from the patterned leaded glass windows. The nameless woman was now within the tub, still dressed in the earlier outfit save fer her feet which Adam now realized were bare. Her small size sixes were propped up at the head of the tub, decorated with French tipped white polish.
Suddenly, Adam’s perspective shifted as if he was hovering over bathtub looking down at her. Her toes wiggled excitedly as she made a sweeping gesture with her arms, encompassing the entirety of the tub in a showy presentation.
“This beautiful piece was a part of the original home, though the original brass feet had taken a lot of wear and tear. In our efforts to redesign the bathroom, we’ve opted to go with a cast iron set instead to better accentuate the black and white motif we’ve decided onhAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!”
Adam suddenly saw a pair of long handled shower body brushes suddenly appear at the bottom of the presenter’s feet, scrubbing up and down her arches with a lathered sheen that made him think of old cartoons. They glided across her sensitive soles, eliciting frenzied laughter in waves, broken up only by the occasional handy at home tip. She persisted none the less with her lessons of home improvement despite the ticklish distraction.
These moments began to flash across Adam’s eyes one after the other, each time bringing a new scene within the house featuring the ticklish woman being tormented in brand new ways. Feathers teased her ears in the living room and forks scraped across her feet in the kitchen. Like a slideshow of forced mirth, each one dedicated to some new aspect of the house that the woman found herself discussing.
Finally, as the Adam found himself staring at the open doorway to the master bedroom, he began to hear the familiar tones of show began to play once again. The woman, now completely nude after losing some segment of her outfit through the giggling tour, laid upon the queen size four poster bed. She was bound spread eagle to each point of the dark wooden frame, staring at the silent audience with a mixture of breathless exhaustion and eager anticipation. She wordlessly stared on as the familiar tones of the outro begin to play.
“Well that’s all we have time for today! We look forward to seeing you again in our next home. I’m Bob Vila for This Old House!”
The woman winked at Adam and smiled her bright smile at him one last time.
And then the young craftsman opened his eyes, covered in sweat from a night spent battling the sickness that wracked his body. He blinked once, then twice, before wearily sitting up in bed wrapped in a blanket cocoon.
He looked around his 1-bedroom apartment, taking a moment to reaffirm reality, before making a surprised declaration out loud to none other than himself.
“What the fuck was that?”
********
A few days later, once the last vestiges of the illness had run its course through Adam’s body and he felt himself confident enough to stand up for more than 10 minutes without falling over, he made his weekly trip to the Lowes near his home. It was 10am on a Saturday, late enough to avoid the morning crowd of early risers yet early enough to miss the late lunch rush of do-it-yourselfers. He recited his mental list like a mantra as he walked through the sliding doors. 2 x 4’s, WD-40, spackle… Each one echoed through his mind with an almost rhythmic like cadence.
It was amidst the smell of treated lumber in a quiet aisle tucked near the back of the store that he heard a familiar phrase which had already been repeated to him three times in the short walk from the door to where he presently stood.
“Can I help you with something?”
Adam turned around to once again to politely decline the offer of assistance, already knowing the store and his needs within like the back of his hand, when he froze with a sudden shock.
It was her.
Clad in the jeans and flannel that had stuck in his mind like an errant splinter, though now sporting the iconic vest of an employee, was the woman that had visited in his dreams days ago. Adam, like many of us, didn’t remember the bulk of his dreams. The fleeting morning light would scatter them like the discarded scraps of a finished project. Yet this fever dream, like many of the strange scenes of sleep we find ourselves able to recall even after the passage of many years, had been burned into his brain. Her smile, her curves, and her voice.
“Sir, are you okay?”
He realized he had been staring. His mind raced to form words, a little uncertain in the moment if he currently was sleeping or awake.
“Sorry about that… Erin,” he said as his eyes darted from her honey colored gaze to her name tag. “I was a little lost in thought.”
“That’s alright, I know that feeling all too well whenever I begin on a new project. Is there something I can help you with in particular?” She repeated with the same earnest tone.
“I think you can. I’m working on something a bit different than from what I usually find during my 9-5, so I would love a little help out of the deep end.”
“Of course! What can I do you for?”
“Well, as strange as this might sound, I have a friend who works a few events on the renaissance festival circuit. They asked me to help make a set of stockades for one of the attractions there. Do you have any recommendations relating to that kind of thing by chance?”
The woman’s eyes flashed for the briefest of moments, the same excited look that had graced her eyes through each and every moment of his dream. She smiled at him again, her customer service expression now tinged with a mischievousness that made his heart nearly leap into his mouth.
“I think I might know just the thing you need…”
“Adam,” he said, extending his hand toward the literal woman of his dreams. “My name is Adam.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” she replied as she grasped his hand warmly. “How about we find something together?”
**************
The illness came on fast.
Adam had known the possibility of getting sick was pretty high given that Allison had fucking sneezed directly on him, but even by the time he had reached his 1-bedroom apartment he was already feeling the effects of the flu work on his body. It wasn’t the virus we all know and loathe, but it wasn’t nothing.
He hung his coat with a groan, availing himself of its currently staggering weight. Sluggishly carrying himself to the kitchen, he focused on his next objective. A hiss of running water greeted him as he switched the faucet of his sink to cold. He grasped at the cabinet door above him, fumbled with a glass, and swayed as he filled the vessel to the brim with water. His mind slowly gave way to the next tasks on his feeble to-do list:
Bathroom, medicine, bed, sleep.
And so he did just that, stripping out of his sawdust ridden jeans and stained, faded flannel with a motion similar to that of a paddleboat being tossed in the midst of the thunderstorm. Only his boxers remained when he finally found himself in between the sheets of bed. Wrapping himself in his comforter, he blearily blinked his eyes once… twice…
And then Adam fell asleep.
********
Adam was nowhere.
He knew that with an utmost certainty as he found himself floating amidst a void of inky blackness. He neither stood nor moved as his body heavily drifted in this strange place. No recollection of his arrival graced his memory, leaving him trapped with only his present experience to derive any explanation from. But there was none, as there was nothing and nowhere to be found. He was simply here, in the moment.
And then he heard a hiss. It was like the static you hear when a broadcast tv channel wasn’t coming through, crackling and incessant. It was low enough in volume that it didn’t overwhelm Adam’s hearing, but instead caused him to feel that it was coming from an area around him. Near him. He strained his ears, searching as he would for the dull hum of a lost phone on vibrate. And then it hit him.
It was his phone.
He found his arm suddenly able to move and used that newfound freedom to reach into his right pocket. He found there the unmistakable features of a smartphone as he rummaged through the clothe container carefully, withdrawing it up toward his face with a pace that would make a tortoise look concerned.
When his hand finally did reach its destination, he found himself hearing that iconic hiss clearer than before. It took a few moments after that to register that the screen of the phone was flashing with the iconic snowy cascade of static. But somehow Adam knew that the static was out of sync with the visual blizzard that poured into his field of vision from the inky blackness that surrounded him before. It was… delayed? Maybe distorted? Or possibly drifting?
He stared on and on and on and on and on and on and on.
And then the broadcast began.
A flurry of tone and tunes rang out from the phone, enveloping his senses completely as a small song of welcome played. Slowly, a man appeared before him as the music grew softer. He was not tall, yet not exactly short with dark hair that had just begun to gray. He took up the screen as his gaze went out toward the audience at home. Dressed in blue jeans and a flannel carpenter shirt, very similar to his own, he began to speak.
“Hi, I’m Bob Vila.”
It was Bob Vila.
The background behind the strange celebrity cameo slowly began to fill into Adam’s vision. Filtering in like the trickle of light through the leaves of a shady tree, he saw a warm yellow merengue, two story farmhouse come into focus. It looked as if the early 1900’s home was recently restored as everything from the exterior trim to the wrap around porch looked as new as the day it was first built. Standing amidst a clear blue sky and green fields, the picturesque domicile almost radiated in the midday sun.
“And today we’re looking at the latest addition to this beautiful turn of the century home that recently was given new life.”
Bob Vila continued to narrate, his dulcet tones wafting around as shadows began to descend over him. The sight of the home with all its Rockwell aesthetics began to impose itself over the entirety of Adam’s gaze as well. He imagined what it would be like to be there, to feel the wind sweep over the fields, rich with the perfume of the earth. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, like a master vintner surveying his field. For a moment he even thought he could feel the warmth of the sun.
Adam opened his eyes and found himself on the steps of the porch.
He turned his head to the left, then to the right, and finally back at the porch. Sunflowers as tall as skyscrapers surrounded the perimeter of the property, surrounding it like a green and golden ocean. Adam took each step slowly, noting the rocking chairs squeak as they went back and forth by themselves. Finally, he found himself facing the front door. He leaned forward, preparing to knock as he heard the sound of laughter faintly coming from the other side.
“Let’s take a look inside,” he heard the voice of the master carpenter ring out from all around him.
The door opened by itself. Adam crossed over the threshold and found instead of any living room or entryway, there was the interior of a large rural barn.
“Well, hey there viewer!” A new voice suddenly chimed in.
In the middle of the barn, standing upright with her arms above her head, a well-tanned brunette looked towards Adam with an iridescent smile. Wearing a black and read flannel and blue jeans, she had her wrists bound with rope that ran up to a pully that hung from the rafters. The taunt position accentuated her figure, from the delicious curves of her hips to the wonderous fullness of her stomach. She did not look uncomfortable, presenting herself with an almost helpful sort of cheerfulness as she continued to speak.
“You ready to see how these new features work?” She asked with a mischievous smile that brightened her honey-colored eyes.
Adam went to answer, but soon realized that he could not speak. Or maybe he no longer had a mouth? He wasn’t sure to be honest, but quickly found himself not caring as he nodded toward this beautiful woman. She giggled in response as she looked excitedly back and forth, seemingly at no one as she shifted her cowboy boot clad feet anxiously.
Adam knew what was about to happen and grew anxious himself, eagerly hoping to see how things would play out next. His eyes grew wide, like the moment you know you’ve caught sight of a shooting star. Only one thing could happen next. He knew it in his soul like smell of sawdust and paint primer, like the heft of a 2x4, like the feeling of a job well done.
She was going to be tickled.
From every inch of the barn, they quickly began to appear: Pairs of rawhide gloves. Pairs of gardener’s gloves. Pairs of winter gloves. Floating lazily in the air as they approached the seemingly undisturbed bound woman, their empty fingers wiggling playfully as they drew closer.
“We’ve gone ahead given the pully system a kick in the pants to help allow for ease of movement and creative bondage positions. We’ve been lucky enough to be able to reuse a lot of the original components through the efforts of our wonderful restoration teameheheHAHAHAHAHA!”
The woman began to laugh wildly as the gloves descended all over her. They crawled over her underarms, goosed her sides, and teased her neck. The flurry of hollow fingers cascaded across the terrain of her upper body with unabashed enthusiasm. Adam watched eagerly as the woman was quickly reduced to hysterics.
He listened as the woman struggled to continue hosting the strange home improvement show he found himself witnessing through forced laughter, each informative sentence punctuated with giggles and guffaws. Tips on staining wood intermingled with hysterical squeals brought on by the animated gloves, bringing a strangely delightful combination of two of his greatest passions.
The gloves continued their work for several more minutes, each one running over the course of her body like a master carpenter inspecting their work. The gentle squeezes that ran over the contour of her thighs, threatening to burst the seams of her tight blue jeans. The insidious pokes and prods that wormed their way through the gaps in her button up flannel and the gentle caresses of her sensitive neck continued to unrelentingly torment the bound woman.
Eventually the mysterious hostess reached the end of her narration, bringing the laughter to an end as well as the gloves retracted from her to their original places amidst the barn. The woman, still tied to the pulley system, stared towards the direction of Adam once again and smiled brightly, her tear-stained cheeks blushing with the warm tinge of delighted exhaustion.
“Alright, let’s check out the bathroom now!”
The world shifted again as it had when Adam walked through the earlier door, finding himself suddenly within a beautifully curated bathroom. From the white semi-gloss finished cabinets to the shining porcelain bathtub with cast iron black feet, it shined with the natural light that filtered in from the patterned leaded glass windows. The nameless woman was now within the tub, still dressed in the earlier outfit save fer her feet which Adam now realized were bare. Her small size sixes were propped up at the head of the tub, decorated with French tipped white polish.
Suddenly, Adam’s perspective shifted as if he was hovering over bathtub looking down at her. Her toes wiggled excitedly as she made a sweeping gesture with her arms, encompassing the entirety of the tub in a showy presentation.
“This beautiful piece was a part of the original home, though the original brass feet had taken a lot of wear and tear. In our efforts to redesign the bathroom, we’ve opted to go with a cast iron set instead to better accentuate the black and white motif we’ve decided onhAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!”
Adam suddenly saw a pair of long handled shower body brushes suddenly appear at the bottom of the presenter’s feet, scrubbing up and down her arches with a lathered sheen that made him think of old cartoons. They glided across her sensitive soles, eliciting frenzied laughter in waves, broken up only by the occasional handy at home tip. She persisted none the less with her lessons of home improvement despite the ticklish distraction.
These moments began to flash across Adam’s eyes one after the other, each time bringing a new scene within the house featuring the ticklish woman being tormented in brand new ways. Feathers teased her ears in the living room and forks scraped across her feet in the kitchen. Like a slideshow of forced mirth, each one dedicated to some new aspect of the house that the woman found herself discussing.
Finally, as the Adam found himself staring at the open doorway to the master bedroom, he began to hear the familiar tones of show began to play once again. The woman, now completely nude after losing some segment of her outfit through the giggling tour, laid upon the queen size four poster bed. She was bound spread eagle to each point of the dark wooden frame, staring at the silent audience with a mixture of breathless exhaustion and eager anticipation. She wordlessly stared on as the familiar tones of the outro begin to play.
“Well that’s all we have time for today! We look forward to seeing you again in our next home. I’m Bob Vila for This Old House!”
The woman winked at Adam and smiled her bright smile at him one last time.
And then the young craftsman opened his eyes, covered in sweat from a night spent battling the sickness that wracked his body. He blinked once, then twice, before wearily sitting up in bed wrapped in a blanket cocoon.
He looked around his 1-bedroom apartment, taking a moment to reaffirm reality, before making a surprised declaration out loud to none other than himself.
“What the fuck was that?”
********
A few days later, once the last vestiges of the illness had run its course through Adam’s body and he felt himself confident enough to stand up for more than 10 minutes without falling over, he made his weekly trip to the Lowes near his home. It was 10am on a Saturday, late enough to avoid the morning crowd of early risers yet early enough to miss the late lunch rush of do-it-yourselfers. He recited his mental list like a mantra as he walked through the sliding doors. 2 x 4’s, WD-40, spackle… Each one echoed through his mind with an almost rhythmic like cadence.
It was amidst the smell of treated lumber in a quiet aisle tucked near the back of the store that he heard a familiar phrase which had already been repeated to him three times in the short walk from the door to where he presently stood.
“Can I help you with something?”
Adam turned around to once again to politely decline the offer of assistance, already knowing the store and his needs within like the back of his hand, when he froze with a sudden shock.
It was her.
Clad in the jeans and flannel that had stuck in his mind like an errant splinter, though now sporting the iconic vest of an employee, was the woman that had visited in his dreams days ago. Adam, like many of us, didn’t remember the bulk of his dreams. The fleeting morning light would scatter them like the discarded scraps of a finished project. Yet this fever dream, like many of the strange scenes of sleep we find ourselves able to recall even after the passage of many years, had been burned into his brain. Her smile, her curves, and her voice.
“Sir, are you okay?”
He realized he had been staring. His mind raced to form words, a little uncertain in the moment if he currently was sleeping or awake.
“Sorry about that… Erin,” he said as his eyes darted from her honey colored gaze to her name tag. “I was a little lost in thought.”
“That’s alright, I know that feeling all too well whenever I begin on a new project. Is there something I can help you with in particular?” She repeated with the same earnest tone.
“I think you can. I’m working on something a bit different than from what I usually find during my 9-5, so I would love a little help out of the deep end.”
“Of course! What can I do you for?”
“Well, as strange as this might sound, I have a friend who works a few events on the renaissance festival circuit. They asked me to help make a set of stockades for one of the attractions there. Do you have any recommendations relating to that kind of thing by chance?”
The woman’s eyes flashed for the briefest of moments, the same excited look that had graced her eyes through each and every moment of his dream. She smiled at him again, her customer service expression now tinged with a mischievousness that made his heart nearly leap into his mouth.
“I think I might know just the thing you need…”
“Adam,” he said, extending his hand toward the literal woman of his dreams. “My name is Adam.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” she replied as she grasped his hand warmly. “How about we find something together?”
