InsaneJournal

I was in Manhattan...
I was attending a SF con, and damned if I didn't run into my best bud Neil Gaiman again. He was just finishing up with a panel, and suggested we go get something to eat together. How could I argue with that? He went and got his dog from the hotel suite and we went walking.

We ended up kicking around a couple of downtown neighborhoods, finally ending up down by the docks and the fish market, where he bought some fresh, raw clams and oysters. Yuck. Well, we sat down on some crates while he fished out a knife to open them up; apparently he likes raw clams and oysters.

There was a ring in one of them. It was an antique by the look of it, Victorian era maybe, of silver, with seed pearls set around a small sliver of abalone that was as reflective as a mirror. We both peered at it--

--and there was a little face in that mirror, shifting, moving: the trapped soul of a very evil sorcerer.

And the sorcerer met Neil's eyes, and made contact, and his soul leapt out of the ring into Neil's body.

They struggled for a moment, trying to share the flesh, and then I realized that, little by little, Neil was being forced out of his own body. In a second, his soul would be entirely pushed out, and like steam, it would dissipate, and he would be gone forever, unable to return.

I leaned forward, not even sure what I was doing for a moment, and inhaled his spirit as it poured forth, just barely visible, from his mouth, then knelt as his body shuddered as the invading sorcerer tried to coordinate himself with it. I breathed Neil's spirit into the nostrils of his dog, which went rigid for a second, and then the dog barked. (I have no idea how I knew to do this, but it worked. Neil's spirit was there; I could hear him in my thoughts.)

I looked up. The sorcerer, in Neil's body, sneered at me and tossed aside the ring and the oysters and ran.

I snatched up the ring, knowing it was the only prison that could hold the sorcerer's soul, and ran after him, the dog at my side.

But he got away.

I knew I had to go back to the hotel, where Neil's wife and family were waiting. (Yeah, who knew he'd gotten married again?) I wasn't sure how I was going to tell his wife that she was now married to a dog.

It was a long walk, and when I got back and knocked on the door to his suite, it was answered by his lawyer. His wife was in there weeping. Apparently the sorcerer (in Neil's body) had come by and shoved her, then ran off with his son Charlie (I guess it was their child together?)

I opened my mouth to tell her that there was good news and bad news: the good news was that Neil wasn't dead. The bad news was that he was now a dog.

That was when I woke up.



...I have the weirdest goddamned dreams...

Disclaimer to new readers of my journal: Neil Gaiman is not really my best bud. I've never even met him IRL. But sometimes the dreams make it feel that way.