Alternative Endings

Once in a while, I'll have more than one book on the go at a time. This surprises some people, who wonder if I don't get the storylines or characters confused. It hasn't happened so far, and I can either alternate which one I'm reading each night or, if I'm feeling daring, read a chapter of each before nodding off.

Perhaps it's that I generally only read before going to bed that helps - sleep being that time when the brain organises everything, a full defrag for the day's myriad sensory inputs.

One might expect this would have an effect on my dreams but, as previously mentioned, I haven't been dreaming much of anything for quite a while. That recent one was a rather elaborate extension of my typical 'Zombie Dream' scenario... but last night's was something altogether different. I dreamt I was still reading one of my books.

There are times, either when reading, or watching TV shows or movies, that I can tell how the plot is going to go from a certain point. Far too many things basically telegraph later events by setting them up much too obviously. Other times, I'll make what I see as logical connections. Sometimes that leads me to the correct ending, sometimes it doesn't (I am not impervious to deus ex machina, after all).

What happened last night is that the book seemed to be suggesting a particular scenario so strongly, that my unconscious mind continued picking away at that thread. The upshot was that I woke up very keen to carry on reading, to see how close to the truth my dream came... and whether or not any of the dialogue I remember from my dream's version of the book is used in the real thing.

The other half of my dream was just as bizarre, but in a completely different way. It seemed to be set at a company meeting, where 'the boss' was giving everyone a bit of a grilling. I seemed to keep answering back as, eventually, she singled me out for some more direct abuse, making some slightly erroneous references to things that happened to me back in my school days, of all things.

Been feeling a bit odd today, generally. My stomach's playing up quite badly, so I'm in that situation where I don't know whether I'm hungry or about to be sick... and, sadly, only time will tell...