Save the Planet! – Day 3

And behind him, just like yesterday.  Hardy’s incessant drum-drum-drumming…

*****

‘Burghhh!   Werghhh!  Mah!  Eeek!  Help!’

Hardy sat straight up in bed.  His eyes were still tight shut.

‘What was that?’  he said.

He flopped straight back down again.  Eyes still firmly shut.

‘What was THAT?’  said Freddy, rubbing his eyes.  He looked around vaguely, shielding his eyes from the morning sun that was drifting through the window.

Three silent, sleeping people next to him. 

Freddy was on the edge of the big bed, and realised that he was actually clinging to the side to stop himself falling off.  In fact, the duvet, which was tucked in at the side underneath him, was keeping him in.  He levered himself upwards and crawled back onto the sleeping surface.  His head throbbed with too little sleep, too much dreaming, too much drumming.

Still, there was not much room.

Michael was now comprehensively wedged between Wil, who was lying flat as a flatworm, his arms and legs splayed out in a horizontal star jump, and Hardy, who was now the opposite, curled up tightly into a ball, his head jabbed into Michael’s side.  Michael was sleeping.  Freddy could see the rise and fall of his stomach as he breathed.

Suddenly, Hardy uncurled himself with a violent lurch, and sat up again.  He raised his hands up as if protecting his (still shut) eyes against the sunlight.

‘No, I can’t stand it…too bright…noooo!’

He flopped right down again, this time slightly uncurled, draped over Michael’s feet.

Michael involuntarily lashed out with his right foot, landing a kick hard onto Hardy’s thigh.  His eyes opened.

‘What was that?’  he said again, looking round with wild goggle eyes.  Michael’s foot, and the rest of Michael, was utterly still.  Totally innocent-looking.  Hardy sat straight on the bed, his head in his hands.

‘Freddy…you awake?’  he just about managed to get the words out through his tiredness and through his cupped hands.

‘Yeh…you OK?...I had a weird dream…all this noise and stuff…’

‘Oh…oh…oh…I had a nightmare, a real nightmare…’  Hardy buried his head deeper into his hands, as if trying to escape something.

‘What was it like?’

‘Oh, don’t make me talk about it, please!’

Freddy thought that Hardy actually seemed very distressed.

‘It was all these bright lights…flashing…moving…dancing…’

‘You really don’t need to talk about it, you know’.

‘OK, I won’t, but…’

‘But what?’

‘It was all these bright lights…flashing…moving…dancing, forming shapes and patterns in front of my eyes.  First this way, then that, I was blinded, I was deafened, I was…I was…’

He sat straight up, then jumped off the bed.

‘…I was dancing, like this…aaghhh!’   he jagged this way and that, moving his arms in stiff little circles, then his legs in rectangular patterns, then all limbs randomly…’then these colours…bright yellows with little green edges, vivid reds with pink borders…then finally this horrible, horrible…’

‘What?  Go on!’

‘…this horrible, horrible, pink colour, impaled on the top of Big Ben, like random shapes, gradually forming into this pink pile of blocks’.

It slowly dawned on Freddy what his friend was talking about.

‘That was no dream, mate, that’s real!’

‘Real?’

‘That’s the new Olympic logo, for two thousand and twelve!’

‘Really?  I’ll be, let’s see, sixteen then.  I’m going to enter.  One hundred metres.  You should see me go!’  Hardy took up a sprinter’s starting position.

‘In your dreams, mate!’  said Michael, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

‘No!, don’t remind me of my dreams…aaghhh!’  

*****

‘Well I dreamed about one of my parents’,  said Michael, waking up, dreamily.

‘Which one?’

‘Well, I can’t really remember, it was like a cross between my Mum, my Dad, my Grandad, Uncle Bob, and Aunty Selina’..

‘Sounds like a monster…’

‘No, it was definitely a parent…’

Freddy turned to his friend.

‘Parents aren’t like that really, are they?’

‘Oh no, this was a good dream.  I was lying in bed, surrounded by all the cuddliest cuddly toys you’ve ever seen.  This strange mixed up adult came into my room, and said ‘Good Morning, Michael dear’, how are you?’.  It slowly drew back the curtains and said ‘Is this too bright for you?’, and then  ‘it’s time for school now….’  I said, ’aw no, it’s much too early’, and the mysterious parent said,’oh, OK, dear, that’s fine, you have another hour in bed, you can go to school late and I’ll write a note to your teacher.  I’m sure she won’t mind’.

‘This sounds pretty unlikely’, said Freddy.

‘There’s more.  I drifted off to sleep and when I woke up again, it was ten o’clock in the morning.  The strange being was there again, carrying a big tray full of breakfast things.  It said, ‘I’ve brought you your favourites, crisps, coca-cola, and I’ve spread your sandwiches extra thick with chocolate spread!  I do hope you enjoy it!’

‘That sounds like the best dream ever!’

‘Well, actually it all got a bit much.  By the end I was feeling sort of sick’.

‘Well, I’m feeling sick just listening to it’, said Hardy dismissively

Wil sort of woke up, then started babbling.

‘Eeaowwm!’  His head tossed to the right. ‘Rrrrooom!’  His head tossed to the left.  He repeated these sounds and movements several times.

‘Wow, he’s having a nasty dream too…!’  said Hardy.

‘Actually, I think he’s OK’, replied Freddy.

What was Wil dreaming about?

*****