November 27, 2009

 
So no more red dots yesterday. Actually, no more of anything yesterday. After putting you down, I fell into an uninterrupted pitch black sleep until this morning. Yes...that was almost twenty hours of sleep. But hey, I'm not complaining. I feel way better. Cold be gone!

I said I'd get to the Safeway woman story soon, so I best to to it.

It was a Wednesday. I remember it clearly because Stevie and I were picking up groceries for dinner before band practice, and we have band rehearsal every Wednesday night.

We were standing in the checkout line when I noticed a bright red dot next to the headline "Bat Boy Hoax Exposed!" on The Globe. It was the same red dot I found in my journal two days before.

"Hey Stevie," I said. "Check out The Globe."

"What about it?" He replied in his high pitch whine.

"Do you see a red dot?"

"All Globes have a red dot. It's their logo."

"No...not the logo. The one next to the Bat Boy story."

"There's no dot there. You must be seeing things dude," he said curtly.

I let it go, but picked up The Globe. Something wasn't completely right about it, but I couldn't place it. I got stuck in a loop of contemplation about the dot.

"Dude! Check out the woman staring at you." Stevie interrupted my concentration. I startled and knocked over the candy rack behind me. A loud metallic clank echoed between the cascading Orbit, Snickers, and M&Ms. "Fuck man! Don't do that!" I threw The Globe on top of my groceries. My face flushed, and I spun around to clean up my mess.

"Sorry," I said to the cashier without looking at her. "I'm picking it up."

Stevie leaned in close and said, "Dude, no really. Check out the chick staring at you. She's there at Customer Service."

I grabbed some peppermint Trident, a few Butterfingers, and two packages of Skittles and put them back on the rack. As I leaned down to grab more spilled candy, I glanced over at Customer Service. There she was: extraordinarily tall, slender not skinny, evenly cut black hair stretching to her waist, bright green wide eyes circled with black liquid eyeliner giving them a hard edge, wiry long fingers tapping the counter impatiently. Her back was to me; her head unnaturally angled was looking directly at me. She rarely blinked.

"Do you know her?" Stevie asked.

"Excuse me gentlemen," the cashier interjected, "but you're holding up the line."

"Sorry. Sorry. My apologies. Just trying to clean up the mess I made."

"I've already rung you up. Do you have a Club Card?"

"Oh...yes...where is it?" I reached for my wallet, opened the leather two-fold, and looked behind my driver's license. It wasn't there. "Where is it?" I muttered to myself.

"What's your number?"

"Number," I asked.

"Yes. Telephone number," the cashier pressed.

"Oh...THAT number."

I had to think really hard about what number I put on my application for the Club Card. I never gave a current one, fearing telemarketers, so that meant it could have been any of about 20 different ones. As I sat there thinking about it, my eyes turned towards the tall woman. She was still staring at me. Now, her body was turned fully in my direction, and I saw she was wearing a long-sleeved black t-shirt with a giant red dot on it.

"Hurry the hell up," someone screamed from the back of the line. "We're all trying to get out of here."

"Stevie?" I said.

"Yes."

"Can you please give her your card? I need to get out of here." I handed him $40. "I'll meet you outside."

"Uh...okay," Stevie said.

"Don't forget that Globe," I emphasized as I walked away from the checkout line.

"Whatever," he replied.

I had to pass Customer Service to leave the store. I could have sworn I heard her say, "Don't ignore the dots," as I walked past her. Her eyes, not her head, followed me as I exited the automatic doors. I was officially creeped out.

The cool crisp fog-laden air greeted me and snapped me back to some semblance of reality. I tried to forget about her, instead wanting to focus on band practice that night. But every time I tried to think about something else, I found a way of relating it to her.

Stevie joined me outside a few moments later. He was carrying our groceries. The Globe was missing.

"Damn it Stevie. I told you to get The Globe." I said brusquely.

I ran back into Safeway past Customer Service paying attention to nothing other than getting that Globe. The line was gone, the candy picked up, and The Globe was back on the rack.

"Forget something," the cashier said.

"Yup. Needed to get this Globe. I've been following the Bat Boy story for years." I grinned and handed her a $10 bill.

"Club Card?"

"Forget it," I retorted.

She gave me my change, and I headed out of Safeway. The woman wasn't standing at Customer Service any more. In fact, she wasn't anywhere in the store. It was almost like I imagined her, but I know I didn't because Stevie was the one that pointed her out to me.

I met Stevie outside. He was kind of annoyed with me, but didn't say anything. We headed to band rehearsal.

And that's the end of the story.

I know there isn't much to it. I am still trying to work out the pieces. Who knows when that will happen.

Well...I'm done for now. See you tomorrow or in a couple of days. Ciao.

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November 26, 2009

Hey There. I'm back. I've been incredibly sick over the last few days, so much so I haven't even really thought about any of the red dots. I've been downing Nyquil and Emergen-C for the last 48 hours. (Note: Don't ever take one right after the other. You will end up in the bathroom, head over the toilet, worse than you were before.) I'm feeling slightly better now, except for the achy joints and occasional dizzy spells.  

I had to pick you back up today not only to momentarily escape the crappiness I feel, but also because I had the most unsettling dream last night. I'll try and record some of the past instances of red dots, but it feels like my energy will fade at any moment, and I have to record this dream before it escapes my memory.

I sat on my comfy plaid couch most of yesterday wrapped in the pastel afghan my granny crocheted me. I flipped channels between the Food Network, Home and Garden, and the endless James Bond movies on SyFy. Once that got boring - I can only take so many flipping holiday cooking shows - I ordered Drag Me to Hell on OnDemand. Somehow, the old gypsy, Allison Lohman, and that button entered my subconscious. More on that soon.

After the movie, I made a can of Campbell's Chicken Soup, slurped it down, and passed out on the couch while watching The Spy Who Loved Me. It was unrestful sleep, the kind that makes you really tired. The movie mixed with dreams. Soon, I was swimming off the shores of Italy with Jaws, not the shark but the henchman with the silver grill after 007, walking along the ocean floor trying to bite off my toes. When he finally chomped off my pinky toe, I was at home with Paula Deen making pickled pig's feet, and the whole place stunk of boiled vinegar. The liquid was turning into a gelatinous mess -- one that Paula told me I would have to clean.  The stench and the fat morphed into wallpaper paste, and son I was remodeling a kitchen with large red polka dots. Yes...red dots.

I recognized the dots instantaneously as the same red dots that have been teasing me for the last few weeks and startled awake. The first thing I saw when I woke up was the VCR, yes I still own one, blinking 11:42 in its dull green light. Except, the dots of the colon were red, and the time couldn't have been right. If it was, it meant I had slept on the couch for almost ten hours. I rubbed my eyes thinking I must be hallucinating from the fever and looked at the clock again. The red colon was gone, and the time read 1:43. I had only been asleep a couple of minutes. Oh...and it wasn't blinking either.

Unnerved at this point, I turned off the television leaving Jaws in hot pursuit of Bond, took two capfuls of Nyquil, and went to bed. It took me quite a while to fall asleep. I couldn't stop obsessing about the wallpaper. When I finally did, it was filled with tossing and turning until I entered dreamland. Then, everything changed. It's why I have to write this down even though all of my joints and muscles ache and it's uncomfortable to sit in this chair.

It started with sinking. The bed turned into water, and I was slowly drifting to the bottom of the ocean. Jaws was there. This time it was the shark. I wasn't afraid at all. Instead, I just watched him swim elegantly through the water. The gentle back and forth motion of his body lulled me into a trance, and I woke up on a beach somewhere in Southern California. It was bright and the sun was high in the sky. Next to me were about a dozen or so sunbathers all on beach towels with red dots. Some were like a giant Target logo. Some were like the wallpaper from the dream. On one of the towels laid Allison Lohman. On another laid the woman I saw in Safeway. The same on who can see the red dots. (I promise, really I do, I will tell the Safeway story soon.) The Safeway woman was fully clothed head to toe in back, the same outfit I first saw her in, and she was staring at me. She was the furthest person from me.

Allison Lohman was to my left and was also staring at me. When she saw me look at her, she smiled and said, "I have a gift for you."

I replied, "I don't want your gift. I don't accept it. I know what it will do."

"Then follow me," she said.

I stood ready to follow her. She stood too. So did the woman in black.

I looked around me, and we were no longer at the beach. Now we were at a fortune tellers with red circular candles on every surface. A circular table with a red table cloth sat in the middle of the room with Tarot cards fanned on one side.

"Please sit," Allison commanded, and so I did.

A red beaded curtain directly across from me rattled and out walked the Safeway woman. As she sat down at the table, she morphed in to the gypsy from Drag Me to Hell. Her dentures chomped, foam gathered at the corners of her mouth, and she leaned in close to me. Up until now, I was perfectly calm. Seeing the gypsy put me on edge, and I quickly stood up and looked for Allison to tell her I was leaving. She was no longer in the room. It was just me and the gypsy. Fear gripped me, and I ran for the curtain.

The gypsy screamed in a pitch that shattered all of the glass in the room including the candle holders and the three window and the little trinkets for sale. "Pay attention to the dots! They are the key!!"

Shards of glass flew in to my eyes and blood dripped in perfect circles down my cheeks forming a large pool beneath my feet. There was a sudden clap. The shards flew out of my eyes, and I was standing in a pitch black space with the pool of blood still underneath me. I tried moving, but was stuck in place by two hands firmly gripping my ankles. I screamed, terrified. The scream bounced and echoed all around me as it it were a round being sung. The hands pulled me through the blood beneath my feet.

I was back at the beach. This time the sun was setting and burned a bright red. The only other person on the beach was Allison. She approached me and said, "I have a gift for you. Don't be afraid of it."

"I still don't want your gift." I replied crying. "I just want to wake up."

It was then that I realized this was all just a dream. I turned to her and said, "I will take your gift as long as I can wake up."

Allison presented me with a white envelope. I tore it open, and it contained a single red button.

"Pay attention to the dots," she whispered in my ear.

Everything faded to black.

I woke up a little while later, and I was holding a button. I panicked. How on earth did this happen? Then, I looked at the pajamas I was wearing, and they were my black flannel one with the red buttons. One of the buttons was torn off and now in my hand. The funny thing is: I don't remember putting on those pajamas before hopping in to bed.

I looked around my bedroom and found a neat pile of clothes at the foot of my bed. My closet door was wide open. Inside, it was messy as if someone tore through it looking for something. I deduced that I must've been sleepwalking, something I haven't done since I was 11 years old.

A dizziness hit me, and, as I was about to lay back down on the bed, I glanced at the clock. It was blinking 11:42, and, you guessed it, the colon was red.

I couldn't go back to bed. I put the button with my red dot collection. Then, I had to open you up and start writing everything down no matter how I felt.

That's it.

I am still trying to figure this all out. I have no idea what any of it means. I just know I have to pay attention.

I'm feeling worse now than I did when I started writing this, so I'm going to take a few more capfuls of Nyquil and, hopefully, actually sleep. We'll see if that actually happens.

Be back soon.

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November 23, 2009

 
So...I didn't get to you yesterday. Sorry. It was a hectic day of cooking and entertaining. I set time aside in the morning to start this story, but instead called my grandma. (She's reading Going Rogue.) It seemed a better use of time. At one point during our conversation, I could have sworn she said something about a new package of red dots she just bought to price her homemade baked goods she was selling at the Christ, the Redeemer Bake Sale. But I could be crossing my wires. All I can think about are the red dots.

Which bring me to the beginning of my story.

It all started when I opened an old notebook and saw the dot. I had just gotten home from the dentist and was slightly out of it. It was around 3:00pm, a time when the only goof television on is People's Court, and I wasn't about to watch that trash today. Actually, I did turn it on only to find out I had just watched the episode about three weeks ago when it was shown at the 11:00am time slot on a different channel. (I do like trash tv.)

I had just finished all of the books on the bookshelf and all the magazines in the bathroom. There was nothing to do, so I put on a Magnetic Fields' album and grabbed my memory box from the hall closet. The yellow college-lined notebook sat on top of everything else. I picked it up and thumbed through it.

That's when I found it. It was large, raised, and bright red. It was hard to miss and looked trapped. I don't know why I thought it looked trapped -- it was just a dot -- but something about it seemed sad and lonely, like it might be on of many. Indeed, it is.

The journal it was in was the one that chronicled my break up with my girlfriend some three years ago. I remember the day I wrote the page vividly. It was a bright and slightly crisp day, and the fall sun was low in the sky. I sat on a cliff overlooking the ocean, feet dangling below me. It's one of my favorite spots in The City because you can always find a spot to yourself. I needed to be by myself.

I had just finished my joint and took a swig from my flask of tequila and began writing this:

I did it, fucking finally. We're no longer together. I told her I just couldn't lie anymore. It was all a facade anyway. She was a dyke. She just never wanted anyone to know, especially her family. I couldn't continue being her excuse for not coming out. Sure, I knew her family would disown her. But that's not my problem. I played along long enough.

Yeah, it still fucking hurts. We were together eight years. Eight fucking years! Why the hell didn't I see it earlier? Why? I guess it had something to do with....

 I never finished that sentence because just then I dropped my flask down the side of the cliff. There was a small beach down there, so I knew I had a chance of finding it still. So I set off down the pat to my right to try and find the flask. I never finished the entry. I did find the flask.

Now, there was this big red dot after the "with". Totally weird and random. I know. At first, I thought someone might have been playing a prank on me -- that maybe someone might have sneaked into my apartment, found my memory box, opened it, found the journal, placed the red dot in it, and put everything away exactly where it had been and not taken anything else. But that seemed somewhat implausible when thought about in any depth. Who would really do that? I still can't answer that question.

It puzzled me for a few more hours, so much so I had to put the notebook back into the memory box and then put the memory box back into the closet. Hoping out of site, out of mind.

At around 7:00pm, I turned the television on as I prepared dinner. People's Court was on again. You know what happened next? I couldn't believe it: There was a bright red dot on Judge Marilyn Milian's nose, just like a clown!

I flipped the channels thinking it might be some static or crossed signal or some other freak accident of the cable box, but when I turned it back to People's Court it was still on her nose almost like it was staring at me.

The case involved some sort of dispute about an unpaid carpet cleaning bill. The defendant argued that the carpets became moldy after the cleaning, and so she didn't have to pay the bill. I don't remember anything else, partly because I had to change the channel and partly due to the fact that the red dot disturbed me so much that I fot out the vaporizer and inhaled deeply. The rest of that night is a blur.


Well...that's it. That's how I first saw the red dots. I would have put them out of my mind, but I saw more the next day. But that story is for another day. I'm off to work.

Ciao for now.

p.s. - 10pm - I saw one red dot today. I left work with a very hot vanilla latte, and it was on the coffee cup. I didn't notice the red dot at first because it was under the cardboard sleeve. As I was about to throw the cup away, the sleeve slipped revealing the red dot. I brought the cup home and added it to my growing collection of "things with red dots" in my home office.

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November 21, 2009

 
This is the journal of Martin Morowitz. I've had some really weird things happen to me recently. All involve red dots. I am not exactly sure what they mean or why they keep showing up in the most random places -- old journals, television commercials, gossip rags, murals on buildings, people's clothing -- but I will figure this out. I have to.

It seems that no one else can see them. Well...that's not entirely true. There is at least one other person that's seen them, but I will get to her later. Everyone else I've asked definitely can't see them, even when they are on their clothes.

There are some basic facts about the red dots:

1. Once they show up, they never go away. Or, more precisely, they have yet to disappear.
2. All of the red dots, minus the one on the woman mentioned above (really, I will get to her momentarily) are on things that directly relate to me -- things I've created, news stories I've been following for years, people I know, works of art I like, etc.
3. I have never seen them materialize. They always look like they have always been there, even in things like my journal.
4. The red dots may have been around a lot longer, but I first noticed them about two weeks ago.
5. Nothing has dramatically changed in my life. I'm still single, working at the Coffee Cafe, and performing with my band Concrete Slab.

That's all I know.

Oh wait...there is one more thing that should be noted. It seems trivial, but important at the same time because it is a first.

The morning of the day the red dots appeared, I had a dentist appointment, and he diagnosed me with my first and only cavity in 33 years. Silly, I know. But I think it may be related.

All right. Off to bed for me. I'll continue my story tomorrow.

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