Dream Journal 2017-07-11: Fire Cop and Other Tales
There were several dream fragments last night, so let’s get straight to the bulleted list of what went down (arranged in order of increasing awesomeness)
A house built near a jetty overlooks a placid harbor. The weather is fair and the waters are calm. Gulls caw in the distance. Everything is peaceful.
I went to a county fair on a whim so it other people could see me and not think I’m a computer goblin of some sort. Although I wasn’t expecting to see anyone I knew at the fair, I ended up running into the girlfriend/almost-wife of one of my good high-school buddies. She’s working at some funnel cake booth, so I order a funnel cake and ask her how my buddy is doing. She tells me that they broke up and I am absolutely devastated by this news because they are one of the cutest couples ever and such nice people. But before I can offer my apologies for putting my foot in my mouth, my buddy comes strolling up to the booth (completely coincidentally) with a placeholder girlfriend. This placeholder girlfriend is so new and placeholder-y that she is wearing a nametag so nobody forgets her name. I bear witness to an awkward stare-down for the ages. It’s like a Mexican standoff, but everybody’s shooting dirty glances at each other and not actually murdering people (dirty glances are preferable to murder in most situations).
Some sort of outdoor summertime festival is happening after dark (perhaps around 10:00PM). There is a giant pile of dirt nearby that’s probably 2-3 times taller than me. Because I am still a child in my heart, you can bet your sweet ass I started climbing all over it. Some really young girl (probably no older than 5) started throwing a tantrum about wanting her own dirt pile, and her dad was like “You have not expressed an interest in a dirt pile before this moment, so you can either share the dirt pile with that Fish Davidson guy or you can keep throwing a tantrum and never know the joy of a good dirt pile.” That dad is on to something, folks.
For reasons that are unclear, I served time in prison and was later released. Apparently I lived on the second floor of a red brick apartment building, and the whole building was celebrating a holiday that is best described as “Christmas In July.” One of my first acts upon being released was to start drinking a whole bunch of alcohol out of red plastic cups, knock all the holiday garlands off the wall, and loudly sing Lorde songs in a stairwell. In the dream, though, this was actually part of the holiday tradition; and that means I probably wouldn’t get arrested for public intoxication and/or noise complaints.
And now for the best dream of the bunch: FIRE COP!
We open up our tale on a busy city street. Judging from the accents and businesses, this is somewhere in London. Someone in an office building covered in mirrored glass is doing some graphic design work and generally being terrible at situational awareness. A Bad Dude enters the room, ready to perpetrate a random act of violence against this poor graphic designer.
But the city of London is home to a mighty protector, and this protector senses impending danger. He rushes down the street and bursts into the office where the bad dude is. Nobody knows this protector’s real name, but everybody knows his street name: Fire Cop.
Fire Cop keeps a bright red mohawk buried underneath his police hat, but most people know him because of his distinctive uniform. Where the other police officers wear black slacks with their uniform shirt, Fire Cop wears shorts with black socks. He is not the sharpest dresser.
The cops of London don’t usually have guns, so Fire Cop thinks outside the box when it comes to incidents where ranged combat is required. Fire Cop apparently trained in the circus, because he has earned his nickname from his flashy displays of fire-breathing to take down perps. He’s got a silver Zippo lighter always at the ready, just in case he needs to singe some bad guys from a distance.
Now, I thought seeing a cop toast a bad guy would be pretty cool, but things took an even more impressive turn: the Bad Dude in the dream possesses the antithesis of Fire Cop’s power. The Bad Dude can breathe deeply and inhale Fire Cop’s spray of flame unharmed. The entire blaze gets inhaled, and is reduced to a tiny smoky burp from the Bad Dude. Bad Dude is zen-like in his precision and dedication to his task. It is a thing of beauty and awe straight out of a Kung-Fu movie.
With Fire Cop’s powers effectively neutralized, he and the Bad Dude end up having a good ol’ fashioned fistfight to determine how much justice should be served today. I woke up at this point wanting to turn this into a story. I’d like to imagine that it’s a story about a successful cop who meted out a lot of justice in the past, but now the villains are getting wise to his flame attacks and he struggles to find meaning and purpose when his sense of identity is (at least partially) nullified. I’m also imagining that Bad Dude was just a low level minion of some greater supervillain organization collectively called “The Lung” and they are teaching their members how to defend against fire attacks without flinching. But they are also teaching some dogma that seems benevolent on the surface, but perhaps could be exploited by a charismatic mastermind.
I still want Fire Cop to win, though. Because he’s a badass. Even if he wears shorts.
Picture of Fire Cop’s apparent relative, Axe Cop, taken from www.drewlundquist.com