Issue #97

Robot Wedding, Dime Novel Dream, and Old Doll Dream

by Tom Whalen

Robot Wedding

Once, a robot was to be married, but when it tried to put on its gloves, its hands were so sharp they sliced right through them. With little time to spare (though more than it thought), the robot rushed to its car to get to the church on time, but with its circuits running hot, the fingers of its left hand electrocuted the vehicle. Immediately, it raised its other hand to hail a cab, but so eager was the automati, its hand, moving faster than light, ripped a hole in the fabric of space.

At this point, as you'll surely understand, the universe gave up the ghost, or rather sent it to that point physicists spend their lonely nights speculating upon, leaving the robot forever racing toward the church where its future in-laws forever awaited the conjunction of a robot with their daughter, her desires forever beyond her parents' comprehension, as had their own desires been beyond theirs.

***

Dime Novel Dream

Last night I dreamed I and my doll were inside a dime novel. As I flipped its pages, a crowd of dolls swarmed around my doll, each doll pointing their wooden fingers in a different direction. Suddenly my doll was no longer visible among them and they all turned toward me pointing at the end of the alley where a door, opened a crack, emitted a strange green light, as if from within a night pharmacy. I rushed towards it, but before I could squeeze through the door (I knew I had to get through it if I were to save my doll), the door slammed shut, severing my hand at the wrist. What, what, I said, looking down at the stump which wasn't bleeding. Then I awoke.

In the closet where my doll sleeps, I could hear it tossing and turning.

***

Old Doll Dream

An old doll lodged in a closet dreamed it was a doll sitting in a wooden doll chair. Morning light soon would warm its limbs, it dreamed, but at the moment the objects in the room were still in darkness. A clock ticked off the seconds on the mantelpiece, but the doll did not know the exact time, though it could hear birds outside beginning to stir. Four-thirty? Five? Wind from a door opening somewhere in the house ruffled the bottom of the bedspread under which the child slept with her toy animals. Is she dreaming of me, wondered the doll in its dream chair. I hope so. The child and her toy animals were warm in bed, dreaming whatever they dreamed. Only the doll in its dream was awake waiting for the child to come hug it. Will she play with me today? Or is this the day she'll lock me in a closet, even though I won't have misbehaved? I hope not, thought the doll in the dream. I'd rather not grow old in a closet.