It was a dream sequence of course. I’d had to tell them it was a dream sequence.
They’d said
“ You’ll be crossing the line.”
“ It won’t cut.”
They were making my life hell.

I went out onto the veranda and lit up a cigarette while I collected my thoughts.
I just couldn’t figure out why Glenda had kissed me.

The horse and the dog were having some kind of dialogue, the kind which doesn’t go anywhere.
The kind that hangs in the air in the same way cigar smoke doesn’t in the back seat during a short ride in a fast convertible.

“Don’t fuck with me!”
Not the kind of language Glenda ever used outside the factory.
I put it in her anyway. She went quiet at that point.
That’s when I noticed the blue horse.

Up until that point I’d led a charmed life.
I was the happiest guy in a small town under a dark cloud in a two-bit one-act play.
If it wasn’t for Glenda I’d’ve been outa that place, shooting from the hip and not waiting around to answer any funny questions.

As soon as I told them it was a dream sequence they said,
“ You can shoot it like this from such and such an angle and it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t cut.”
All of a sudden the black dog was happy as a fruit bat, the white of its eyes standing out like a maniac in a Prussian blue frock coat coming straight at you.

She was very heavy. A dead weight.
You wouldn’t have thought to look at her.
It was the silence that got to me though.
I poured myself a drink.
The glass was cracked and I cut my lip.
The first I noticed was a ruby teardrop spreading like crimson cigarette smoke on a cold spring morning in the Appalachian mountains.

I was no lady and I didn’t mind who knew it.
Anyone who asked got a straight answer and a stiff drink.
That usually did the trick.
If they needed any encouragement I figured they had to be one Shatner short of a starship and told them where to go.
That was a place no man had gone before.

Glenda was sweet but had no balls. I had to tell her every time. That got my goat.

The sun was setting.
As I reached for my drink a moth the size of the smile on the face of a newly-divorced settled on the back of my hand.
I aimed for its juicy middle and stubbed out my cigarette.
It fell to the floor like a stone.
It lay there, kind of dead and beautiful, its wings jerking in a dance to the crazy beat of the screen door slamming.