Maybe The Dice Came out Warm and Damp Each Time

Last night my cat woke me by vomiting on the bed. Then later I dreamt that my parents’ house, back in Iowa, was surrounded by zombies. The zombies wanted to, before they ate us, freestyle rap at us, and they did so in their thick, slow zombie voices. Many of them were missing parts of their faces. Finally I was like, this is too ridiculous, I’m done here, and I woke myself up.

Last night I attended Speakeasy again (you can read a past entry about it here). The night’s theme was religion, and I read stories number 126 and 147. I also said two sentences about how my father used to be a Baptist preacher. J. Bradley, Gene Albamonte, Ryan Rivas, and Tod Caviness all performed solid pieces. I drank a beer with a  turtle on the label.

I also, last night, had an idea for Story Every Day #150. It came to me in the fleeting weird anesthesia that precedes sleep, and I thought, No, no, no more of that until I finish this novel. But I loved the idea and didn’t want to forget it, so I emailed key words to myself: “arm hole dice.” Now the details are either lost or were never really in my head to start with. I think there was a father with a hole in his arm, and in that hole he kept dice to take out and roll when decisions needed making. Or maybe he rolled them as a tic, when bored or thinking, rattling them over the dining room table until somebody came in from the living room to ask him to please stop. Maybe the arm was wooden and he kept an assortment of things in it. Or maybe the arm was real and the dice came out warm and damp each time.