Free Dreams That Burn In The Night by Craig Strete Page B

and he didn't know whether he was supposed to be angry or disgusted or depressed.
He worked at trying to be all three but then he thought about the picture on the wall of Candy Boxes' legs and he settled on being
suicidally depressed.
    He still had the
urge to kill something, a feeling in no way dampened by the legs on the wall of his cabin. If
anything, Candy Boxes' legs were a further incitement to riot. Aren't legs always what cause
riots? It seemed that it must be so to Sanderman.
    A drop of moisture
splashed coolly against his forehead. It struck softly but had the effect of an explosion on
Sanderman.
    He leaped into the
air, head reared back, mouth open to re­ceive the liquid. Rain! Rain! Rain! His blessed rain! His
ticket back to Candy Boxes! A drop of liquid melted on his tongue and his eyes sunk into his
head. He looked like he had just been mounted and stuffed. His eyes looking up, his ears hearing
that sound. He gagged. Crack. Crack. He threw up with nothing left to throw up. Those damn
nutcracker birds! He fell to the ground, completely fagged from gagging. He'd had quite a day.
Sander­man closed his eyes wearily. He could just see it
    At this very
moment, Candy Boxes would be putting a slug in the jukebox back on earth, U.S.A. Back there in
Mother Flicker's Bar and Billiards room. She'd be shooting pool, leaning over the table, her
boobs sometimes hanging right down into the side pockets when she was lined up just right. It
drove him crazy just thinking about it. And she had a pitcher of beer at her table. Ice-cold beer
and the glass she was pouring it in was almost clean by at least two days. It was driving him
crazy.
    Someone tapped him
on the shoulder. It was the old man again.
    "Can I eats belt
buckle?" asked the old man.
    "What?" screamed
Sanderman, his hand unconsciously straying to the worn metal buckle of his Planetary Foreign
Legion-issue belt. "What!"
    "Owed me for lunch
rat throwed without being to find," said the old man, teetering on one leg in front of Sanderman.
The old man looked determined.
    He left Candy Boxes
with one of her breasts in the side pocket. He tore the belt off with a kind of lethal frenzy and
thrust it at the old man with a vicious swing. The old man fell over sideways with the belt
wrapped around his neck. Sanderman seemed un­aware of the old man's tumble. Just as the old man
began gnawing on his belt buckle, Candy Boxes sank the eight ball and an astronaut reached out
and dragged her under the table.
    Sanderman screamed
with impotent fury and went dashing madly off in the direction of the jungle again. He ran
headfirst into a tree and that brought him back to his senses, in the sense that he imagined that
it knocked the astronaut out. He slid down the side of the tree and rested.
    Almost in front of
him, the bushes parted and a lizard shaped like a Volkswagen with a tongue stepped out into the
sunlight. The perfect victim. Sanderman's hands squeezed imaginary pulp in anticipation of the
lunge. Just as he was ready to spring all two hundred pounds of him on the helpless lizard, his
attention was distracted by a rather large snake of the unkissably poisonous va­riety. It was one
of those snakes in the who-to-avoid-and-what-not-to-touch category. It had an unpleasant talent
for being fa­tally poisonous. It was a foogi snake, the most dreaded reptile in
Mintfrappe.
    The snake oozed
toward the lizard, which promptly froze in its tracks, its tail going limp like a stock market
quotation.
    "Kill it," shouted
Sanderman, aware that the snake needed no cheerleading section.
    The snake moved on
oiled gears, coiling like a crocheted doily just inches from the doomed lizard's snout. The snake
moved its head from side to side in a hypnotic, sleep-inducing rhythm.
    "Kill it for me!"
whispered Sanderman.
    Suddenly, a shadow
fell over Sanderman and he looked up at the sky. For the first time in months, the sky was full
of clouds.
    "The rain!"