THE STUFFED MAN

It was so hot last night that I slept with a wet sheet wrapped around myself, trying to keep cool. I felt like a mental patient.  I woke up in the middle of the night and the room was filled with steam rising off the sheet, and there was jungle stuff, abandoned equipment and tropical flowers, on the floor and on the furniture. I took the sheet into the bathroom and plopped it into the tub and turned the cold water on it. Their dog came in and started barking at me.  The dog barked so loud that the bathroom was soon filled with dead people. One of them wanted to use my wet sheet for a shroud. I said no, and we got into a big argument over it and woke up the Puerto Ricans in the next apartment, and they began pounding on the walls.  The dead people all left in a huff. "We know when we're not wanted, " one of them said.  "You're damn tootin'," I said.  I've had enough.

There is a man in a spaceship floating above a planet which is like a brain. lt can read from his mind. The planet recreated his dead wife from his memory. But she wasn't exactly the same. She was like a photocopy. So, he hates her. He locks her in a room to be rid of her. But she tears through the door like if it was paper just to be with him. She loves him but he hates her. So she tries to kill herself, but she can't die. So, she comes back to life like the resurrection. lt's only when he sees the pain she's going through that he's able to love her for what she is.