The Toga Guy in the Clouds
Cotton candy. Pink lilies. Ivory soap. Though I was aware that I was dreaming, the aroma floating under my nostrils smelled very real. As time passed, I started smelling other things, too. Freshly mown grass in the middle of summer. Taffy. Morning dew. Whipped cream.
One by one, I opened my eyes (well, technically, I didn’t actually open them since it was just a dream), and my vision was filled with hazy, late afternoon sunlight filtering in through the cocoon of golden clouds surrounding me. For a moment I just lay on my back and breathed in those wonderful scents, watching the billowy clouds drift before my eyes.
A few moments later, I started to hear faint music. Considering the whole heavenly vibe this place was giving off, I would have expected to hear something like the sweet symphony of a harp. But instead, it was the sad ruckus of somebody who thought they could play the electric guitar.
I sat up, annoyed by the racket, and looked around for whoever it was making all the noise. The golden mist cleared a little, revealing tall, pure white pillars. The architecture reminded me of those ancient Greek temples, which made total sense because we were studying Greek mythology in English, and I suppose that that somehow made its way into my subconscious mind…if that makes any sense.
Anyways, I looked around for the source of the noise, but couldn’t see anything other than the pretty clouds. I pulled myself up to a standing position and listened intently, then followed the direction the cacophony was coming from. As I walked, I noted that the clouds felt a lot like marshmallows under my bare feet. Bits of fluff poofed out from under my feet from each step I took, sailed up and came to a graceful halt, suspended in midair.
Suddenly, I tripped on something that shouldn’t have been there, and I fell face first onto the clouds. But since the clouds felt all marshmellowy, it didn’t hurt all that much.
I looked back at my feet to see what it was that I had tripped on. It was a coily black wire. The contrast between its color and that of the clouds was so obvious I wondered how I didn’t see it before.
I stood back up again and began to follow the direction of the wire. The noise became louder as I kept following it. The wire stopped a couple of yards away, disappearing around a giant blob of a champagne-pink cloud. I trailed after it and turned around the feathery bend.
Tucked into a crevice of golden downy was the culprit of all the noise: a tall guy wearing a toga with a blue electric guitar strapped over his shoulder. He wore wide, black rimmed glasses, and an afro stuck up out of his head, and smoke was coming out of his hair in a way that reminded me of someone who’d recently been electrocuted. The guy looked a lot like Steven Hyde from That 70’s Show. The way he was abusing the poor instrument proved that my prior theory was correct; this guy, whoever he was, did not know how to play the electric guitar.
“A one, a two, and a one two three four, one, two, and a one two three four…” he repeated, swiping his fingers over the strings insistently.
“Hey!” I called out.
The toga guy turned around, startled, looked around for who had spoken. When he spotted me, he grinned.
“Hey, man!” He talked like the stoned hippie named Leon, also from That 70’s Show.
“What are you doing?” I demanded as though I were speaking to someone who’d escaped from an asylum.
“Playing the guitar, man!” He struck the guitar strings again like a maniac, producing loud, ear-grinding sounds that did not sound like anything close to music.
I covered my ears to dispel the noise. “Cut it out!”
Alarmed, he stopped playing and looked at me like I was the one who was crazy.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“I’m an angel, man,” he said as though it were obvious. He tugged at his toga like that was a sign.
“An angel, huh?” I said. “Well, you sure don’t play like an angel.”
“Aw, dude. There’s a reason for that. I died before I could ever get my skills.”
“You…died?”
“Yeah, man. It’s a really sad story. Wanna see?”
I blinked in confusion. “How -?”
Suddenly, the clouds beneath our feet cleared away like someone blowing dust off of an old book. We were still up in the heavens, but we were looking down into a dark basement like were standing on top of a glass ceiling. Inside the basement was the toga guy, back when he was alive, I assumed. He was wearing a green t-shirt that read Aerosmith in white letters, and held a blue electric guitar in his hands.
“I died the day I bought it, man,” Toga guy shook his head sadly.
The other toga guy, the one who was alive in the basement, raised his guitar pick high up into the air as if it was a goblet of holy water. And then, he swung his arm down like the hand of a clock and hit the strings.
I flinched away at what happened next. A jolt of electricity shot through him. I knew it was electricity because of the charging sound, the lights in the basement flashing on and off and the way Toga guy was flopping in place like a fish out of water. He collapsed onto the floor a second later, his coiled hair steaming and the electric guitar laid out across his stomach.
I was glad when the clouds appeared again and covered the awful sight. I turned to look at the Toga guy next to me.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
He raised up his hand. “Wasn’t your fault, man. I still wonder what happened, though. Faulty wire or something.”
“So…you died playing the electric guitar?”
“No, man. I died playing the electric guitar.”
“…that’s what I just said.”
“No, man. You said, ‘you died playing the electric guitar’.”
“No. I said – wait, what? Hang on; were you high when you died?”
“Yeah, man.”
“Heh. Guess that explains it,” I muttered. “I really am sorry, though. Wish you would have learned the basics at least.”
“So do I, man. So do I,” he tsked, shaking his head.
“So am I dead? Or is this a dream?” I wondered.
Toga guy seemed just as confused as I was. He looked from me to himself and back to me again.
“I think you’re just dreaming, man,” he concluded. “Usually, the guys wearing the togas are dead, and you’re wearing pajamas.”
“Oh,” I murmured. “Well, do you mind sending me back? Your lack of guitar skills is buggin’ me.”
He wasn’t offended at all. “Sure thing, man.”
Before he could wave me away, I asked, “Oh – what’s your name, by the way?”
“Just call me Toga guy.”
“Okay. Bye, Toga guy. Maybe I’ll see you in my dreams again.” I hope you lose your guitar in the clouds before that happens.
“Sure, thing, man,” he repeated. Then he waved me away, and I felt myself being pulled back down to my bed by the force of earth’s gravity.
I opened my eyes (really opened them this time) and I was back in my bed, inside my little square room. The morning light seeped into my room from my only window and colored the walls with sunlight. I turned my head to the window and looked out at the golden tinged clouds on the horizon.
“Nice meeting you, Toga guy,” I whispered, whether or not he was just a figment of my imagination or a real angel who’d spoken to me in my dreams.
***
Yes, this was a dream I had recently. It doesn't really have a point. I just thought it was interesting so I turned it into a short story. Of course not everything is set in my memory, I made most of the things up. I actually made up the entire conversation, but I remembered that he talked like a stoned hippie.
