Bizarre Morning
Red light flooded the room. Gordon sat up quickly and hit his head on the low ceiling. Looking frightened, he glanced around the room and saw that everything was in its rightful place. He squinted at the sun, which was the source of the red light, as he thought, What a weird dream.
He had been outside his house and was being chased by a creature had the body of a lion and the head of an eagle. A griffin, Gordon suddenly recalled as the name of the monster, is a mythical beast.
Running under the shade of some nearby trees, he heard it crash into a nearby tree. Soon after, he heard it screech and begin crashing through the trees at an alarming rate. The monster jumped on his back, knocking him down. The next thing he knew, he woke up.
"Oh, well," he said aloud. Sometimes dreams were strange like that. Gordon stood up and stretched. He pulled on his clothes and quickly walked out his door. Just as quickly, he turned around and walked back into his bedroom, his pupils dilating with shock. Outside his bedroom, two griffin-like guards stood! And, he also noted, the olive-green hallway outside the entrance to the bedroom was nothing like the flowered wallpaper that tended to stand beyond that particular door.
"This has got to be some kind of nightmare," Gordon stated aloud. That would explain his surreal calm at finding two creatures, creatures that weren't even supposed to exist, standing outside his room in a strange hallway. He added, "I've got to stop eating pickles before I go to sleep."
His door slammed open. "Breakfast," a hooked beak squalled. The griffin tossed a box, which Gordon fervently hoped was filled with cereal and not some vile concoction. The box burst open and Gordon sighed with relief. It was cereal. Silently, the griffin watched Gordon eat. When Gordon had finished, the griffin silently took the food and left.
Quickly, so as to escape the other guards’ attention, Gordon crawled beneath the griffin's legs. Luckily, though they probably had good eyes, the two guards did not notice Gordon.
As he and the griffin rounded a corner, Gordon rolled out from underneath the monster and jumped on its back. Faster than he thought possible, the griffin reared and snapped its head almost all the way around.
Putting his shoulder under the beak and arm around the neck, Gordon squeezed until it collapsed on the floor and stopped moving. He glanced at the body and, not seeing anything that interested him, continued cautiously down the hall.
Running by a circular window, he, out of habit, glanced out and kept running. He then slowed and walked haltingly back to the window. Looking carefully through the portal, he was appalled by what he saw. Disbelieving, Gordon rubbed his eyes and looked again, but he saw the same thing. Thousands of stars zooming by, at about the same speed as he could run. "I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore," he muttered.
"This way! I heard something!" cried a voice nearby.
Gordon cursed and sprinted to the end of the hallway, where there was an oddly shaped door. Throwing it open, he rushed inside. Strangely, there were many controls in this room. Stranger yet, all of them were labeled in English. Not being one to stop and ask questions when the dice rolled in his favor, Gordon punched the button marked "Earth" and felt the sickening sensation of falling. This feeling only lasted a second or two, and then he landed in his bed at home. He squinted at the sun. "Logic tells me that all of what happened was a dream, but I know it wasn't."
Raising a hand to his cheek, he felt a bump. "Either I battled a griffin or I hit my head on something without realizing it," he thought aloud. "I did feel pain during the fight with the griffin, but could I have possibly imagined . . .” his voice trailed off. “No,” he decided. "That was all real.”
Gordon glanced at the sun. "It doesn't matter now. The sky is beautiful and I'm going to have fun outside." He turned to walk out of the room. A sudden tapping at the window startled him and he turned back around.
The hooked and feathered face of a griffin leered at him through the glass. "On the other hand," Gordon said as he slowly closed the blinds, "Locking myself in my room and playing video games all day sounds just as good."
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Bizarre Morning
