In which I fall into a stream of consciousness

Total Word count: 29,037

I actually have more than that, but I haven't uploaded my stuff from the car into the main file yet, so the official count is still just over 29k. Been travelling, which is why I'm behind on updates. Been working, which is why I'm behind on word count. Oh well, I'm catching up.

I write just before bedtime most days, even if I write in the day. I've shared some of my sleep-writing passages with you before. Here's the one from last night. Mind you, I realized I was going all sleep-induced, so I tossed in a sentence to have the character dream, and just wrote what came. I think, too, that the words I wrote weren't the words I was thinking I was writing at the time. Which to me is an interesting phenomenon. I swear what I thought I was writing made more sense even to my conscious mind than what came out. And when I jerked out of it, the words I'd written didn't really match the words I thought I'd written. Anyway, that's for those scientist-types out there who are curious about it. I may try to do more. I ended up, for the sake of upping the word count, incorporating it into a story. The char is being hypnotized and asked to remember something. Just in case it's not obvious where I was sleep-writing and where I'd managed to wake up long enough to be coherent and on topic, I've emphasized the sleep-writing bits.

“The building, Mr Elphineus, describe the building.” Merkos knew that if Darius Elphineus were introduced this way, his father would. But no, Mr Elphineus was with the Army a long time. He said, “They took me through a maze of twisty little corridors all alike, dumped me into the middle, and left. It stopped ceasing to be a passage, and it just injected the boost for the competition! I mean, it became my holding cell. I think they pushed a button somewhere, but I could never find one when I was inside. I couldn't find any doors either. I sat there a long time, wishing I'd been born across from a bathroom because I didn't want them to see me and because I needed to go. They laughed. 'Not yet,' they said, 'we need our fun too!' but I think he's the best dog. If there was anything to find, he'd find it.”

Merkos nodded. “What else do you remember about the cell?” He cut off Mr Elphineus's strange statements, not wishing to embarrass the master any more.

“It had a bed, a bit of a latrine or bathroom, and the rest was smooth. Sometimes music would be pumped into the room, sometimes not. I went to sleep, and I dreamed of... something, let me think. I dreamed I was in the kitchen with the soup glass, and I did say lass, so that's something of your right here, I don't bite when I'm asleep, because my real body thinks I'm in terrible trouble and blow the horn for me. Save it for that one blow like a treasure. It would serve them right for missing this beautiful in that color. Ropes I think it was, and all sorts of stuff. Did you ever get into the car?? No? Well that would explain where I'd never seen you before. Our picture will go home if one can but lead them.”

“What's he talking about?” whispered Amabel.

“I'm not sure,” said Merkos. “I think the hypnosis is having a strange effect on him.”

Uh, yeah, it's the hypnosis. Right.