#8

"I've always thought that there is something very unusual about mittens." I said, eyeing off Dawson's baby blue hand-warmers. "Unusual and infantile." I added. We were walking briskly towards the station in the dying light of the day; the cars on the road beside us at an aggravated peak-hour standstill.
"Only a man who hasn't experienced the sheer, unbridled warmth and cosiness that mittens afford would say such a thing. Here," Dawson said, while slipping off his left mitten, "give it a go."
Reluctantly I took hold of it, "This seems somewhat intimate... Like, holding hands almost?"
Dawson flashed me an amused smile as I imagined how we would look to the people in the cars beside us: two grown men walking down the street, sharing mittens.
With a shrug I pulled the mitten over my hand and managed to withhold from reacting audibly to the blissful sensation of comfort. It was still warm from Dawson's hand.
Suddenly the world seemed more beautiful - a white dove made the sound a dove makes from a nearby tree, a light breeze gently scattered some leaves across the footpath, and I'll be damned if a shooting star didn't make its way across the darkening sky. We both stopped walking.
"Did you see that?!" Dawson remarked lowering his head from the sky back down to my eye level.
"Yeah I... I think I did," I responded, realising that Dawson had placed his hand on the small of my back.
"It sure was something, wasn't it?" he asked, looking fondly, yet somewhat uncomfortably, at me. I started to feel like something wasn't quite right.
"You... are you okay, Daws?" his hand still lingered.
"Never been better, my man," he started to lean in.

[I feel like this is as good a time as any to point out that neither Dawson or myself are gay.]

Confusion and panic danced across each of our faces as the distance between our mouths lessened. Something was forcing us to do this, to play out this scenario. Something... or someone! We were literally moving in slow motion, and the sound of a string quartet drifted over to us from a car radio nearby. And then our lips touched, ever so lightly. Instantly the music stopped, the world seemed cold and dreary again, and Dawson and I jumped back from each other.
"What the faaa??" Dawson exclaimed, wide-eyed.
I took a moment. "It's the project... it must be. It's Dale Stephens."
"How is that even possible?"
"I don't know," I replied. "But we need to stop him before his mind gets out of control."
"Or before he turns the whole world gay..." Dawson added contemplatively.

#7

There was not much going on inside Dale Stephens' mind... "We all know frogs go, ladi dadi da, ladi dadi da, they don't go croak! croak! croak!"

Dale was well aware that he was in an unusual state of quasi-consciousness and that he had been for some time. He was disinterested in contemplating why, or even how to break out of the jail that was holding his imagination hostage. He'd been strapped to a table for several days - yes, a table! The people around him had absolutely no regard for his comfort. Or they were just cruel sons of bitches. I mean really, who puts someone on a table? It's possible his posture would benefit from this in the long run, but present Dale cared little for future Dale. "Sucker," he sniggered (mentally).

His mind wandered back to frogs. Giant, tall ones that stood on their hind legs, and had a strange obsession with Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. In his imagination they were generally happy go lucky creatures, but they lacked a few key social skills.

A lightness invaded his imaginings suddenly, and he felt oxygen against his eyeball. The distraction broke his reverie momentarily and he was thrust into the midst of a painful memory he'd been long suppressing.

"Shit."

His mind hunched over in pain as though it were his stomach and had just been buffeted by a battering ram.