Where the hell had that come from, thought Todd. He remembered almost at once: the fucking book. He started laughing; how fantastically useless it was he had managed to retain a very complete memory of something that didn’t exist. Like a man dreaming a film in perfect detail that had never been made, or someone waking up to find a fully formed melody in their head, just waiting to be…

Todd sat up straight. That was it. Just waiting there. Just waiting to be written down. He’d read in Playboy about the Beatles song, “Yesterday,” and how Paul had dreamed the song, or some shit, and spent a year humming the tune to people and asking them if they’d heard it before, until he realized that nobody had and the song was his, all his.

I don’t have a fucking year, thought Todd. He reached for the legal pad again. Then—why waste time?—he pushed away the pad and took the cover off the typewriter. He ripped out whatever crap was in there, slipped in a fresh sheet, and began to write.

ALL MY COLORS
by Todd Milstead

Chapter One

The hardware store was empty. Jimmy the store clerk was clearing away some boxes when he noticed the woman standing at the counter. She was in her early thirties, good-looking with blonde hair and wearing a blue print dress.

“Can I help you?” Jimmy asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I want to buy a hacksaw.”

Two

TWO

Billy Cairns woke up sweating. This wasn’t a big surprise—Billy always woke up sweating. Sometimes he woke up sweating because he’d been drinking the night before, and sometimes he woke up sweating because he hadn’t been drinking the night before. But today was different. Today Billy was sweating through his ancient pajamas because he’d had a dream.

Normally Billy paid no heed to his dreams. In a decade when people were always being told in self-help books to follow their dreams, Billy was an exception. He would no more follow one of his dreams than he would follow a serpent with the face of his father who wanted to eat him; coincidentally, this was one of Billy’s recurring dreams. And in a decade where dreams were constantly being scanned for meaning and dissected for their relevance, Billy had no need for interpretation. He knew exactly what his dreams meant. They meant that his subconscious hated him.