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Student by Day, Wookie by Night
A dream log by Justin Wuycheck
illustration by Sharon "Mama" Spell
...So I'm flying the Millennium Falcon and notice my gargantuan hand-paws all covered with shaggy brown hair. Outside the cockpit window red lasers stream off into endless space. Han Solo tells me to dive and make a beeline for Hoth. I do; the icy planet looms into view.
Apparently, I do not like to land the Millennium Falcon, because, in the next instant, Han (or “MRNNGH,” as I call him) and I are being chased down tunnels very similar to the icy Hoth corridors in The Empire Strikes Back, except these are clay. Again, red lasers flying by us, but guess what? I got my trusty crossbow with me, and I'll let you in on a secret: Empire-issue armor ain't jack to a deadeye Wookie.
But the Stormtroopers keep coming, we turn a corner and my basement appears in the cavewasher, dryer, hot water heater. I'm thinking dead-end, but Han Solo points out some stairs that lead up to a small wood door in the ceiling. I know it opens to a foot-high crawl space, but what choice do we have? As he creeps up the steps and breaks open the door, I cover. Another of the Empire's elite gets it square in the chest: the knees buckle; the arms flail up and out as he topples backwards with a clatter.
I crouch up the stairs and squeeze my seven-foot frame into the space; it's thick with cobwebs. Nobody attacks, which makes us nervous, and we look for a way out. We push on the wood above us and pop up into a bedroom on the top floor of a Miami apartment building. The place isn't poshdirty clothes everywhere, a plain bed with rumpled sheetsbut the morning sun is glowing in, and the view out is a sea of pink stucco. Han and I are confused about the location change, but the important thing is to go back down and shoot some more bad guys. Then I notice the Muppet reclining on the bed. Well, he's not all Muppet, just his foam head with its sleepy eyelids, weak chin, bulbous nose, and thinning hair and big fluffy mustache made of long white feathers. The rest of him is a wastrel man in his late fifties: scrawny legs in tiny red shorts, wiry gray hair coating a belly swelling way beyond the bounds of his open Hawaiian shirt. Jimmy Muffet stares at us as if to say, “Why this early in the morning?” His tired wife appears in the sunny doorway, her head just like his minus the mustache. She tells him curtly that his eggs are ready and stalks away. He rises to follow her. Han demands, “Where's the elevator?” Obviously annoyed, the Man-Muppet limply waves toward the closet, and we scramble into it. The adrenaline is pumping as Han sits on dress shoes and I crouch under belts.
In the dark elevator, a distant, violent alarm sounds; I feel my shaggy face droop in disappointment. Han Solo looks at me, shakes his head and rolls his eyes; Chewy must get ready for high school.
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