Author's note: A lot of this story is inspired by real experiences I've had as a customer service and collections agent for various companies, and the scary extremes they might go to if they ever branched out into space, got alien technology...or decided to collect payments door to door.

Although loosely based on Disney's Avatar and John Carter, and featuring several characters and situations from those movies, DOGOS is not a true fanfiction piece, any more than Battlestar Galactica is a Star Wars fanfic.

In between that, and the fact that there are millions of other Avatar fiction pieces on this website, pretty much guarantees that nobody will ever read this story, despite the huge amount of effort I have spent in writing and editing and polishing the material to perfection.

[0000]

"I think I'm beginning to understand the problem," the neurologist said to my mother.

"So you think you can cure him of his sleepwalking?" she asked.

"No, but I am beginning to understand the problem."

"What did you see in the MRI?"

"We, uh, couldn't get anything."

"What!"

"I'm sorry. We tried it three times, but your son just didn't want to cooperate."

"And you gave him medication."

"That was actually after the medication."

"And it didn't work? On all three attempts?"

"Well, you see, the first time we put the mask over his face, he got up, and one of our nurses had to get him to lay down."

"And the second?"

"He tried to attack the nurse."

Mom sighed. "And what happened the third time?"

"He sent the nurse to ICU."

I didn't remember any of that. All I remembered was the MRI.

The MRI room was a large area containing nothing but a chrome and plastic machine.

With the strange, otherworldly lighting, the white robed doctors and the glowing mechanical altar, I felt like an acolyte being presented as a ritual sacrifice.

In ancient Aztec rites, the acolyte would generally be clad in nothing but a robe, and the thing in the middle of the machine reminded me of the pictures I'd seen of Chacmool, the stone basins in which acolytes are slaughtered.

Mine, however, had a soft pillow.

Clad only in socks, underwear and a backwards facing hospital smock, I lay on that padded bench, staring up at the word PHILIPS surrounded by a wall of tan plastic. Motors hummed as the bench slowly rolled inside the cramped cylindrical compartment.

I stared as a small glass window labeled `LASER' passed by, and then I'm surrounded by a coffin-like enclosure of alternating blue and tan plastic.

Although panicky at first from the claustrophobia, I could still see open air beyond my head and feet, so I calmed myself.

A tinny muffled recorded voice told me to breathe, over and over again.

Minutes later, the sedative they injected me with kicked in, and I passed out.

It's not my fault it didn't work.

Minutes before, I dreamed I was on a mountain face somewhere, stalking after a big red leathery thing with a shovel shaped beak.

It was windy, and the cold air chilled my naked skin, rumpling the narrow strip of leather that served to cover my intimate areas.

My blue hands gripped the rocks as I silently crept after Shovel Beak.

Seeing its anxious movements, I jumped, chasing after the thing with all the speed I could muster.

Bounding from rock to rock, I boldly ignored the frightening heights that lay below the jagged rocks, obsessed with an all consuming lust of sticking my hair tentacles in the creature's brain, and mounting him.

The creature neared, its glistening red-purple wings mere inches away.

I leapt.

I missed.

As the beast spread its wings, taking into the air, I fell screaming off the side of the cliff.

I have no idea what my real body was doing at the time.

"Are you familiar with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise?" the doctor asked me.

I told him maybe.

"Well there's your problem right there! I suggest you lay off those horror films...forever!"

"Why did you even ask?" I groaned.

"Well...there's a drug they use in that movie, something called `Hypnocil.' it's a fictional drug, but I can prescribe something for you that's just like it. Represses REM sleep. Can't say that it'll be very good for you, but..." He took out a prescription pad, scribbling down something illegible. "Stabbing a nurse in the side of the throat isn't good for you either."

I rolled my eyes. The last time I tried an `experimental' drug like that, I nearly flunked my classes at the community college. The biology teacher came up to my desk and made jokes about me sleeping in class. I'd open a history textbook in a hard plastic chair in the cafeteria, and sleep through Spanish. I ruined five sheets of expensive framing material in art class because I didn't realize you cut the material with the sharp side of the knife.

He ripped off the page, handing it to mom. "Have you heard of homicidal somnambulism?"

"No?"

"I haven't either, so I looked it up. Turns out quite a few people have the same problem. They, uh, usually lock them up in a rubber room so they can't hurt anybody. But I thought, hey, let's give this prescription drug a whirl before we do all that. Hate to do anything drastic like call the cops."

I paled. "Uh, th-thank you. I'll...be sure to take it."

"Oh, and by the way..." He scribbled another note, passing it to mom.

"What's that?" she asked. "More medication?"

"No, it's, uh, the number for the MRI center across town."

I sleepwalk.

A lot.

My parents regularly took me to the shrink because I walk around naked, set fire to brush piles, and hunt down cats and squirrels with a crudely constructed bow and arrow, with no conscious recollection of any of it.

I have witnesses.

Somehow, the guy that flunked archery merit badge in Boy Scouts can take down a squirrel from thirty feet, each one with a perfect bullseye, all while asleep.

Where am I while all this happens?

Dreaming about blue cat people.

Dreaming about hunting weird animals in an alien jungle.

Dreaming about bizarre sexual encounters, which somehow involve heavy use of dreadlocked hair.

I rode on the back of a giant leathery pterodactyl thing, firing arrows at my enemy, while my real body knocked Mr. Whiskers off the neighbor's porch with an arrow fashioned from a stick and a ripped up beer can.

The doctor thought this had something to do with me not having a girlfriend and watching too many movies.

What I would soon learn is that even a work of science fiction can have a grain of truth to it.

My shrink was the one who suggested the MRI.

"He's been sleepwalking again," mom had told the guy. "Yesterday I caught him peeing on the living room rug. Last night he ate an entire bucket of ice cream, threw up, then climbed up on the roof in his underwear, howling at the moon and waking up everyone in the house."

I didn't deny it. Whenever I dreamed of the blue people, things happened. One time I found myself standing naked on the sidewalk, one hand clutching a serrated bread knife, coated in blood, the other clutching the barbecued remains of the neighbor's cat. I spent a week in Western Mental, where everything is white and you're not allowed any sharp objects.

I've gone to see Dr. Galwyn more times than I can count. He's the shrink you go to when you can't afford a good one. He didn't cure anything. I take sedatives every night, but they don't help at all. In fact, they make it worse.

My doctor was a bald slack jawed African American half a head shorter than me. His face always looked happy, but it seemed forced.

The decor in his office consisted of carefully chosen artifacts reflecting a doctoral education in psychology. Where the Wild Things Are, due to its relevance to children's Freudian psychology. A Picasso due to its subjective interpretation. Escher due to his effective trickery of human visual perception. A bust of Freud. A framed autographed picture of Philp G. Zimbardo. Educational toys. Musty psychology books he'd probably only skimmed through in college. The desk had photographs of family to establish the doctor's emotional stability, more than likely a facade.

He asked me about the dreams again, and I told him what I told him before. I hunted weird animals in an alien jungle. I had sex, somehow involving heavy use of dreadlocked hair. I rode on the back of a giant leathery pterodactyl thing.

The doctor thinks it's something to do with me not having a girlfriend and watching too many science fiction films.

He recommended an MRI, so I went to the hospital.

Let's just say we had an interesting ride back home.

I filled the prescription, took it before bed.

The meds didn't do a damn thing.

My dreams tend to be elaborate. The people I meet in REM sleep have actual names, especially the blue ones.

Everybody there calls me Qaddafwu. I hang out with this chunky cat person (Na'vi) named Qurvigu, apparently my best friend, and Mikuvzil, a female I found very attractive.

The night I took my first pill, I dreamed that they tied me to a tree. I awoke in a jungle of glowing foliage, the two of them staring at me with concerned looks on their faces.

I groaned as I stared back at them. "Oh hi, guys. How's it going?"

We were both speaking a non-English language, but I could understand and speak it perfectly.

"Who are you now?" asked the female. "Qaddafwu or Jason?"

I squirmed against my restraints. "Which one will get you to untie me?"

Then I frowned. "Why did you tie me up to begin with? Did I do something wrong?"

"It's `Jason'," said Qurvigu.

"Look guys," I groaned. "I know for a fact I never did anything bad here. I never, I don't know, stabbed the neighbor's cat to death, or walked outside naked, or attacked a nurse..."

"I don't know what those words mean," Mikuvzil replied. "But when you're Qaddafwu, you're obsessed with Seqwadti and want to raise her kids, but when you're Jason, you keep following me around, flirting, staring at me when you think I'm not looking..."

I blushed. "So you tied me to this tree until I came back to you? Is that it?"

She looked...disgusted. "Not...exactly."

A bloated blue female stepped out of the bushes, batting her eyes at me.

She had been wearing a buckskin top and loincloth, but when she found me imprisoned, the clothing fell away.

"Sorry, Qaddafwu," my `best friend' told me. "It's for your own good."

I blanched. "Oh God."

I awoke naked on the bathroom rug, which had somehow made its way to my front yard. A skinned squirrel slowly roasted on a crude spit over a dying fire. I'd also built a lean-to from yard debris.

My stepdad stood over me with his arms crossed, sighing in annoyance. "It's nice to know one of us is getting rest!"

He threw me a towel to cover myself with. "Clean this shit up before you leave for work."

With that, he stomped back into the house.