Over to the reviewers:

To Agent Silver: Right on, my friend. Octopuses, they don't exactly have a choice, but Goblins, yup, definitely evil!

To Lady Kayoss: Keep reading, you're going to meet another one.

To Moonjava: Very.

Chapter 6: Mr. Sandman, Give Me a Dream

(song by Emmylou Harris)

Flint Marko, Junior, sat on the bed of his dorm room. Unable to sleep, he switched on his radio. It was on this oldies station and they were playing yet another corny love song.

Mister Sandman, bring me a dream
Make him the cutest that I've ever seen
Give him two lips like roses and clover
Then tell him that his lonesome nights are over…

Flint switched the radio off and turned his laptop on. In addition to his schoolwork as a pre-law major, he was desperately searching for his past. He very much needed to know about the man who had given him his name, but abandoned himand his mother before he was born. He never knew he was about to find out too much.

It had been happening more and more often. The first time he'd nearly freaked out of his skull. He'd been reaching for his double black espresso coffee on his desk and suddenly his arm dissolved into a mass of sand, which piled on his desk. Then suddenly, it reformed again, back to normal. Flint thought this was a hallucination from his tiredness, as he'd been pulling an all-nighter study session at the time.

But then whatever it was, it'd been happening more frequently, and a couple times when he was fully awake, especially during times of great stress. He kept telling himself to "pull yourself together," literally.

The last straw came when he was going on a date with an attractive blonde sorority girl. He reached out to shake her hand—and it fell apart in a pile of sand. She'd fainted. He'd freaked.

So now he had three burning questions to answer.

Who was his biological father?

What the hell was wrong with him?

And could—God forbid—the answers to those two be connected?

Until this really hot chick in a skintight green suit and auburn hair knocked on his dorm room door—and answered both questions for him.

Mister Sandman, someone to hold
Would be so peachy before we're too old
So please turn on your magic beam
Mister Sandman, bring us
Please, please, please
Mister Sandman, bring us a dream…