A Dream: The Usual Chase and The Ropy Arms

I am an intern at a scientific institute during the 1950s. I am up late studying in one of the rooms when "Kathleen," a senior researcher, enters with her bewildered assistant. Kathleen explains to the assistant that she's developed a formula which gives a person enormous strength. She says that it turns a person's grip into unbreakable iron, but the side-effect is that you become a murderous, sociopathic thrill-seeker.

Kathleen is aware that I'm hiding in the room behind one of the partitions so she grabs her assistant and they stumble around looking for me. Since she can't catch me without letting go of her prey -- and she prefers to be watched -- she drinks the formula and then chokes the assistant to death. I only see Kathleen's silhouette except for her arm, which is thick and pale, marbled with veins. It looks like a ropy albino tree.

Escaping the institute I'm sniffed out and followed by "'Ymann," the head scientist, who has also drunk the potion. 'Ymann says it will be fun to hunt OUTSIDE the building for a change. We go on a slow "hide and seek" around the neighbourhood and eventually I wind up meeting "Rutherford," a high school friend, and begging him to take me away in his enormous 1950s car. We temporarily escape, but eventually 'Ymann kills Rutherford with his ropy, pale arm. I'm ashamed for leaving Rutherford behind but I remember hearing that the grip was unbreakable, like a pit-bull's hold. I tell myself that I couldn't have helped Rutherford.

The chase ends in a convention center. 'Ymann has become abnormally tall and he's very fast, but I'm able to get onto a lower part of the main floor, and I know that he can't jump down to my level without being crushed under his weight. As I'm escaping through the foyer, running past reclining businessmen who are reading the morning newspaper, 'Ymann speaks through a public address system that he's hijacked from a switchboard operator. He says that the scientific institute will no longer hold conferences at the convention center due to the center's tolerance and promotion of "alternative lifestyles." This is meant to be a revenge against me, which seems foolish and impotent.

I see a newspaper report about 'Ymann's eventual death; he suffered from "rickets" due to his ever-increasing height and he died in a hospital.