Dangerous places

This recurring dream had become so complex that Rock could walk from his bed, wide awake from everything except the dream-like grip of hypoglycemia, convinced that his house was the epicenter of earth's dwindling energy resources and the corresponding spill-over filth of carbon-based fuel consumption. He knew he could never leave. There were too many people outside, and his reputation throughout not only his immediate neighborhood but across much of the world had dropped into dangerous places.
As always before, Rock thought his sole hope was to clean and straighten his living-room den, the only room most of his visitors ever entered. A lack of balance worked against him, but he wasn't sure anything mattered anymore.

The ambulance

Apparently one of Rock's neighbors in Levy called an ambulance for him. He surmised this for the benefit of his doctor, who was as confused as Rock when he was delivered an hour before sunrise to the doctor's office in southwest Little Rock.
"You are a little hypoglycemic, but this seems well within your tolerance level," the doctor said. "This doesn't make any fucking sense."
"I told the guys in the ambulance that I was fine, but they insisted on bringing me all the way over here," Rock said. "I don't understand it either."

Chicken rows

Rock and several of his neighbors had long debated the significance of chicken in the American diet, and Rock weighed heavily in chicken's favor. His cat Joe took a contrarian stance, but Rock thought he had all the evidence he needed when he awoke to find yellow styrofoam packages of four chicken thighs each stretched in a row from his back bedroom to the kitchen.
Joe seemed convinced, but he was also anxious to go outside. As Rock walked toward the front door, he wondered where all the chicken had gone.

Racecats

Several racehorses the size, shape, and color of Rock's cat Joe were in Rock's back bedroom at daybreak. Rock interviewed their jockeys one by one and heard the same from each, bearing in mind as always that optimism from horserace participants skews their comments to an extent that renders them virtually meaningless.
"We feel good about our chances," they said; the only variable was how their rides responded to whatever medications they were prescribed.
It gradually dawned on Rock that these animals weren't horses at all. They were, in fact, housecats, which raised an infinite set of questions. At first, Rock wondered how racing had conned the public for so long and what sort of visual tomfoolery was required to make ten-pound cats appear as one-thousand-pound horses. How did they carry their jockeys? Why were they not visually dwarfed by the enormity of one-mile racetracks? It seemed as if they would do nothing more than sink into the sand and silt.
After a while, Rock saw other horses around the track, regular thoroughbreds familiar to nearly everyone. He guessed the cats were used for cheaper races, but this was all very confusing. He wanted to call his horse-training friend Lynn Chleborad. She usually had the dirt on everything, but he wasn't sure how to begin this potential story of a lifetime, this incredible, perhaps world-changing story about cats. Rock was indeed frightened by it.

Fantasy football

A running back for Rock's fantasy football team scored a touchdown even though a lineman for the running back's team had illegally blocked an opposing player. Had a penalty been called, the touchdown would not have counted and Rock's team would not have received six points.
Rock knew he was responsible for the missed call. Apparently, the owner of the fantasy team Rock's team was playing also knew this. That must've been why Rock's flip phone kept ringing on his nightstand long before daybreak.

Balloons

Two hot-air balloons were attached to the hull of a caravel-type ship, typical of those used by seafaring explorers of the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, and Rock and dozens of others boarded the craft in a vast city park late in the evening of some sort of summertime celebration.

All went well as they skimmed past trees on the edge of the park, no more than ten to fifteen feet above the crowd and carnival grounds, but Rock gradually began to feel something go amiss. The ship at first brushed the trees and then began to drift randomly across the park, an apparent loss of control adequate to somewhat panic him. 

A Skillet

There was a Beat the Streak option called a Skillet. This was a way out for internet players who had not selected anyone in the mlb.com fantasy game the night before and had subsequently failed to fall asleep.
"I think they named it that because it sounds like the name of that guy from Chicago who faked a hate crime against himself," Rock explained to no one in particular.
Rock tried to pick someone, but nothing seemed to work with his computer. As he tried to figure out the malfunction, he could hear an alarm go off in his back bedroom. Apparently, he had nodded off in his living room recliner.

The concession stand

After climbing down from the press box on a maze of unsecured aluminum ladders, Rock approached a concession stand a hundred or more feet below the stadium's upper reaches. It was unlike any he had theretofore seen, with only two items listed on a chalkboard menu.
This concession stand served steaks and frog legs and nothing else. From Rock's perspective, the steaks looked perfect. They were each huge three-inch thick Porterhouses. There were a dozen or more of them spread on platters behind the clerk who approached Rock. Each of the slabs were textbook medium rare, and Rock figured they weighed at least three pounds each.
The steaks looked wonderful, but Rock wasn't particularly hungry, and he couldn't imagine how much a three-pound steak would cost at typical concession-stand rates, so he went with the frog legs. They were indeed cheap, but whereas the steaks were perfect, the frog legs had the bland, tasteless appearance of processed fried food. Rock wished he had dug deep.

Impossible old house

Years had passed since Rock was last in this enormous old house, but as before, he had moved in at the invitation of extended family members. He was given the familiar back portion, which alone was twice the size of his former house in Levy. Rock remembered living in this very section several times over the last thirty years.
On his first day there, one of his many Hispanic first cousins—an overweight but pretty thirty-year-old woman—approached him in his kitchen with a photo album. His cousin and Rock overlooked a vast, dark-paneled den filled with at least a dozen other relatives. She tucked her left arm under Rock's right, leaned into him, and held the album so they could both see it. "Take a lot at these hot chicks, Rock," she said. "You need to meet them. They're really hot, and I promise, they would all love you."
He knew this was too good. It was impossible.

Nothing made sense

Rock watched live video of an enormous tornado as it raced by Mount Pinnacle on the westernmost edge of Little Rock. He was in the radio station newsroom he had worked in nearly forty years earlier but was the only of his newspaper coworkers to have seen it. The tornado looked to Rock as if it were traveling east at close to fifty miles an hour, meaning it would reach downtown in less than ten minutes.
Rock tried to warn others in the sports department, but no one seemed interested. Nothing made sense to him except to walk down to the station's basement.

Roommates

There were too many people here. Rock was enrolled for classes at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, and he had been eager to find an inexpensive place to live before a man who ran a print shop near the campus invited him to move into his apartment.

Rock was aware the man had other roommates, but he didn't know how many until he awoke on a couch in the den, early his first morning there to see a crowd of overweight, college-aged women pass by him between their bedrooms and the apartment's only bathroom.

"Good morning, everyone," he said.

Several of the women smiled and returned Rock's well wishes. Others passed by without pause. Neither response surprised him, but he knew there were too many people in this apartment. He would have to find someplace else to stay.

English words

Things were underway in Rock's house that foretold for him a future in which English words would no longer mean what they had from the previous days of his life. He wasn't sure how to react. All he knew was that he needed something to eat and that his cat Joe seemed confused.
Rock was hopeful, but this wasn't a good circumstance.

Rock's pro shop

A handful of old golf historians worked for years to turn Rock's house into a golf museum, a structure that would celebrate the early days of the game in the United States. They tried to make it look like a nineteenth-century clubhouse but had apparently fallen short with the pro shop. All of the clubs in it were relatively modern. Only one—a putter—dated back more than fifteen years.
Rock gradually began to understand that his job had been to acquire the clubs. Obviously, he had made no effort in that regard. He realized he was in big trouble and that the men would arrive soon. All he knew to do was to let his restless, nearly panicked cat Joe go outside.

Anxious for his demise

It wasn't until he reached the door that Rock realized he had two tins of Altoids mints in his hand. He saw a woman at the register staring at him, and he became immediately self-conscious of his apparent attempt at theft. He responded by returning the containers to a candy counter that he thought seemed out of place at a night club such as this one.
Rock was in Nashville, Arkansas, at the club on Sunset Boulevard, three blocks away from his maternal grandmother's house. After he put the candy back, he saw that the woman continued to glare in his direction. He was worried and hoped he could walk to his car and drive away without incident, but when he reached his ten-year-old Chevrolet Impala, it was turned upside down in the parking lot. The trunk had popped open and the doors were buckled out.
It took him a moment to realize there was no way he could drive to his grandmother's house and that the car was a loss, but he knew her house was a short walk away. He walked down Sunset, but his relief was short-lived. People, perhaps creatures, were all around him, anxious for his demise.