Episode #11

This time on BARBARA's

Barbara looks up and finds herself face-to-bodice with her gruff but lovable roomate.

"Oh hello. My name is Barbara and I'm a song stylist. What do you do?"

"Roberta and I don't like prying blondes."

"Oh, but I'm not a blonde, I'm really more of a ..."

The bodice disappeared and a loud groan accompanied the sagging of springs as Barbara's cellmate laid back on her bunk and lights a fag.

"You know you really shouldn't do that. I know it helps to pass the time, and even if you don't care about your own body, think about mine!"

The bodice reappears, with it a head of close cropped salt and cayenne hair and two experienced eyes. Roberta ponders this challenge then thinks better of it and heaves herself back onto her bunk and begins to snore.

"Well, I suppose it has been a long day. What with the wonderful party, the gunshots, that horrible policeman and getting arrested and then Beulah and jail and, and, and, well when they fit me for my uniform, how could they think I killed my wiggle wattle and who in heck is this Marquessa Areta von Kass?"

Suddenly the piercing scream of a spring releasing its load penetrates the damp cinderblock hovel these two women call home. Roberta rise from the bedclothes of the upper bunk like a dandelion in a suburban lawn pre-Chemex and descends to floor level.

"I can't quite get relaxed up there, honey, I think I'll just take up down here"

Roberta moves in on Barbara's territory -- the lower bunk.

"Well, I guess that's okay. I'll just be on top."

"Whoa baby, that's my bunk up there. I'm just borrowing this one for a while. There's room for you too if you get tired."

Roberta scoots over about two inches for Barbara and closes her eyes with a small girlish smile as her breathing deepens.

Barbara, surveying the situation, realizes that perhaps this is not a good moment to call upon her assertiveness training. After all, Roberta has been used to having this room all to herself. She attends to her evening rituals and other private matters, as best she can in the trickling sink and whistling toilet in the corner. Barbara then removes her uniform and carefully folds it and places it on the floor near her occupied bunk and nervously tries to lay down without waking the exhausted Roberta. Our poor sweet Barbara, cannot help but tumble into dreamland immediately.

Live TrudyVision camera at The Data Lounge Network Operations Center

Barbara finds herself in a hazy green meadow carpeted with wild grasses and daffodils and pansies. She looks about in wonder as the early morning sun rises in front of her. Suddenly, as if born of the sun itself, a vision grows larger and larger as it approaches.

"Why, whatever can it be? It looks like a man wearing a dunce's cap ... but wait, no, it's some sort of animal."

The vision comes closer tossing its head from side to side but never losing contact with Barbara's eyes.

"It sees me. It's a wondrous thing -- so large and so gentle."

The vision which most would identify as a unicorn, but we forgive Barbara her shock, walks right up to our tortured soul and nuzzles her shoulder whinnying gently. Barbara feels a warmth spreading from where the unicorn has touched her, like lava issuing forth from a volcano cascading down the mountain overtaking everything in its way. Barbara makes no move to cover her nude body in front of the mystical creature; in fact she feels completely natural as she yields to the creature's continued carresses.

The unicorn looks deeply into Barabara's eyes and kneels before her, allowing Barbara to mount its back. As soon as Barbara is astride, the creature rushes off into the wind neighing and galloping completely changed into a maddened creature. What was a silky white coat is slowly changing into rough coarse dark hair as the animal rushes faster and faster towards the horizon. Barbara grips as hard as she can with her thighs trying to remember correct procedure from her days at the equestrian school until she can barely stand it she falls forward onto its neck and tries to grab where ever she can. The unicorn speeds on still faster and faster until with a soul-splitting voice it leaps forward into to the sky. Barbara can no longer hang on as she screams and falls headfirst toward the darkened meadow without fear but on fire from contact with the vanishing vision.

She is about to land when she wakes up and realizes she is astride Roberta who coos,

"You are something wild lady. Just keep scratching me there and you and I are gonna be best friends."

What Happens?

• Even though Roberta said they would be best friends, will she still be so kind in the morning?

• Isn't Barbara's best friend Joan? Would she approve?

• How could such a sensible girl dream of unicorns?

On The Next Episode of BARBARA's

Lady Magrieta de Tamaki, letting dignity confuse her judgment, refuses to be Barbara's body double in the sequel to the dream sequence, where if she had consented, she would have actually been tapped to stand-in as the kindly prison matron that barters for Barbara's entertainment services.