As a kid growing up in the 60s, I became obsessed with I Dream of Jeannie.
Obsessed may actually be too mild a word.
I knew every episode by heart. I could anticipate each joke, each misunderstanding, each twitch of Jeannie’s magical powers. None of this diminished my devotion. I was hopelessly enthralled by Jeannie herself, played by Barbara Eden.
Eventually she began visiting me in dreams.
Whenever she appeared, beautiful aching music accompanied her presence. She would float through my bedroom window, take my hand, and carry me around the world to exotic destinations glowing beneath moonlight. When I awoke, I could still smell her lingering in the room—honey, sweat, nectar, patchouli—the impossible perfume of longing itself.
The dreams continued throughout my childhood.
Then one day I encountered two beautiful sisters, and after that encounter Jeannie stopped visiting me in my dreams forever.
This story is about those sisters.
It happened during the spring of 1973 on a warm California afternoon after sixth grade classes had ended. The school bus dropped us off near Crow Canyon Road, and several of us wandered across the street to the local 7-Eleven to buy Slurpees before making the miserable uphill trek home along Greenridge Road.
Inside the store, the radio was playing “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl),” that melancholy yacht-rock masterpiece about romantic disappointment disguised as cheerful singalong music. The frozen-drink machines hummed. The air smelled of sugar syrup, cardboard pizza, and asphalt baking in the afternoon heat.
That was when the Horsefault sisters entered.
They were impossible not to notice.
One was in eighth grade, the other already a sophomore in high school. Both had long blonde hair, freckles, high cheekbones, and mischievous blue eyes that radiated the dangerous energy of girls who enjoyed creating problems merely to see what would happen next. To my sixth-grade brain, they resembled slightly feral versions of Barbara Eden.
One of them smiled at me and asked:
“Do you want to see our rabbit?”
Now, to be clear, I had absolutely no interest in rabbits.
Had two pimply boys invited me to inspect a caged rodent behind a farmhouse, I would have fled instantly while clutching my cherry Slurpee in terror. But these were beautiful older girls, and beautiful older girls possess the supernatural ability to make adolescent boys enthusiastically volunteer for situations that would otherwise trigger police investigations.
“Yes,” I said immediately. “I’d love to see the rabbit.”
Naturally.
So I followed them.
We left the 7-Eleven parking lot and walked perhaps a hundred yards down a dusty trail lined with dry horse manure and tall grass swaying in the afternoon breeze. Beyond the field stood their weathered farmhouse, half hidden behind eucalyptus trees and fencing. The place had the unsettling atmosphere of a rural fairy tale where attractive maidens lure travelers into barns never to be heard from again.
Behind a thicket of bushes stood the rabbit cage.
It was large enough to imprison a medium-sized farm animal—or an unsuspecting sixth grader. The cage door hung slightly open, and a heavy chain lock dangled ominously from the latch.
I peered inside.
No rabbit.
At that exact moment the sisters burst into shrieking laughter and lunged at me.
They grabbed my arms and tried to shove me into the cage.
The truth arrived instantly and with horrifying clarity: there had never been a rabbit. The rabbit was merely bait. I had walked directly into an ambush orchestrated by two hormonally deranged Valkyries whose apparent goal was to lock me inside a cage and transform me into some sort of suburban hostage.
But they had underestimated me.
At eleven years old I was already deep into my future bodybuilding destiny and absurdly strong for my age. What followed was less an abduction than a full-contact barnyard wrestling match. We grappled outside the cage rolling through dry grass, hay, and dirt while clouds of dust exploded around us like scenes from a low-budget western.
Nearby chickens erupted into chaos.
Inside the coop they flapped wildly, clucked hysterically, and hurled themselves about with the alarm of creatures witnessing either a murder or a satanic fertility ritual.
The sisters were laughing so hard they could barely breathe. Sweat darkened their halter tops and cutoffs as they struggled unsuccessfully to overpower me. Eventually, exhausted and defeated, they abandoned the mission.
The moment their grip weakened, I escaped.
I sprinted home outraged.
Not merely embarrassed—outraged.
They had attempted to steal my freedom.
I stormed into the living room and did what I always did when emotionally overwhelmed by the complexities of existence: I turned on I Dream of Jeannie.
That night Jeannie came to me one final time.
As always, she floated silently through my bedroom window accompanied by that beautiful aching music that seemed to emerge from nowhere and everywhere simultaneously.
But this time something was different.
She looked sad.
“The Horsefault sisters want you now,” she explained softly. “It’s time for you to return their affections. They are real girls. Girls who do not drift through bedroom windows inside moonlit clouds.”
I argued desperately.
I told her I loved her.
But she only smiled with melancholy tenderness before slowly retreating backward into a gray mist that swallowed her completely.
Then she vanished forever.
After that night, the dreams changed.
No more Jeannie.
No more moonlit flights across the world.
Instead my dreams became feverish and earthly. They featured rabbit cages beneath silver moonlight, hayfields trembling in the wind, and sweat-soaked girls in cutoffs and halter tops chasing me through cornfields while laughing hysterically.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” they cried.
Over and over.
And just like that, childhood fantasy gave way to adolescent bewilderment.
I never watched I Dream of Jeannie again.
Cinemorphosis 
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