Dream May 27, 2021
I was living in a cheap, crummy apartment. I had a bed, dresser, and mirror, which was shoved up in the corner next to the door. All the other furniture was cardboard boxes. My television was a large panel of cardboard, upon which was crudely painted a scene from a movie I hated.
My neighbor across the hall was a woman with an enormous bob of blond hair. All day and night, she walked out into the hall in front of my door and stomped her boots on the floor. My door had a square cut out at head level, and was inset with metal bars. The neighbor banged her hair against the door and stuck her tongue through the bars, alternating between screaming and blowing raspberries.
“Ugh,” I said, and the cardboard chair beneath me crumpled. “Shut up! Trying to watch the scene!”
“Come outside and say hello to me!” she yelled.
I got up from the floor and went to the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what looked like a filament of linen float up from behind the headboard above my head. It undulated in the air, floating around the room and gaining both length and girth. It flew behind the mirror and emerged from the other side resembling a cottonmouth. The snake lunged at me, knocking me down on the bed. I caught its head, but it surged again and bit me on the neck. Immediately I felt the effects of the venom, causing extraordinary pain and also an immeasurable peacefulness.
I passed out.
I awoke in a stupor. The snake was gone. My neighbor was staring at me through the bars, expressionless. The apartment was filled with an incredible buzzing sound. A yellow jacket the size of a chihuahua rose up from beneath the bed, buzzing on drunkard wings. Its giant, shrimplike legs brushed against my face as it fell on my chest and then launched again. Its stinger lazily darted at my face and shoulders, looking more like an ovipositor. I successfully dodged all attempts to sting me, then slapped at it; it was liked pushing at a heavy punching bag. The enormous hornet buzzed louder, furious, and quickened from its lethargic hovering. The stinger jabbed at my nose, making contact, burning up my snozz with pain. It clacked its mandibles together and darted away through the mirror into oblivion.
I went to the mirror to check out my throbbing nose. It was violet and swollen, the size of a grapefruit. Lines appeared all over it, like boundaries on a political map. One of the skin countries fell off my nose, landing with a wet smack on the dresser. Then another. A pink mass was revealed as the skin fell off.
My brother appeared beside me and saw my nose. “Oh, that is so gross!”
All the skin had fallen off now, uncovering a pulsing brain. The inside of my nose was a brain that writhed on my face as if trying for escape or some exercise.
“Quick,” I said to my brother. “Get some peroxide!”
He brought me some peroxide and a toothbrush.
“Why the toothbrush?”
“It will help.”
He stood back as if afraid of infection and doused my nose brain in peroxide. A globe of foam ballooned around the flesh. My brother applied the toothbrush and brushed at the foam vigorously; the pain made me weep. After a minute of brushing, he stepped away. I blinked away tears, which rolled down over the flat surface of a large clock. My nose turned brain had now transformed into a digital radio alarm clock radio. The radio was on, but it was static. The red digits on the clock were at 2400 hours, military time. When I peered closer at my new, absurd nose, the time began to count down.
“What happens when the time runs out,” my brother asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
My neighbor stomped in the hall and blew a raspberry through the bars.
Dream Over
