A warm spell finally broke the unholy cold but a sinister wind was blowing. It rattled, and clattered. It reeked and clung like a damp dirty blanket. It blew in but never blew out. It filled the melting land with a painful, uncomfortable tension and we locked ourselves tighter inside. The heat had promised relief but it turned a frigid claustrophobic hell into a warmer and filthier one instead.
I had a strange dream last night. It was summer and I'd left embers in the backyard fire pit. I woke up to the smell of smoke and I ran to the window. The wind had come up and reawakened the flames. The night was pitch black but by the time I got outside it glowed orange. The neighbour's house caught fire and was almost instantly engulfed. I ran to the side yard to get my hose. I thought I might still save the house! I turned the tap but I couldn't tell if the water was running. Then I realized it was actually my house burning and the hose might be melting. The fire and the destruction was all my fault but I still hoped I could stop it. I heard a fire engine siren in the distance, getting closer, closer. Was it for me? I didn't want to get into trouble. Then I think I woke up.
Another dream. I was fighting a headache.
There were two open wounds on my left thigh, one below the other. The bottom one was a long gash on the outside from mid-thigh to just above my knee. It was recent and deep but didn't seem to hurt. I had to keep it clean.
Above that and over to the inside was a round wound, like I'd been shot or stabbed. It was old and festering. I squeezed it and a white, round, puss-filled tumour bulged in my fingertips but didn't break. It stung sharply and I was forced to relent. When I did so it burrowed back under my skin out of my reach. Some type of white and maggot-like bugs wiggled out. They had short, hooked legs like ticks. They dangled like spiders on long hooked rear appendages and seemed to be looking for a new host. I held back my vomit and began pulling them off, one at a time and throwing them into some sort of convenient hell pit. Something larger rolled under my skin and pinched at my fingers with brown crab claws. I dug into the round, festering puncture, desperate to stop the bugs spreading to the other injury on my leg. I got hold of a hard, chitinous shell, squeezed, and pulled.
A large brown queen, shaped like the smaller bugs, came out in my hands. It was slick with my own blood but it clung like hell to my hands and wrist. Instead of the thread-like hooked tail it had a stinger and tried again and again to stab me. I finally broke off the pincers and flushed it and all its parts away to hell while it screamed and fought. Then it was just a matter of picking off the remaining nits and flushing them away too. I had to be careful to get each one because I could only wake up after that was done.
But the next one was a cockroach dream. I found it in a dishwasher. German apparently, you can tell by the two horizontal stripes down it's back. It looked like a female without an ootheca, the egg sac. I cut off the head ran it through the garbage disposal. The body I sealed in a Ziploc baggy and threw away. Then I thought better and pulled out the bag from the garbage. The body was still moving. It was another problem on top of what was already on my mind. I'm waiting for the straw to fall across this camel's back.
And then there was a student. He had a panic attack of some sort and thought he was going to be arrested. He got angry, and started shouting about destroying the classroom. He was upset because he hadn't been paid and was told someone was looking for him. He took that to mean a warrant had been issued and the cops were coming because he got angry (not unusual in his experience) but it was a friend of his in town from another city.
The last one. I'm in a dugout basement with a large group. The walls are earthen and we're inspecting them. While we inspect them we argue about the foundation of a personality and what makes someone a nazi. I try to argue it has nothing to do with the basement we're in but some are saying when the concrete is laid over soil that person is a nazi and others are saying no, it's when the concrete is built over stones. This basement is under the kitchen of a summer cottage. At first it seems to be sealed but air and light are coming from the back corner. No one notices or cares we are in a trap. I dig enough at the back corner to make a hole and I escape. No one follows. I'm at a larger campsite and it is nighttime lit up by a full moon. I wander over to the neighbour's yard, then back. I look at the building I escaped from underneath. No one followed me and I wake up.
