Just caught in the undertow

I had a weird dream. You were in it, and then someone else was, and yes, the world too.

Weird dream, it begins: I am on my toes, looking out a window to the apocalyptic world -- there it is, gray skies, gray buildings, gray mountains in the distance. And then there's a rumble in the air, something a writer has aptly described as thunder without sound, and you stand behind me, and I think, This is an important man, he will save the world. And then you brush my (alarmingly short) hair from my nape, and I think, You need me to save the world. And then there's a heavy thudding within my chest, and I cast my gaze to the gray clouds, and there they are -- I say, Igloos, the goddamned Igloos: gigantic, gleaming white balls of segmented metal, sort of like Marvin's (from the movie Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) bubble head, without the cuteness, and the Igloos are hurtling from the skies, and everything is turning grayer. I tell you, Fuck, the Igloos are here, and you stand closer to me that my body has no choice but to feel your warmth, and suddenly, beyond us, out that window, one of the Igloos has hit a skyscraper and everything shatters, and I am scared, yes, but I only feel this overwhelming sense of inevitability that tells me all those prophecies are really real, why didn't they believe you and I? We were out to save the world, and no one listened, and now the Igloos are here, and that only means one thing. Only one goddamned thing, and before I start to do something that could ruin the fate of what remains of mankind, you keep me still by saying, I would like for you to be still.

The dream goes on: That other person? As we stare out at the end of mankind, she slinks towards us, and I can feel her -- see her, fuck dreams are weird -- as she presses against you, that you press against me, and I think: Tangina, lousy timing for a goddamned threesome, puwede ba?! Outside, the Igloos are razing our city.

The dream goes on: You say, Don't worry, we still have you and the Corps. And I lean towards you, and then I realize that other person is still attached to your back like a leech, and so I make my voice gruff say, We don't have much time.

The dream goes on and I think: Who the fuck is that woman?

The dream goes on: We are sort-of underground. A classroom -- I can see the cut-out alphabet framing the blackboard -- filled with about forty people, the only survivors from the Igloo Attack. And everyone knows we're all here, because we're all simply waiting for the next batch of Igloos from the sky. There is a man in dress greens at the front of the class, talking to all the survivors. I am at back of the room, near the door, pacing. You and that woman (who the fuck are you, woman?) are off to the side, talking in hushed tones. I go to the door, and the moment I touch the knob, everything blurs, and it's like I am having a daydream within a nightmare: a vision -- floating above the city, disk-like segmented white thingies, like flattened Igloos, and then hatches are being opened from below them, and I should be scared, but I am only thankful. I blink my way out of the vision, and then you are beside me, holding my hand. You say, Did you have another one? I ignore you and open the door an inch, and everybody in the room goes silent, and I look up at the clouded, gray sky, empty of Igloos, flattened or no. I close the door, and look at you. I tell you, everyone: Ten minutes. The Corps is here. And presumably, ten minutes later, on the dot, the man in dress greens marches out of the room, and goes out to hold his hands high towards the flattened Igloos -- the Corps. The Corps is here, and everyone knows war is at hand, and I look at you, and you look at me, and we both know we have a job to do, preferably together, but alone if we must.

The dream goes on: I am in the passenger seat of your car. The Igloos have come again. Everything around us is being blown up, but you and I both believe that if we stay in this car, we will be safe. When I run my hand through my (abominably short) hair, I see how you have turned in your seat to tease the woman sitting at the backseat, and I think, You are not just doing that, and I open the door, and run out the street, ignoring your shouts of my name, ignoring you and everything else when you say, You fucking idiot, get back in this car, now! And I am running now, the Igloos are everywhere, and I can hardly believe I ran off in an almost paranormal fit of jealousy. I run, weaving through the broken road, like a child skipping across a lawn to avoid raindrops, and I tell myself, Damn idiot woman stalking off in the middle of a fucking Igloo attack!

The dream goes on: I reach a workshop of sorts, and the walls are painted white, and I cannot believe there is so much sunlight in this room, that I am immediately scared. I think, I am crucial to this cause, nothing will happen to me. And I see a man in a white shirt hunched over a wooden table, with a knife in his hand. He is stocky, his face looking like someone banged an iron pan to his face, and rubbed hard for good measure. Damn, he's ugly. On the table is a severed arm, deathly pale. (Duh. It's severed. The arm must be dead, then.) The man looks at me me with yellowing eyes that bug out, before he raises his knife, and starts to slice through the flesh and the muscle of the forearm. He spreads the meat as one would a book, and I can see how the meat is all-white, until, suddenly, it grows red, as though stained, and everything is bloody now. The door, he tells me, and he proceeds to make thin slices out of the flesh. I have to stay, I need that meat. But everything is starting to make me sick, and I run out of that room, into an underground sewage system, and everything is damp and dank, and I lose a couple of fingernails when I scrape them along the algae-d walls, and I think, Damn the cause, I can't do this, we're all going to fucking die anyway.

And the dream goes on: I reach a hotel lobby. You are standing by the door, and you are alone. Thank What Is Left of God that you are alone. Your face is stern, but the way your body has started to move towards me, upon seeing me, tells me that damn it, you fucking missed me, just admit it. But you tell me, Go back there, you know we need them, and I know you are right, and I also know that, like all apocalyptic worlds, the heroes and heroines, all the chosen ones, they all need that one scorching kiss, so they'd have something to remember when the people hurtling the Igloos to raze our city finally show themselves, when everyone has died, and the cause has almost failed -- everyone needs that kiss, because damn it, the world is ending, pucker up, you Messianic asshole, give me this kiss, then let's go save the fucking world.

And the dream ended there. I woke up with the right side of my head throbbing, and Bed of Roses stuck in my head, and I thought, I need to write all this down, because no one is with me, and I don't have anyone to tell my dream to, as I usually do.

Yes, I dreamed that, I shit you not.


*

The Painting
John Balaban

The stream runs clear to its stones;
the fish swim in sharp outline.
Girl, turn your face for me to draw.
Tomorrow, if we should drift apart,
I shall find you by this picture.