When I finally collapsed into the Bed of Doom last night, all I wanted was a good, solid five hours of sleep. Just enough to get me through today, but not enough to rid me of the damned circles under my eyes. And even though it was a little over 50 degrees out and I had the windows wide open, Sleep hovered around the bed, glancing in my general direction for a good half hour. Finally, I believe, Exhaustion came round and told her to fuck off just before he pounced on me.
And then I had the strangest dream, set to some sort of remix of the Johnny Quest theme song.
After awakening in the wreckage of a downed plane and checking to make sure I had all my limbs, I made my way through the small fires and the dead to the back of the plane, which had a gaping hole in it where the tail should be. An immense stretch of desert lay before me, mostly shrouded by the dark. A few hundred yards in the distance, I could see small tent. And the only thing that stood between me and it was a good length of shifting desert sand and a few thousand snakes. I couldn't see them all, of course, but I knew they were there, writhing and twisting and waiting for me to take that first step out of the plane.
I knew that come morning, they'd all be off to a dark cave somewhere to sleep off a hard night of giving me the willies and that I'd be able to make my way to the tent. But that would mean that I'd have to spend the night in what was left of the plane, surrounded by corpses and the smell of burned hair and flesh. Their blood would be on everything I touched and there was no way I could escape the gaze of all those empty eyes. Their tortured, soulless eyes burning into my brain and stealing whatever little resolve I had left.
So, it was the snakes, then.
I took a deep breath and jumped off the back of the plane. Into the sand and my legs are already moving, faster and faster. I feel the tiny pin prick bites a thousand times, but I will my legs to keep on,to keep moving forward. Faster and faster, my feet barely touching the sand, all to get to that little tent. About fifty feet away and I realize that I can't feel my feet anymore. But I will my legs to keep moving. Twenty feet and I've got nothing below the knees. Ten feet to go and they finally stop working all together.
I pitch forward, landing on my shoulders and face, inches from my destination. And I can see, though a small gap in the tent flap, a wondrous oasis. A small pond, fed by a waterfall. A slight, sandy ridge that encompasses the pond and the narrow path that branches off from it, traveling down into a forest so large that it trails off into the distance. A midnight blue sky that has stars in every color of the rainbow. I can't feel anything below my waist.
I try to pull myself along with my hands, but I'm too weak and start making small tracks in the sand with my fingers. There's a peculiar bird hovering in the sky over the waterfall, bright green wings and absolutely huge. I find myself wondering, as my arms go numb, what it would be like to fall asleep under those stars every night. And what the morning would bring.
That's when I woke up and found Wednesday (the smallest of our cats) sleeping on my chest. She opened her eyes for a second, decided that I wasn't going anywhere and drifted back off. And so did I.
--finn
