of Mushrooms and tadpoles
Last night. I dreamt of mushrooms and a vagabond. You know? The type where an old man comes up to you brown teeth and all and says “Child, do you never want to dream again? Dip your hand into this bag, and you will know peace. Or then,” he paused, taking out another bag. Pink and stained from all the memories of the world and he says “this one though, will make you dream colour, but you will also know misery. You see dreams are a curse, they make you so hungry. I’m hungry…you have cinnamon? They are nice things…Hurry hurry, pick one child, because you are running out of time.”
I had to ask then. “Are dreams bad? Can I not pick? I will dream when I feel like it thank you very much, and no I don’t like your mushrooms either ways. They look like goldfish eyes” Then the vagabond sniffles, glows and vanishes. I pull a face. He leaves both bags behind. One a dream giver, the other the dream void. I try and pick up the bags, knowing them to be powers of the world but as soon as I touch them I start to dissolve into sand that divides into rivers that flow like spores/ sand into the bags of mushrooms.
70% into the dream-giving bag. 30% the dream void. I remember noting this as I fall into sand. 2 sand rivers sorting and dividing into the bags. Funny how statistics are such vivid and round numbers in dreams. I’m down to my chest now, slowly atomising into sand. There’s a tray of cheese crackers, what looks like good cheese and some wine and I help myself. Atomising is such a slow process. I am almost bored out of my mind about my inevitability.
And I laugh. Suddenly it’s too funny when you are all half sandy and half humanoid. My laughter spills the half drunk wine spills and my sandy bits are soaked. Hmm…tadpoles, wine and sand make tadpoles. Now I am a third tadpole colony a third sand and a third human. It’s a giddy ride, when you are a million tadpoles at a time. It’s almost like having compound eyes except…maybe worse.
Now I’m puking my guts out from the disorientation. hmm…pizza from the night before. NASA should have trained me for this I remember thinking. O wait, it doesn’t make sense, I have no stomach so WTF? Where is this river of reverse gastro food source?! I wave my hands through the sea of puke, sand and tadpoles tracing the source of my digested food. Hah..rope like things, this must be my guts, so I pull…
The mushroom bags come alive like tents when I pull, like puppets. Humanoid puppets, bursting with mushrooms. It’s getting crazy, the mushroom bags from Mr Vagabond now look like frankenstein monsters gasping and the like. They are pulling back my guts too, with arms that look like tentacles and sand bags. I’m insulted and it becomes a matter of pride. So I suppose I should be fighting for my intestines so I pull, they pull, it’s all a great show of strength. All this time, I’m a million tadpoles swimming in a murky morbid sea of puke and sand. I’ve never been busier.
It’s all very distracting, by now I’ve figured that closing my eyes makes the puking go away. Which is a relief, but the mushroom monsters still have my guts.
This is a problem.
Then of course, it occurs to me that my hands are dissolving now and I’m going to be losing the tug of war so I put my intestines into my mouth. At this point I discover that my intestines taste like the best snake candy in the world, and forgetting my fight I start chewing.
I realise to my horror I can’t stop chomping through the rest of myself from the inside out. The mushroom humans realise this too and they start looking really scared and really small. I don’t stop, I can’t stop…chew chew chew this is all I know. I slurp the tadpoles and the sand and all the mushrooms and the bags and the sea of gross out. I am my mouth.
All this time my eyes are closed and I don’t want to open them anymore and I feel my eyeballs slipping out from behind my sockets as my mouth burrows into my face like a giant mutant termite and empties out my sockets and then I think I hear my skull cave in. At this point I know the universe has stopped. At this moment I’m all knowing, all hearing and I know I’m the only one left in the verse. Then I cry and retch huge pieces of flesh and I am me again.
Somewhat. For some reason I’m now wearing a McDonald’s uniform behind a sign that says tadpoles for sale. $4.99 ask for the special upgrade. A girl comes up to the counter and asks for a tadpole special, someone unrolls my sticky frog tongue and gives it a good wipe on the food tray, from my drying spit is a sea of tadpoles with the face of the vagabond….
Freudians can shut up now.