A Mid-February Dream

I’m having a heated argument with someone over politics and authoritarianism, and he reaches down to break the power cord off a nearby heating pad and starts beating and whipping me with it. Suddenly it’s later and I’m before the media explaining what happened and it ruins his career.

It’s later still, and I’m in a meeting with the powers that be around a small table in a very large room that appears to be high school gymnasium. Two of the men at the table explain that the vote of the man who beat me now is split between the two of them. A third man who sits slightly off to the side away from the table reading a book jumps up, and gets in my face over what happened.

“Have you ever been whipped,” I ask him.

“My sister was,” he replies. “My cousins were.”

“Well, I hope it never happens to you.”

“I hope it does happen to you.”

“Well, at least now that’s all out in the open.”

Suddenly I am an entirely different person in the room and the person I was begins to have a seizure. He falls to the ground, and I kneel down and hold him on my lap.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “It’s okay.”

The man who got in his face scrambles off to the side to grab a stick and place it in his mouth so he doesn’t bite his tongue, but then the seizure stops and his head bursts into flame. We all back off and watch as the flames first crystalize and then start turning to stone.

I wake up.