hi.

excuse me please, while i have a temper tantrum.

i am just all whiny and piny and altogether feeling like throwing things and screaming.  strangely enough, it’s not a terrible feeling.  i think it would feel really good and not at all negative.  the negative part is not being able to do it right now. 

hmpf.

so over the weekend (this is not the temper-tantrum.  just my exposed soul, is all.)  i had the worst dream i’ve ever had.  not one of the truly terrifying ones; no loss of a loved one or anything.  i mean like gory, horror-flick style.  i am still quite amazed at the twisted horrificness (nope.  not a word.) that came from the depths of my subconscious.

i’m going to tell you about it, which is sort of a problem because a.) it’s just nasty and not really inspiring blog material, and b.) if you were so inclined, you could analyze a road map of my inner workings.  and i don’t want you to know.  i really don’t.  and yet, i’m telling you.  (idiot.)  so look away if you must.  i will have a lovely guitar-playing, dread-headed, tube-sock-ed girl to post soon, and you can just hold out for that if you came here hoping for loveliness.

this is not lovely.  and also it is long.

there was more to the dream in the beginning, but this is where it got ugly:  it was my first day back to work as a nurse.  the hospital building was dark and there were no patients in the rooms.  the hospital was also sort of a dormitory and maybe a church and had a mental institution vibe.  i stood with three other new workers, and we wondered what we were supposed to be doing.  we figured out that we had been assigned to some experimental project that had, that night, been suddenly abandoned.  the phlebotomist came onto the floor and asked where all of the “scions” were.  (i should note that i woke up from this dream wondering where i came up with the word “scion.”  i can’t ever remember hearing it.  googling it gave me the chills: a descendant or offspring.  a shoot or twig from a plant for grafting.)

we told the phlebotomist that apparently, the project had been abandoned.  she stared at us in horror, then relief, and went running, full-speed, from the room.  slowly, the “scions” or patients or subjects or whatever began to wander into what was like a large surgical area.  they were sort of zombie-like and bloody, but cordial enough.  (ha!) one doctor was with them, and it seemed like he was trying desperately to save the experiment, and he took a few of them into the operating room. 

somehow we new workers ascertained that this experiment or whatever it was was intended to help the human race live to its highest potential.  the scions were people who were dead or dying, their bodies (but not souls) salvaged by some new medication.  the surgeons, we learned, performed procedures not unlike lobotomies, nipping and scraping off different internal organs, trying to find the right combinationfor their ambitious goal.  some of the patients ended up being exceptionally “good,” or moral, after a procedure, some gained genius intelligence, some could actually fly.

as we were learning this all (maybe the surgeon was telling us, as he operated?  i don’t remember), a beautiful blonde woman sat up on her surgical table, her chest oozing new blood upon the old dried blood.  she was screaming and screaming in agony and pain and sorrow, pointing at a stainless steel table across the room.  there, on the small table, sat her heart, bloody and beating.

i backed away slowly, half-listening to the doctor explain that things had started to go terribly wrong.  i quickly found a set of many open doors, and walked outside into a group of scions.  i was about to just walk away, the fresh air felt so fabulous in my lungs.  but i noticed the scions staring at the humans playing in the snow in the distance.  the other workers were with me, and we decided that we could not just let these things escape.  there was a definite sense of martyrdom:  “save the human children!”

suddenly we workers all had bloody swords, and we ushered the scions inside.  it all got really terrifying, then.  they were disgusting and putrid and it was a bloody mayhem amidst the surgical steel hospital equipment.  there were too many, and there was no controlling them.  it became every-man-for-himself, and i was running, opening doors that led only to windowless rooms, finding small openings and squeezing through them only to find another room, often dorm rooms or classrooms or apartments.  i would search under beds for trap doors, climb into empty elevator shafts, scream and pound on locked doors.  it was endless, and each new escape led to another prison.  and all around, there were scions.

at last, i found myself in a darkened hallway, dark rooms with locked doors everywhere.  i noticed the sword still in my hand, and suddenly remembered a rule that i could leave if i took a scion outside with me.  there was a woman in a lobby trying to deal with the chaos, and i was trying to show her my xeroxed rulebook, to point out the rule about escape.  but she could not hear me.  i grabbed a bloody scion anyway, the sword to her neck, and suddenly i noticed a glass window open a crack.  i could hardly contain my emotion.  it opened onto a rooftop, but we were a story or two above that.  i had to muster the courage to jump out, and to kick out the entire window so both of us would fit, but i was desperate, and left with no other choice.

i kicked, i jumped, and then beside me, (real) Shortcake woke me up.  i couldn’t even find the courage to look around the room.  i held my little teddy bear girl and shivered.  to take my mind off of the dream, i imagined a story plot about secret lovers sending letters to post office boxes, and a granddaughter discovering them.  i didn’t go back to sleep for hours.

how bout them apples?