Saturday, January 3, 2009

Hippoaquarius

Maybe it would be a good idea for me to not write down my dreams as blog entries. Maybe not.

Last night I dreamt I was in an enormous store. It was an absolutely enormous, dull-colored warehouse with that kind of concrete floor that never looks clean. It was exactly like a Costco in appearances, save that shelves were few and almost the entirety of the inside was a fifteen-foot deep glass tank that was full of Alligators, and Crocodiles, and Caimans and Gharials and what have you. The tank was almost the size of the store itself, stretching on for the size of a city block in either direction. Moms and children were about with their shopping carts and they stopped and they looked and they pointed and moms told their kids little interesting factoids before going to look for the Brillo pads or greeting cards for their aunts and father-in-laws.

A hole opened up in the ceiling and an immense platform on which stood scores wild horses lowered down the tank. Everyone became excited and the tank became the center of everyone's attention. They wanted to see the horses fed to the hungry crocodiles, lazy and uncaring as they were, sliding along the bottom of the tank. The platform tilted and horses tumbled frightened into the water and the surface was upset.

*gasps* look! They're feeding them!

No sooner had they hit the water than had they began to move as gracefully through it as they would on land.

"I read in a book that horses can live underwater" a girl told her mom.

The horses ran through the water away from the reptiles. They formed a herd and ran far from where I could see them.

Then they charged like stampeding cattle from the other side. They trampled the crocodiles to death and they shattered that dense glass and water burst with unimaginable force, sending water and glass everywhere, flooding everything.

I was in the hospital later. I had lost my left leg in the stampede.

"You're a hero". They said. They gave me a purple heart. But I wasn't in the army, so they enlisted me and gave me a uniform, and gave me a purple heart and honorably discharged me.

"No", I said.

"But god knows I'll never ride a horse again"

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