lucyoncolorado
Member

In which I must crawl through a small hole to enter a cramped sleeping space...

I'm in a familiar house with extended family. I climb up a rickety attic ladder to a small opening in the ceiling that leads up to a storage loft. The space is small and dusty. There are blankets thrown across the floor and curtains on the wall. It smells dank, and I have to crawl on my hands and knees to pass through. At the end of the space, there is a tiny hole which I can only fit through by first stretching one arm and shoulder through, then my head, then the other arm and shoulder. I feel compressed and stuck around my rib cage, but once I get both my arms through the other side, I'm able to push the rest of my body through and pop out on the other side. I'm now in a larger attic room with an A-frame roof. The ceiling in this room is high enough that I can stand up fully in the middle. There are four mattresses on the floor in this room, and two of them already have suitcases and clothes near them. Somehow, I realize that the other two are where R and I will stay. I think what a hassle it will be crawling in and out of that hole every time I need to change clothes or sleep.


In which I'm sharing a bed with a man who is presumably my lover...

I'm sleeping in a bed with an older bald white man. As we are in the bed together, I assume he is my lover. I think of how I need to get up soon to let the cattle out to graze. The man is snoring. I'm pretty sure he wants to have sex with me, and I'm wondering how I can wake him up and get it over with before the cattle start to become restless. I remember a dream that I had many years ago in which this same man took me regularly to his house for hookups despite my not really knowing exactly how to initiate anything with him and despite him never really having much to say to me. His house was dark with blue lights. There were heavy carpets on the floor, and blankets and curtains draped across the walls and furniture. His bedroom was empty of any personal items, just a room slightly larger than the bed with nothing else in it other than a digital alarm clock. I start to wonder if that was really a dream or if it really happened. Did I really dream about this man before I met him?

Then another woman comes into the room. She tells me that he has lately been paying attention to her. She sits on the edge of the bed and we discuss how she is going to attract him and take my place, and we plan how she can do it in such a way that I can return to driving the cattle.

In which I'm riding a unicycle toilet...

We are still at K & S's house, but their parents and R's parents are all present as well. I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. The toilet seat is on top of a six foot tall unicycle, leaning in the corner of their hallway. I climb up to the top of it, bracing my arms and feet against the walls of the hallway corner, and eventually pull my pants down to place my butt on the toilet seat on top. Then I strap myself in. I have to keep pedaling to balance myself while simultaneously trying to shit into the seat. This requires me to pedal the unicycle through the house, all around the family in the living room and kitchen. I say that I'm embarrassed about this and I apologize to everyone, but they all just shrug their shoulders and keep drinking chai. It's normal, everyone has to poop.

In which R is having a heart attack but it takes me a long time to notice...

R mentions he doesn't feel well. I'm ranting about Pine Island Capital Partners so I just nod at him and continue. Then I notice he's sweating. I walk over and feel his cheeks, and they're balmy. I notice his eyes are foggy. I ask what symptoms he has. He says he's having severe chest pains and struggling to breath, that he's been having a heart attack for an hour at least. I ask why he didn't say something before. He says he did, but that I can't stop yelling about the military industrial complex long enough to listen to him. I place a cold wet towel on his forehead. He asks me why I'm doing that, and I say it's what people do in Victorian books when people they love are seriously ill.

In which Lucy turns into a tiny snake...


We leave Lucy in our parked car in front of a gas station while we go inside. After a short time, I see that she is running across the lot up to the glass store front. As another customer exits, he holds the door and she runs in to my side. I'm telling the clerk that she's well behaved when she starts to lose control of her back legs and they splay out to the side. R catches her with one hand on either side of her waist and tries to pull her up, but as he does so, she starts to pee. I rush over with a piece of cardboard and slide it under her to catch the mess.

She immediately transforms into a tiny snake with Lucy's face, ears and tongue. She's no more than three inches long and only as wide around as a pencil. I cup her in my hands for safety then walk outside which is now a swimming pool. I'm standing about breast deep in the water with Lucy the snake cupped in my hands. She's wiggling and sliding around. R says she is a snake and therefore a natural swimmer so I release her into the water. But she immediately sinks. She's so small that I lose sight of her.

I shout at everyone in the pool to remain still so I can find her. I spot her under the water, but someone's motion pushes her away and I lose her again. I start to scream and panic. R tells me to calm down as she's already dead. I tell him I know she's dead already but that this doesn't mean we should let this version of her suffer the pain of drowning. We see her again and scoop her up to safety.

Then I place her in R's small whiskey glass. She coils her tiny snake body in the bottom and lets her Lucy face lean over the edge of the glass, her eyes bright and ears alert and tongue panting. I ask her if she's happy. I worry that she's hot, so I hold the bottom of the glass under the water in the pool so that she stays cool and dry.

In which people from the trucker convoy and a guy from a podcast are staying at my house...

Trucker convoy people arrive at my house demanding room and board. Tom Sexton is with them, wearing a skimmer hat and a wrinkled flannel shirt with a pin-on badge that reads Press. I stand on my front porch begging everyone to wipe the mud off their shoes as they push their way into my house.

Everyone is loud and demanding food so I rush into the kitchen and start cooking shepherd's pie. My counters are conveyer belts and the ingredients come to me faster than I can assemble them. I put green jello on the bottom, hamburger meat on top, then mashed potatoes and cheese on top of that. I serve it to the truckers. A woman trucker with a shaved-underneath haircut takes a picture and posts it on Instagram. She labels it #JelloTrudeau and everyone laughs as if this is spectacularly witty. They start chanting Let's Jello Brandon! over and over again, then they scoop the jello up in spoons and flick it with their thumbs, flinging green jello across my muddied house.


In which I discover a secret room under our bed...

I'm vacuuming under the bed when the edge of the hose gets snagged on a nail in the floor. I push the bed aside to investigate, and I see light shine up from around the sides of the floor board. I use my rotary cutter to remove the piece of wood as if it were fabric, then I lift it out. I look down into a dining room with a rustic wooden table set before a stone fireplace. An old woman kneels in front of it, rubbing two sticks together and trying to start a fire. I shout at her to stop because her fireplace has no chimney and it would set my bedroom on fire. She tells me that while my house would've indeed burned down, it would've given me immortality but now I've spoiled the ritual. I ask her if she's the one that set the porch fires in Sequim, and I rush outside to see a deer in my garden box eating my tulips.