“I think you have a point, sir, but are you aware that there is a badger eating your head?”<\/p>\n
I sighed.\u00a0 “He is merely nomming.\u00a0 Besides, this has to be a dream, because a badger’s jaws simply can’t open that wide.”<\/p>\n
“Perhaps you have a point, sir.”<\/p>\n
“A pointy head?\u00a0 And stop calling me, `Sir,’ like I’m something sir…um…ish.”<\/p>\n
“If you wish, sir.”<\/p>\n
“Oh, no, no, no,\u00a0you don’t get me that easily.\u00a0 I never wish.”\u00a0 Which was a lie, but so was the badger on my head.\u00a0 I scratched my badger in lieu of being able to sit and think. \u00a0The strange boy who looked like an extra from “Oliver” cheerfully ceased to exist.<\/p>\n
I was sitting on a bench that didn’t exist in a part of the Botanical Gardens that also didn’t exist, at least, to my merely mundane knowledge of the place.\u00a0 I recognized the area, but not the plants, or the scent of the flowers.\u00a0 It was kind of like the stuff those coffee places called chai, but more if it had been crossed with a dusty road that had just been touched by the first rain of the season, and then a packet of barbecue sauce had been split on it by the passing hoof of an antelope.<\/p>\n
Pareve barbecue sauce, of course.<\/p>\n
Matana sat next to me, watching the sun go down over the fields of odd, motile flowers.\u00a0 “I thought you habitually closed doors,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I thought you habitually feasted on human blood.”<\/p>\n
“You do know there’s a badger eating your head?”<\/p>\n
“We each have our parasites to bear, then, I guess.”<\/p>\n
“No, a badger, not a bear.”<\/p>\n
“Why do you insist on badgering me?”<\/p>\n
“Have you taken all you can bear?”<\/p>\n
I harumphed, and she giggled.\u00a0 That was the way of it, then.\u00a0 “Why are you in my dream?” I asked.\u00a0 “I don’t even like you,”\u00a0I said after the last ray of the sun fell past the ridge and the flowers slowly came to a stop, as if falling asleep.<\/p>\n
“The feeling is entirely mutual.\u00a0 Maybe that bothers your subconscious?”<\/p>\n
“I think everyone wants to be liked,” I said, hesitantly.<\/p>\n
“Perhaps I represent your unresolved anxieties revolving around violence?”<\/p>\n
I quirked an eyebrow at her.<\/p>\n
“Perfectly reasonable, of course, but I’ve never been anything but civilized, and I think that galls you.”<\/p>\n
I shifted, not admitting anything. \u00a0After all, it was my dream, and thus my fantasy, right? \u00a0“It’s been a rough dreaming, a rough night.”<\/p>\n
“And so are its creatures?” she asked, teasingly.<\/p>\n
“I might have a few mysteries that include you, so my subconscious may still be churning out the reasons you’re connected.”<\/p>\n
“Dream a little dream of me?” she shrugged.<\/p>\n
“That’s a Sandman reference.” \u00a0I sighed. \u00a0“DC, of course,” like I had to explain to my dream.<\/p>\n
As I watched the garden, some of the flowers began to glow, and the luminescent petals were picked up by the wind. \u00a0It was disturbingly Disney, and I was going to remark on that to Matana, but she was gone, out sucking blood in someone else’s dreams, maybe hers. \u00a0 Or whatever she ate. I was still unclear on that.<\/p>\n
“If this is,” I said to the plants, “some kind of metaphor, I will have you know that I do not read poetry for fun, and I would prefer if some sort of deus ex machina came out and explained it all to me. \u00a0Exposition and spoilers are fine.”<\/p>\n
The flowers did not answer, but someone else walked past and sat on the bench.<\/p>\n
“Thomas. \u00a0I was wondering when you would show up,” I said, with as much dry wry in my voice as I could manage without a cough.<\/p>\n
“And here I am. \u00a0Not to provide answers, but maybe poetry.”<\/p>\n
“I don’t think my brain has had the opportunity to make simple couplets, let alone some naughty limericks.”<\/p>\n
“Am I Bedlam or Rhymer?” he asked. \u00a0It seemed to be very important to him, so I didn’t shrug off the question.<\/p>\n
“Is this dreaming at all true?” I asked in return.<\/p>\n
“You were exposed to a great deal of magic today. \u00a0I do not think you escaped it all,” he said. “Now, a true Thomas sees the path to Heaven as one foul and tempered too much in order, and instead spends the biblical forty days instead on the road to fair Elfland. \u00a0Mad Tom has been spit out from Elfland and maudlin, his disciples walk ten thousand miles to meet him. \u00a0What path do you follow, E?”<\/p>\n
“I prefer the doctor moniker than something suggesting I’ve walked out of an asylum, previously mentioned comics aside,” I said. \u00a0“Why am I on the road, and does my GPS work there?”<\/p>\n
“You’re a seeker, one who wanders the fringes, seeking the path of truth.”<\/p>\n
“I think I’m more the type who tries to avoid truth, holds his hands his eyes with the fingers just wide enough to not stumble, and runs away shouting. \u00a0The one who knows the best bet is to throw himself on the live grenade than read a book of unspeakable horror.”<\/p>\n
“You’re a very scared man with a badger on his head.”<\/p>\n
“At least he’s got an affable aroma. \u00a0He could be a stinking badger.”<\/p>\n
“Does it hurt?”<\/p>\n
“Until you reminded me of it, I had forgotten it. \u00a0But I’m sure it’s there for a reason. \u00a0Perhaps it is a gentle method of indicating that I am as stubborn as one. \u00a0I don’t know if it even really looks like a badger, because it’s a dream. \u00a0It could be something that my mind had made a picture of that says ‘badger’ and all of your reflections in my subconscious has agreed, indeed, it is a badger, especially if it is not a chinchilla. \u00a0I, myself, just want to know am I suffering for having a badger on my head in real life? \u00a0Is this badger some stubbornness within myself that is holding me back? \u00a0I don’t know if I could go into an interview with a badger on my head. \u00a0That would probably not get me the job. \u00a0What if the badger decides it wants someone else? \u00a0Would my head be cold? \u00a0Would it suddenly savage another in order to rid itself of the taste of my scalp and go back to wherever head-eating-badgers come from? \u00a0I try not to think about it, really.”<\/p>\n
“Madness, then?”<\/p>\n
Of course, it was then that the alarm on my phone woke me up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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