Last year, I inaugurated myself into the batch of special beings.
I'm aware that we all possess something unique evolving from our life experiences, however, that information is mostly redundant for the type of uniqueness we're looking at today.
So, what is this batch, and what afforded me membership into it, you ask?
Well, it was about October of last year, and a dream left me awake at about 3 a.m. very much over it—"it" being life and sleeping.
It started as a vague haze of random, as dreams do (and side note: I would really like one day to remember the exact start of a dream. You never settle in at the beginning of the plot, which is unsettling to me). So, I'm suddenly running and in my childhood home with people I've lost contact with. Interestingly, they were each at the age I last saw them. I was essentially playing around with a bunch of children.
While all this is kicking off, we seem to be talking about some stalker gadget that's supposed to act as a pseudo-smart home device. It was some type of Alexa variant, if you may, but she's also able to follow you around in an autonomous manner—she's somewhat like a drone. An autonomous drone assistant.
So, the whole time I'm wondering why we're running away from this Alexa character—I mean she was just doing her job?—and bam. This computer mouse-sized cockroach lands on the ground right in front of me.
As any normal person would, I bolt in the other direction (honestly, I'm probably also running in my sleep). There's a lot of screaming, Alexroach is continuing to run after us, my childhood neighbors are frantically retreating into their house in horror—they're also pretty much still children, by the way. Yet, for some reason, during this chaos, my dream self seems to find this all slightly humorous.
This Alexroach character, by the way, has quite the run to her. It's a little bit like if a dog with inward-facing legs was running, but remember, it's a peculiarly large roach with their longer inconsistent degree angled legs. You may remember how roaches have two different joints in their legs? If you'd don't, visit google, I'm not putting nasty roaches on my blog—sorry. So, I'd like you to imagine a doggish run with these instead. Beats me honestly.
Anyway, she's chasing us (me? I think she was mine) and we're still screaming, and I'm managing to laugh as well.
We all run up the stairs towards this large balcony we had at our house and pause for a second to regroup. It's then that we realize Alexroach is—and has been—very much absent from the chase. We calm down when we decide that we may have scared her away. We begin to head back down laughing at the disgusting situation, glad the roach issue was now behind us when suddenly we notice trouble ensuing. We see a bunch of strangers gathered around a pit staring at something in shock. We head towards them to figure out the issue. When we reach the gathering, we're told to look for ourselves.
Behold, my dream presents me the castrated nether regions of a person—*penis*.
Yes, I tell the whole truth when I say it was just sat there, inside this new pit in a built-in underground water filtration system we used to have. Not to be too graphic, but it wasn't too grimy of a scene. There was no blood, so the assumption was that the castration hadn't been done recently. We couldn't figure out whose nether regions we were staring at, but there was finally a sense of relief amongst the chaotic day for me being that this Caucasian penis did not belong to any of my immediate family members—we could figure out whose was castrated later. We could only link such a weird turn in events to the obvious new issue at hand: the Alexroach. This would be the time where we would bundle up the Alexroach and ship her back to the seller—probably Wish. No offense Wish.
We left this penis casually laying underground as we began to head into our respective houses. I instead went back to the balcony—to soak in the world??? What was I planning on doing there???
Then, like some ninja of sorts, Alexroach makes her presence known. In a motion probably quicker than light speed, this giant cockroach lands with so much confident aggression on my shoulder. Remember, this mutant smart device is huge. A giant able-to-speak cockroach.
Now, I'm not much of a screamer. Not on roller coasters, jump scares, accidents, nothing. I'm more so a clencher—we can expand on that another time—so I clenched the life out of my entire body. Just the shrill screams alone of all these familiar strangers from my childhood were enough of a reaction to justify the gravity of my situation.
Unfortunately for you, great for me, my total consciousness decides we'd had enough and I wake up. I felt like I wanted to swat against my entire body for my sanity. I didn't even dream well enough to my memory for a couple of days following this one. For the better, I suppose.
About a month after though, I was attacked once again in my sleep. This one was...odd, to say the least. Although looking back on it now, it was insanely foretelling.
Thank you for attending my TED Talk. It's truly appreciated.
I will share the sequel—a now apparent foreshadowing of our future—later...