Prison in Paradise
Date Thursday, March 28, 2024 - 12:48 PM PST
Topic Dreams


The world was a damp, brown place-and no, it was not floating in a toilet. It was a rainforest, and it was hot. I could feel the mist on my skin and the sweat dripping down the line of my spine. I could hear the birds calling, taste the mould in the air, smell the heat...all I could see was an enormous ant mound.

A brown hill, home to millions of the little robot-like insects squatted in front of me in the gloom, and I started at it as if hypnotized until my best friend and my younger sister interrupted me by letting me know that it was time to go. I did not know where we were going, but okay. However, as soon as I tried to walk, I fell down. My friend was the only one there, and as she knelt next to me I noticed the sudden proliferation of vines in the trees.

“Anna, what happened to your feet?” she asked, prompting me to look.

As soon as I looked at my feet, they began to hurt. I could feel the pain like hot needles burrowing out of my flesh. No wonder. The soles of my feet were completely covered in yellow ant bites, and part of the instep was rotting away. The heels were leaking some sort of brown acidic substance, and I felt tears spring up unbidden. I was crushing the vines I sat on, and I wondered if some of the ants had gone away from the nest and were still biting me.

“I think the ants bit me,” I replied stupidly.

We began to walk...well, she walked for a time. I hobbled. At some point, she vanished, but I didn’t really notice. I looked behind me without turning my head, as though my eyes could peer through my brain and skull and hair to the rain forest I was moving out of, and I saw the footprints I left. Misshapen images of my steps, smeared by the oily surface of the ivy, prints of pus and blood. I came to the edge of the jungle, and stood with the birds screaming behind me for a time.

The time was either aeons or but a moment, but regardless I moved on. I came to a building with dozens of people running around like chickens with their heads cut off. My gram was bossing most of them around, particularly a camera crew. Apparently the northern side of my family was going to be part of a reality series, and I had almost been late. There was no time for me to go to makeup, which everyone seemed to think was more important than me seeing a doctor, but no one would tell me what to do. I just limped around aimlessly, following a middle aged man with a truly impressive beard and an awe inspiring beer belly.

Finally someone started giving me instructions, but my task was so easy that I did it without thinking and then just stared out a window at the jungle I had left. It was a very high window, although I don’t remember any stairs and the building had only appeared to be one story from outside. I could see the sun rising, and red birds that I knew to be huge but were mockingly shrunk by distance flew low over the dark green trees. Everything glistened in the damp, and it struck me how stupid all the people inside the building were. But it was okay, because as soon as I realized that, I also realized that all the people were far, far away, and I was all alone. Nothing could touch me...but I could not get out of the floor-sized room.

This article comes from Shmeng
http://www.shmeng.com/

The URL for this story is:
http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=674