Challenge from Emily – write about an indelible moment
So I share a recent indelible moment – about 3 hours recent – and it’s horrifying. Readers beware. Strange what pills will do to “keep us well.” Backstory: negative COVID test – but take this COVID Cocktail to prevent it……
Apologies for the length…..
Melatonin Dreams of the COVID cocktail
an assortment of vitamins and
melatonin-
1 to 3 milligrams a half hour before bed
as tolerated
what does that even mean?
as tolerated
I’d heard sleepless friends say melatonin causes nightmares
(in my dream
I was supposed to be at a horse rodeo
but never saw
the first horse
I was in a big eatery
first at a table with people I didn’t know
two little Italian boys
twins, maybe 5
talking about desserteria
and then selling $1.75 trinket rings
as a fundraiser
my own dad suddenly appeared because my mom wanted one)
Mom
in heaven in real life now-
and Dad here-
(offered to pay for my ring but I scrounged up my own quarters)
quarters from the same Ziploc sandwich bag
I keep in my Caribbean Blue Rav 4 console
that I actually
-not in a dream –
had used to make the change part of my grilled chicken lunch
from Big Chic yesterday
in the drive thru in the sudden deluge
for $7.06
-a twenty from
my purse, a nickel and penny from the bag,
two fives and three ones back-
(so I asked the little boys if they’d been to Italy and one said
yes, he’d gotten an Italian haircut there
– and kept eating his desserteria
what is an Italian haircut?
is desserteria even a thing?
his huge group of older relatives
strangers I’d never met started getting up from
the next table and had all the Italian features of olive toned skin and
Ray Romano noses
and glared at me like I had crossed lines with their boys
I stared back with viral oomph
squinted my eyes at them
meeting their challenge
asking with my expression:
how dare they?!?
I’m not the one who let them sit at a table with total strangers
eating desserteria
spend some time with your kids, my eyes accused
it suddenly seemed like we changed from a restaurant to a train car
further down the mallish corridor I saw
a work
colleague)
-from real life
– her family I’d heard all had COVID in real life
(and then Joanie and her husband)
I actually saw in real life
– not just in this crazy dream-
eating barbecue at the Oink Joint in Zebulon this week
(on the walk I saw
my friend Peg
praising the pho
so the Asian girl behind the counter asked me
what I wanted and I ordered
“what they were having”
since I don’t know enough about pho to know,
pointing at Peg and Mary)
competitive-water-ballet-fisherwomen
married friends of mine who’d left their husbands for each other
back around 2002
(but I left the line for a minute
– I do not know why –
came back, got in line to pay for the pho
and realized – no money!
reached in the pocket of my sweater
wait, no,
-this was Mom’s Korean sweater)
-because in real life this week Dad had mailed me a box with her Korean jacket and two Gladys Taber books-
Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge
and
My Own Cookbook
(and I pulled out-
what is this?
foreign currency?
paper bills with unknown faces on them
a five and a one
not knowing whether it was stronger than the dollar or weaker
a young black girl
about seven years old
pulled out her own foreign currency to pay for hers
glanced at me and said something
about the food?
in some language I did not understand
I hoped the foreign money might work
– hers did
where was I in this international rodeo?
in the eating area
a lady named MooreAnn was there with her husband
they were showing how they’d made all these jigsaw puzzles
but neither was clothed and they were hairless and plopped against a wall covering themselves with their arms except for one exposed flat and droopy breast
expressionless lumps
not saying a word while someone else talked for them
a girl ran out from behind a counter to get a cigarette and a light from someone standing by the wall who seemed to know what she wanted without words
then she ran back to work behind the counter
someone said it was MooreAnn’s daughter and I said she looks like them
only with clothes
she was wearing running shorts and a T-shirt
running with a lit smoke and a smile
next there was a labor room where
newborn naked babies were on display
lying on twin beds with their dads while the moms were off somewhere else
-God only knows where-
one baby was cute but way bigger than all the rest and had a disproportionately huge head
his bottom was way too plump in a babyish sense and when he lifted his head to grin
I saw two buck teeth
up top and little teeth on the bottom
and asked how he’d been born with all those teeth already in and how was he already that big?
he had to have hurt
a random
lady there to see the babies told me he’d surely have a brain tumor later
I quipped back it was sad how we don’t know all the answers and why does God let us go through things like this?
those poor parents
facing a baby with cancer
and then I went back to a room
– like a hotel room but not –
to get things to go home
-wherever home was
I was making a right hand turn
in the far left turn lane and maintained my lane
but a car next to me
had me wondering if he would do the same-
I was hyper-aware
but the car stayed in its own lane
I asked whoever was in the car with me
-I knew them but had no idea who it was –
how to get back
– I didn’t know where back was –
but no answer from
the back seat passenger
the roads were dark and desolate and I didn’t know where to go
I guessed at it and saw a child
a girl of about ten
wearing magenta shorts and a shirt walking on the edge of the road
-finally, someone who was dressed-
I went around her
-but a child?
-on a dark highway?
-is this not strange?
And this was when things got worse
I saw the boy
a clothesless boy
about 8 years old
had been hit by a car
and was lying in the road screaming for help
should I stop?
– of course I should
stop
I missed hitting him and pulled to the side to try to help
but the Rav was going too fast to stop
up next in this Melatonin nightmare – another body this one already dead and bloody
and I could not tell anything at all about the victim that
like some roadkill
had been hit several times
and then I saw nothing but blood spots on the road the further I went
and I convinced myself I should turn around
because we may be next if we kept going down this road
I spun the Rav around to take a different way
– to go back and turn onto the road
I had passed
and saw that the car that had been behind me had spun around too
I wondered what
that driver
thought
in this dream of terror
or
-wait!
we’re they in on the killings!?)
4:21 a.m. in real life-
-thank God I’m back-
jolted awake by the horror
bolt upright!
No more Melatonin for me!
Enough.
No. More. COVID. Cocktail.
I’ll take my chances.
I choose real life!
wide awake
I get up from bed in this log cabin in FDR State Park
stumble to the toilet
hear a sound
I’m thinking hubby is behind me in line to pee next
the same way our two dogs line up
for the same spot
I hear popping sounds on the wooden floor
creaks the whole time I pee
“Hey, baby?”
no response
I go back to the room
– there he is in bed
fast asleep
as he was when I left
in this haunted cabin #7
by Lake Delanor
In FDR State Park
On Saturday,
August 15,
2020
Common Threads 