Day Three.

I woke up last night in a cold sweat from the worst nightmare I'd ever had. I was in the middle of an ever-changing, ever-moving landscape, brick-red and olive-green and sea-blue. The two suns in the sky beat down with large, yellow baseball bat beams, and I was naked and sweating a river which ran into a rivulet which ran into a trickle of a drip on the red, red earth floor. But as I walked into the impenetrable landscape, I looked up to scan the inverted horizon and saw a silhouette, a silhouette I knew only too well. The silhouette of Zach, back to me in habitual disdain. And I looked down again, and on my feet were leather-made, steel-toed boots, and they were supple and strong and fit as skin fits sinew. And I started running, so I could run up to him, before he had a chance to turn, and plant a steel-capped foot into his shins, and feel and hear the delicious crackle of flesh giving way to pure shin, unadulterated bone.

And I ran and ran and ran for what must have been hours, or minutes, and I reached Zach and skipped around him, dainty and eager and willing to crush shin on steel. And I danced around him like a bumblebee in the featherweight division, and kept dancing and dancing and Zach did not have a front. He had no face, no nose, no shins. And I was skipping, still skipping around and around him, waiting for the inevitable presentation of the shins that just would not come.

And so I woke in a cold sweat, and now I can't look at Zach without imagining the sheer shinlessness of his person. I know it's silly, and I know he has them, but I just... can't.

But tomorrow I will kick Zach in the shins. For, after all, he is but a man, and all men have shins.


Listening to: Tracy Chapman - Cold Feet