Who knows what time it was … maybe 4:00 am this morning.  I was jolted awake by a dream.  As I hunkered down in the safety of my pillow, the details remained vivid.  A little red dot, swollen, appeared above my right knee.  I wasn’t concerned, but some filmy being was.  He or she squeezed it, and the tip of a silver filament appeared.  They grabbed on and pulled.  It was so tiny in diameter, and shiny.  There was no pain, just the sense of movement inside.  The being kept pulling and the string kept coming.  This seemed to go on for minutes.  A pile of silver grew at my feet, coil upon coil.  Finally the other end left my body and settled gently to the floor.

Woh.

I think I was sweating but I don’t really know.  Eyes eventually closed, the mind sort of settled, and I was asleep again.

Some time later, another jolt: I was holding a very long duffel bag, cylindrical in shape.  It was empty, except for something moving way down at the closed end.  I lifted the bag vertical and there was a fall of objects towards the drawstring opening.  Out plopped a “bug”, about three inches long, with fluttering mauve and yellow wings.  Next was a gooey snake, the colour of wallpaper paste.  It was divided up into small sections by a series of bright red rings that constricted the body.  As soon as it hit the floor, it curled into itself.  Other beings came out of the bag.  I don’t remember what they looked like, but everyone was scurrying around, seemingly in pain.  Were they hiding from the light?

Woh, chapter two.  Both dreams were shot in Ultra HD, and in silence.

When I finally roused myself to verticality, I sought the refuge of the shower.  Thank God.  Then I pulled out my phone and checked to see what CNN was saying about our coronavirus world.  Scrolling down the latest articles of sadness, I came upon one titled “The Meaning of Your Coronavirus Dreams”.  Okay.  That seems relevant to my life.

The author talked about some Twitter posters being “amazed at the peculiarity of their dreams or distressed by plots that center on death, fear and strange new worlds”.  Yup.  One woman shared that “In my dream, I called an Uber, but a hearse showed up instead.”  Alrighty then, time for a sleeping pill.

“According to experts, these cryptic responses are normal.  Our brains’ way of understanding the stressful information we take in during the day can manifest in nightmares.”

So I’m not outrageously abnormal (or am I?)  Our entire beings are being electrified by something that’s new in the world (unless you were alive in 1918).  Let’s all just breathe, and hopefully sleep.