Two Nights: Two Parts of a Nightmare

Day 1:

Two musical chords.

****

Yes, that was all I remember. Two horrible, movie-style "look-out!" musical chords. Woke up and was halfway across the hotel bed toward the window before I realized that I had only dreamed it.

I remember nothing else.





Day 2:

I was running home through the cornfields in the back of the house. The fields were still brown and not yet tilled, and I was running along the edge, between the field and the forest. There were snakes, sleeping along the forest edge. I ran past them, not really looking at them because they were harmless. Then I thought I saw a hooded cobra, and I stopped, thinking "Cobras don't live in Indiana..." As I stopped to look, the snake reared back and sort of bit me in the hip. I was surprised, and plucked it off. We both looked at each other, sort of surprised, then the snake extended its fangs and sunk them deep into my side, like around my kidney.

****

Again, I woke up, though this time I did not attempt to escape my bed.

Later, while at the Sonora Desert Museum (highly recommend it), I saw a medium-sized snake, black and shiny, slithering across the sidewalk below me. I decided to give it a wide berth.