Fever Dreams

I've had the flu for three days now, and except for the sick and miserable part, it's been pretty cool. I'm talking about the medicine induced fever dreams.

I have always enjoyed a vibrant dream life. And I usually remember most of my dreams. I have idyllic sitting-by-the-stream dreams, highway dreams where I am driving a sleek black sedan down an endless night-time highway, busy dreams full of repetitive tasks that somehow hold the key to the universe, conversational dreams bubbling over with witty banter, lost-in-the-big-building dreams, erotic adventure dreams, and dreams populated with dead relatives.

But fever dreams are the best. In them I go furthest afield from my known realities. Lovecraftian Cthulhu-type monsters, my wife cast as an evil nemesis, cars going up hills so steep they fall over backwards, at times I possess the power of self-flight, or I experience life aboard a generation ship wandering aimlessly among the stars, and floating. Everything is floating, lifting, spinning. I try to raise my arm and my hand is the size of a small car. I turn it this way and that, marveling that I can move something that size. I lay my hand on the covers and feel an immense weight upon my leg, my eyes close again, my arms and legs receding to nothingness as I float effortlessly above a blackened, surreal landscape of charred tree stumps and ground fog, back lit by a purplish glow. Suddenly something moves. It is approaching rapidly. Too fast for me to get out of the way. I can't see what it is through the mist. I hear a growl, deep throated and hungry. I try to turn and slip in some wet muck. I can hear claws on cobblestone and now I can see red eyes penetrating the Stygian darkness, another brief moment of floating, and a weight lands on my chest . . . I jerk awake.

I lay there, sheets soaked with night sweats, heart pounding, my hands gripping the blanket. My breathing is shallow, wheezing; my head aching too much to turn it. And as the dream is shredded and blown away like night fog in the morning breeze, I think, "Cool."