I woke up from my dream last night with my heart pounding. While occasionally this is a sign of a good dream (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), today it wasn't.
I dreamed that I was standing in my bathroom talking to the bartender, who was also standing in the bathroom. Why we were hanging out talking in the bathroom remains a mystery. Dreams. Go fig. Anyway, we were standing there talking, and the bartender had no socks on. Suddenly, as if from no where, a centipede crawled out and ran across the bartender's naked little toes. The good news is, it didn't run over my toes. The bad news is I'm dreaming about centipedes.
Actually, I'm not sure that's it. Since the bartender arrived there have been three centipede incidents: one that he found in the tub when I wasn't home and released to the wild (stupid move - why not just put up a sign?: "No kill centipede shelter! Bring your friends!") the one that snuck into the tub and tried to eat me before escaping and one that came crawling out from behind the toilet while I was freaking on it that then crawled into the kitchen, where it ran into Kristen, got the shit beaten out of it, and was eventually trapped under a bowl with a note on it reading "half dead centipede inside!" until the bartender woke up and killed it. (Side note: it is perhaps possible that these were not three, but rather one exceptionally dogged centipede that twice escaped death and came back for more. But that's a conspiracy theory for another time.) The last of these incidents happened way back in October, so why would I be dreaming about bathroom centipedes now?
Because it wasn't an ordinary dream. It was a flashback caused by post traumatic centipede stress. I was so horrified by what I witnessed that I re-live it in vivid nightmares and become overwhelmed with fear anytime I'm in the bathroom and see movement other than my own.
When I discussed my self-diagnosis with the intern, it got him started on a tangent about bags filled with roaches and roaches on people's faces trying to eat their eyelashes and that these things had happened to people he knew (in South Carolina. Wally, is this common or are his friends just slobs with tasty eyelashes?). I got so freaked out I began to see the appeal of agoraphobia, provided that my entire house is one big hermetically sealed clean room.
I think maybe I should see someone.
2 comments:
To fully elucidate this hypothesis of post-traumatic stress syndrome, I propose an experiment: for the next two days at work we will discuss cock roaches and spiders (in addition to pizza and ice cream) to the point of nausea, and then make note of your dreams. If you wake up in a full sweat, heart pounding and all, stirred by visions of the creepy crawlies, you have proven your theory. This experiment will begin on Thursday and will be conducted by the intern.
Hey, what's that behind you?
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