As in:
The dream he experienced just before waking the next morning was not a rebuttal to his earlier premonition, but it offered new information. In the dream he was lying naked on his back on a sandy beach with his left foot touching Charisse’s right foot. He could caress her foot with his, and admire her face and enviable form through his peripheral vision. But that’s all. It was as though he was suctioned to the beach, his arms and legs too heavy to lift.
He could sense that the tide was coming in and in the distance, above the horizon, he could see a cloud of sea birds drawing near. The physical sensation of the dream, a gentle warmth from the sand, and the dream-enhanced response of the foot-play, was all very pleasant. It was what he knew and sensed about the tide and the birds that, in the way an hour glass inexorably shifts grains of sand from one chamber to other, was turning the dream from bliss to terror. With acuity, he knew when he was directly between the two dispositions and also when the balance shifted toward what he sensed would be a very bad ending.
The birds arrived before the tide. There were seven storm-petrels and one albatross. The albatross could speak and actually did have a lot to say, especially after the storm-petrels had landed and stepped up onto his chest, forming a chorus line from his navel to his chin.
“I don’t know where the traffic went,” the albatross said, and then repeated the line again, before asking the storm-petrels, “what did you see about where the sandwiches went?”
“I did not see any sandwiches,” Ben felt moved to say.
“Not asking you! Not asking you! Not asking you!” the albatross squawked.
The large bird then began asking the storm-petrels whether it would be better to start with his nose or his toes.
It was not explicit that the birds would be dining on him but the conversation seemed headed in that direction.
Having his nose pecked off would be hideous, he thought. And now in a dream that began so pleasantly, he found himself rooting for the tide to come in. First he thought he would drown, but then he realized he was only stuck in a dream, and that the salt water in his nose would just wake him up. And that’s what he wanted. He wanted out.
But the albatross wasn’t done tormenting him.
“See what happens when they take the sandwiches?” the albatross asked. And now he could feel the claws of the storm-petrels.
Not pleasant.
No comments yet.