I was in Iraq, staying in a large house with Lindsay, my Italian cousin Francesco, and Saddam Hussein. Francesco and Saddam got on very well because they were both old school heavy metal fans. They especially liked a song by Bruce Dickinson called Seven Seven, which they were playing and singing along to constantly. One of the lyrics of the chorus was "I am the mother of Touch Hero."

Lindsay and I were getting bored watching Saddam and Francesco get drunk and play air guitar together. Saddam's face was getting redder and redder, and the right hand side of it had taken on the colour and texture of raw beef, leathery and pink. He looked very unhealthy, close to death even. I was playing with a cat, who kept trying to crawl on to Saddam's lap and bite his fingers. I pulled it back and said "Silly kitty, don't scratch Saddam," and I nearly added out loud, as a joke, "Or he'll gas and torture you," but I stopped myself because it occurred to me that he might not find this funny. I didn't know how aware he was of the caricature he had become to most of the world, whether he would be able to laugh at it or not. I also knew that the caricature was based on truth, and maybe he would gas and torture me if I angered him.

I turned around on the bench we were sitting on to look out of the window behind me. We were on the 1st floor of the house, and I could see people in robes and sandals walking on the path below. The air was full of huge wasps, bright yellow and black, with bifurcated bodies like hornets, but thicker, each one at least as long as a human thumb, some of them even larger, buzzing angrily over the heads of the people as they walked.

Lindsay and I went out for a walk because we were so bored of Saddam and Francesco's little double act, but Lindsay turned back after a minute or two because of the wasps. It was hard not to panic, hearing them buzzing and circling just overhead. It began to rain, at least at first I thought it was rain, and I thought, "Good, now maybe the wasps will go away," but there was something strange about the impacts on my hood and my coat. I looked around, and I saw that it was raining locusts. They were bright green, and they were falling from the sky in their millions, hammering on everyone's heads and clothes and turning the earth green. I ducked and hid around the corner of a building to get out of the shower. A voice in my mind told me that these locust storms happened regularly in Iraq, and that it was illegal to collect the locusts when they happened.

Finally I made it to a large, dark cathedral or mosque of some kind, a historical building which was full of tourists. I was glad to make it in out of the hail of locusts, but then I looked over to an alcove on the left and saw that it was a polar bear enclosure, separated from the rest of the interior by a thin rope barrier. There was music playing, and two of the polar bears were having sex in the missionary position while the others loafed around and read books. I was scared of the bears, and decided I wanted to get out of there. Then I woke up.

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