S____ and I are walking around the
warehouse-filled parts of
Boston, off of
Comm Ave, near the
B.U. campus. We meet a woman who says she is waiting for her family to leave a
concert that is taking place in one of the large buildings that surround us. It is either nighttime, or the buildings are blocking most of the light.
The woman comments that both of our names come from families long associated with bookmaking and/or accountancy. We discuss the similarities of the two, and I mention something about reading a mystery/police procedural novel where the gutsy woman protagonist gets involved with some deadly bookmaking operation. Meanwhile we are walking away from the warehouses.
A helicopter flies past, low, overhead. A second, battered helicopter has just landed and tipped over in a swampy open lot across the street from us.
My macho brother, C_____, who was not with us before, appears out of nowhere and goes off to help the people in the downed helicopter. As he is doing this we hear the pilot of the chopper in the swamp directing the passengers to shift their weight somehow in a way that allows the chopper to right itself. I keep thinking the thing is going to explode and they should just get out as fast as they can. We watch nervously.
The passengers and pilot leave the chopper and head towards C_____. C____ is crossing a fallen log that bridges a small stream within the swampy lot and falls in. For some reason the people from the chopper are also in the water now, and all are slogging towards the sidewalk, with C_____ in the lead. Someone alerts C______ to the fact that a large snake is swimming up behind him.
C_____ manages to grab the snake and simultaneously leave the stream and cross the road to a park, where we join them and try to help but mostly are just looking on, trying not to get in the way. C_____ declares that the snake is a venomous copperhead, and tries to tell the others how to deal with it.
In trying to kill it, several of the chopper people manage to get bitten. One is bitten on the eyebrow.
C_____ takes the snake back and places it on the ground. I give someone a paperback book to put over its head, and hand someone a hatchet to chop off the head. C____, or someone else reminds everyone not to try to handle the head after it is chopped off, as this is how most snakebite cases happen (never mind we've already got at least two snakebites to deal with among those present).
I awake, creeped out by all this snake business.