My
intestines are huge against the wall of my stomach, pressing out, distending my entire body. I am talking to someone about why that might be. A girl I don't like falls into the
toilet trying to pull the plug.
I am getting ready to go to work. It's morning and I'm really tired. Soon, this part of the dream will replay in my waking life. I find an insect in my bed as I'm looking for my shoes. It starts out a boxelder bug and as I catch it in toilet paper it is the length of my hand, warm, and hard to squish. I throw it to the floor and stamp on it, bursting its exoskeleton. I find my boots in a basket of shoes and put them on. My friend Nick does the same. I drive to work. At work there are trees planted in ground covered with rounded gray rocks. Picnic tables are set up. One of the trees is planted in a hollow, with an umbrella-shaped wire framework around it and white people chained around the base of the tree, manacles made of steel with huge screws in them. Some of them have infected joints from trying to pull the manacles off. This is some kind of work-related punishment. A black man sitting at a picnic table next to the tree starts asking me trivia questions about Jesus. I push some of the little stones towards the tree, stopping when I realize how bad that would be for the people chained to it. I look down at my feet and realize the shoes I'm wearing are about 6 sizes too big and belong to Nick. I change out of them, putting on my sneakers. I put the boots in my car, which is double-parked on the sidewalk so I won't forget them, then realize that if I have Nick's boots, he can't go to work, which means he's here with me, probably wandering around lost. I find him. He's wearing other shoes but wants his boots. We look for my car, which is not among the light-colored cars sparsely parked on the street. Other people are helping us search. A woman tells us about the two businesses sharing the dumpster in an alley, how one is open from 8am to 8pm, and the other from 8pm to 8am. One of them sells sex toys, the other is an office. The night business has just taken a lot of deliveries. Down at the end of a long block, we find my car double-parked on the street side. There are people sitting on the passenger side, men of arabic descent wearing fezzes. I open the driver's door and tell them to get out. They get out. I get in, make several attempts to close the door before it catches, and lock it. I start driving. It's night and I'm racing through the streets. I hit the same man at a streetcorner and he goes flying off to try to stop me at the next corner, repeating several times before I wake up.