Part Two: The Dream
Part Two: The Dream
That night she dreamed her mother was performing surgery on her.
This was inconvenient, because her mother was dead.
Nobody in the dream seemed particularly troubled by this.
Even she herself did not seem particularly troubled.
It was another weird dream.
Her mother stood over her, but only her hands and her serious, emotionless face could be seen.
The rest of her was in shadow.
There was no hospital.
There were no nurses.
Just herself and the hands and face of her mother.
She was lying flat on a table.
She thought she should get up.
Then the incision began at her throat.
Her mother cut downward.
Oh, my.
She saw it all from above.
Am I dead? Is this my autopsy? Is my mom performing it?
Her mother worked carefully.
This was somehow worse.
There was no anger in her movements. No frenzy. No evidence that anything unusual was happening at all.
And no weighing of organs.
It wasn't an autopsy.
What in the world?
She watched her own body being opened from throat to abdomen with the detached fascination of someone observing repairs being made to an appliance she happened to own.
She felt no pain.
And then everything skipped ahead like a VHS player on fast-forward.
There was no pain.
No sensations at all.
Her mother reached inside.
"What are you looking for?"
Her mother did not answer.
"What are you taking out?"
Still nothing.
The Woman tried to look.
Her mother blocked her view.
Then the dream changed.
Not faded.
Not shifted.
Changed.
Fast-forwarded again.
She was standing now.
Her mother was gone.
The table was gone.
The room was gone.
She looked down.
There were six nipples on her chest.
Two rows.
Three on each side.
She counted them twice.
Then a third time because six nipples seemed like the sort of thing one ought to verify before becoming upset.
Six.
"Huh," she said.
She touched the lowest one.
It was hers.
That was the disturbing part.
Not attached.
Not sewn on.
Not recently constructed.
Hers.
Her body remembered having it.
Her mind did not.
Something buzzed near her ear.
She turned.
A bee hovered beside her.
Except it wasn't a bee.
She knew this immediately.
The bee knew that she knew.
They regarded one another.
Its wings adjusted.
Somewhere very far away, a goat fell over.
She woke up.
She remained still beneath the blankets.
Dark room.
Ceiling fan.
House.
Her house.
Her body.
She put one hand against her chest.
Two.
Only two.
"Well," she whispered.
Then she heard buzzing at the window.
Your mother made you are a pig.
She sat upright.
"Good Lord. What was that?"
And why was her intrusive thought using improper syntax and grammar?
