A Dream

It is night. I am in the desert, alone. I stumble through the brush, Mexican poppies, Palo Verde, a rattlesnake shaking its warning nearby, and then I move out onto a highway. My feet are shredded. Bleeding. Wrapped in gauze. I can smell the infection. I can barely walk.

The road stretches dark in both directions. The sky above is awash in a billion stars. I look to the highway. North, South? East, West? I can’t tell where is where. I am cold. I am crying. And then suddenly I see jacaranda trees in the distance, on either side of this abandoned interstate, their foliage engulfed in fire. I stumble, stagger toward the blazing copse. The heat is all I want. So, I go towards it, the flame.

And then I hear a noise to my left. I stop. Hold still. I’m shivering, my teeth, chattering. Keep my eyes on the fire ahead, but I listen. It sounds like a whisper; like palm fronds in a high wind. But then the whispers turn to words:

“Help me.”

I stop walking and look to my left: A row of Saguaro off the roadside, and beyond, in the wilderness, darkness.

“Help me,” she says, from the darkness.

I look ahead, towards the burning jacaranda trees. Twenty more steps, and I’m there.

I look back at the wilderness. The darkness.

“Help me. Untie me. Please,” she says. “I’m begging you!”

I turn. I move toward the darkness.

"Yes. Come to me," she hisses. And I--

Mark Brucer wakes me. “Ellen show in three hours, bro.”