pastura

I have always dreamt of armageddon - no recurring plots or themes, but a familiar tangible dread that it is The End. Sometimes I am the only one to know, and other times the world crumbles under our feet. Once, it came to me in the glitch of a televised basketball game, everyone watching uncomprehending, as the screen went to snow and came back. I knew.



In the second semester of my senior year of college, I had a startling dream that played behind my eyelids even after I had woken. Jesus was killed by an asp! I think I wrote it down somewhere, or I repeated it enough times that I thought I would always remember. But now, I can just see a man on his back on a bed outdoors. Sick. A crowd describing a semi-circle on his left. On his right, another man charged with making Jesus well. What the crowd cannot see, is that he is lifting a snake to the sick man's side, stretching its length along the bed. Hollow fangs - piercing fleshy neck - eyes wide, like paralized Juliette watching Romeo die beside her - dead? dead! - and wailing, of course there is wailing. No one knew why.