I dreamt of rhinos and I wondered what that meant. I wondered what it meant when
their stampede avoided my delicate body although I lay there, vulnerable, on the
cracked and warm ground, with my hair splayed out around me as the heavy animals
tiptoed gracefully around my limbs. They watched as I moved my arms in snow angel
fashion and dared them to trample me, to crush my radiuses and my femurs and my
larynx and each of my phalanges one by one.

I dreamt of horses and I wondered what that meant. I wondered what it meant when I
stood upon one of their backs as the others around us ran away from something behind
me that, for the life of me, I could not see. I could not see the invisible threat that
loomed behind us and that in and of itself was more of a threat than anything I could
have imagined coming after us. I looked at the horses as if they were show-ponies, there
only for me and not for the sake of their nature or themselves, and then dreamt of a
remedy for the human condition of which we all suffer.

I dreamt of manatees and I wondered what that meant. I wondered what it meant for
the gentle giants of the sea to poke and prod me with their snouts as their kelp-filled
mouths gasped for air while they breached the surface of the calm Crystal River. My
lungs became water-logged and heavy and full of brackish liquid while the hordes of sea
cows looked on and urged me with their flippers to breathe in the sweet air above me,
but I could not, I could not, I could not. I could only stay there, close to the sand and
rock at the bottom of the shallow pool, staring up at the sky the same color as the water
and while I lay there, suspended in the too-warm water that surrounded me, the
mammals crowded me until I could no longer see, but I did not care.

I dreamt of vultures and I wondered what that meant. I wondered what it meant when I
walked up to the group of fouls and stared at them, scorned them with stormy eyes as
they scavenged and did what vultures do best, what they only know to do. The birds felt
my judgement and immediately moved in on me, live prey, a challenge. They chose to
peck at my ankles, began to tear tissue from tendon and as I looked on, I felt nothing.
Vultures ripped feeling from my body and I only became more and more numb, the
world fading out from beneath me as I stood, helpless and unafraid, while the raptors
feasted and flocked to my body. A murder of crows swarmed above the volt and I and I
heard them cawing and they called my name and I heard nothing.

I dreamt of maggots and I knew what that meant. I knew what it meant when the larvae
burrowed into my skin, devouring the warmth within me as my bones, left intact from
the ungulates, cracked and crumbled like the inhuman resin I knew they were. The
worms consumed my conscious until my mind was left uninhabited by thought, my
human condition alleviated, maggots wriggling through my nonexistent temporal lobe.
The naked, rotten caterpillars moved their way through my damp lungs that I no longer
had use for, their dank, clammy climate the perfect habitation for the sick little
creatures. Finally, the infant insects worked their way through my muscle. It decayed
rapidly and uncomfortably, but I did not care because I could not feel their work being
done. With a head empty of thought and substance and a body full of maggots, I closed
my eyes and dreamt, as much as dreams can be considered dreams without a brain, of
an array of animals that would put Noah’s Ark to shame.

I wondered nothing.