EndTimeWorks: The last time I will ever mention suburban neighborhoods, asphalt/cement, my parents' house or Richard Ashcroft
QUAIL DREAM I HAD
I dreamt I was riding an ATV down a bumpy, weed-cracked sidewalk, jumping over thick tree-roots and bouncing into dusty gutters.
The street was, by some forgotten landmark, recognizable as the one on which I was born, and I stopped in front of the neighbor's house to look at this "quail."
One of its wings was caught up inside of the door screen and the other one flapped wildly as it noiselessly clapped like a moth. But what drew my attention was this other quail which was in fact the size of an emu, and with a long, interrogative, shaggy, prehistoric neck. (Like the Pipsquack or Richard Ashcroft.)
Lying In the neighbors' driveway was what appeared to be a dead guinea pig. I dismounted and took a closer look.
That's when a woman and her niece came out of the house. They in no way resemble the people who actually live there now, but my dream had cast others-a little girl and her baby-sitting aunt, who ran out of the house to interrogate me. The aunt looked like Sandy Duncan and may have been carrying a golf club. The niece stood behind the her, clutching her denim skirt
I said "Have you seen this?"
"I've got friends coming, and the police will be here at any moment."
"But I'm your neighbors' son," I said, spelling my last name.
"Bullshit! You look like a criminal."
"But I'm not."
"Well then how do you explain this!?" She shot out her arm to indicate the guinea pig carcass. The niece began to cry.
"The quail did it," I said.
And just like that, we were at the top of my parents' driveway, (next door,) loading up a hand-truck with abandoned containers of what I believed to be the byproducts of agricultural bioengineering-small cardboard barrels with stains on them. (It made sense in the dream.)
As we were doing this, quail of every size and mutation gathered at the foot of the driveway. My thoughts ranged from "God help us all!" to "These birds are making me hungry."
Two quail, which had been genetically modified to grow into little walking advertisements, hobbled toward us. They were shaped like freestanding rectangular cigarette ads you see at gas stations, but with organic feet and tiny vestigial heads that were barely visible. Printed across one of them, in nearly perfect Franklin Gothic fonts inked by blue luminescent down, were the words EAT MORE FAT.
As the woman, her niece and I regarded the words, the tiny vestigial head screeched "Eat more fat!"
I understood that these modified breeds of quail were created to advertise products or suggest lifestyle choices to quail farmers; that one in a hundred quail would grow into a disposable advertisements- like the first Polaroid in a cartridge actually being a coupon for more film.
Surely, this was the end of the world. The three of us descended the driveway, hand truck in tow, gently nudging the freakish quail with the insteps of our shoes.
I looked back at the cart of stuff, just as a ten gallon bottle of Chanel #5 rolled onto the driveway and cracked open, startling the aunt, the hundreds of quail and myself.
We all jumped.
The perfume spilled out and sluiced down the driveway to fill the cracks in the sidewalk and pool near the storm drain.
"Is this stuff expensive?" I asked.
"I'll say," answered the aunt.
And that's when I woke up.
Honestly, I don't even know what a quail is.
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