Thursday, June 05, 2008

It's in the air

Summer’s back. I usually comes once a year and with it comes all the usual summer activities. My least favorite summer activity is lying in bed at night, wrapped in a sweaty sheet, struggling to sleep in the oppressive nighttime heat. It’s damn near impossible to get a good night’s sleep, but when I do, I have some strange dreams. Allow me to share the most recent:




The dream began with me sitting at my school desk, getting my learn on. Like many dreams, I happened to not be wearing pants, but that wasn’t much trouble because I didn’t really feel the need put on three pairs of pants over my six legs. That would have just impeded flying.


It was the middle of a hot summer day the Fourth of July (sense a theme here?) in fact, and friends and I were chilling out in school, avoiding the heat. You might find it odd that I’d be in school in the summer, especially on such a prestigious holiday, but with a pupal stage of around two days and a lifespan of a few months if I’m lucky, I don’t have the luxury of missing out on my education.


But the day was just too beautiful, I was itching to get outside and enjoy it. Beyond the teacher’s droning on about the dangers of diethyl-meta-toluamide and picaridin, I could hear sounds as if in a joyous celebration. And the delightful smell of carbon dioxide mixed with delicious foods wafted by my proboscis, enticing me and daring me fly outside as soon as the teacher’s thorax was turned.


As her lecture on citronella and nepetalactone continued, I saw my chance and made a break for the door.


When I flew outside my senses were immediately assaulted by smells, sounds and sights beyond my comprehension. People everywhere! Barbeque grills! Food! Condiments! Picnic tables that gave unsuspecting sitters inch-long splinters! Frisbees! Red, White and Blue streamers! It was truly a Fourth of July celebration for the ages, and I couldn’t wait to be a part of it!


With a weight of under 2 milligrams, all it takes is a breeze of around 1 mile an hour to send me flying off in the wrong direction, luckily, I was flying with the wind and had little trouble approaching the picnic unseen.


I alighted on a branch and saw a few friends of mine, Hana and Chrissy, hanging out and watching the people mill around. Since they were females, Hana and Chrissy were both about twice my size, with long, slender, sexy legs and big, juicy-looking, swollen abdomens. Gorgeous!


The ladies had also smelled the picnic and were making plans to get their feast on. So we got together and decided on a course of action. I’d go in first and be a source of distraction while the girls would go in and get as much food as they could before we were all discovered and chased away.


It was all going well until Hana was slapped by a big drunk redneck with a tattoo of the American flag on his forearm. She would have made it away, but his blood was so loaded with alcohol that she could barely fly in a straight line. She didn’t have a chance.


When Chrissy saw what happened she started to make her way over to her friend, but barely made it a foot before she was assaulted from behind by a generous spray of Off! She instantly became disoriented and dropped to the ground, where she was killed when a bunch of people stepped on her repeatedly, in a blood-thirsty rage.


With both females dead I knew that it was only a matter of time before I was attacked by these drunken 4th of July celebrants. And I was right. They suddenly sprang at me in a group, prepared to rend me limb from limb (from limb from limb from limb from limb!) for the simple crime of trespassing on their cook out. The horror!


I dodged and weaved as best I could, trying to stay out of their grasp, but it was no use, my small, scaled wings could only keep me aloft for so long and I had already been flying for two hours. I was tired and getting sloppy and they knew it.


With my last bit of energy, I resigned myself to the inevitable and went over to the picnic table in a last ditch effort to maybe have some kool aid before the end came. I walked up to the glistening, cool, pitcher of grape kool aid, ready for some of that sweet, sweet nectar, when a shadow descended upon me. The last thing I saw with my compound eyes was a giant hand blot out the sun as it rushed down to smack the table, with me caught in its path. I tensed my tiny mosquito body for the impact....




…Which is when I woke up. Weird, eh? I’m going to lay off that Iraqi cuisine before I go to bed from now on.

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