When Bed Bugs Bite

  Last night I dreamed that, due to some natural disaster or another, there were a large amount of baby ducks that had recently became orphaned. Due to logic similar to "you can't help them get out of the shell or they'll be too weak" (never understood that), these baby birds could not be flown to their next location, but had to go via a tiny raft that would eventually drift them to some kind of safe haven or another. I saw on TV that many people were volunteering to transport these baby ducks from their last raft to a new one that would then take them to their final destination. There were short images of attractive firemen herding baby ducks onto tiny canoes, and a number to call if you wanted to volunteer.

  I quickly headed down to the harbor to offer what little help I could, and was thrown in a group of like-minded people. We were greeted by an obese woman in a hideous sweater, who was knee-deep in the water, grabbing at an incoming raft. Rather than the cute, yellow down ducklings I'd seen on TV, these guys obviously had not had an easy voyage. Most were black and brown with muck, and many were in a state of decay. The obese woman grabbed one and said, "These guys aren't good for anything anymore except hors d'oeuvres." She then took a huge bite out of the dead duckling. Its insides looked like a hard boiled egg.

  Horrified, I looked at the rest of the ducklings on the raft. The majority of them were dead, and probably going to be the greeter's snack.

  "Yuck, this one's slimy!" Another volunteer exclaimed as they picked up a rotting duckling, covered in mucus.

  Another raft came in. "Oh, yeah, I heard about these. They definitely didn't mention these guys on the commercial," another volunteer chuckled. On the raft were decapitated baby human heads. I gaped, thunderstruck. One, a toddler, still had their torso and arms. The arms flailed when the volunteer picked it up by the hair, and I realized it was not dead. Or at least it was still capable of reflexes. The volunteer chuckled affably and patted it on the head before setting it on a new raft to take it somewhere else.

  In the morning, I told McKay about my dream.

  "You are a sick and twisted person!" McKay said.

 "It wasn't me! It was my subconscious!" I protested.

 "EXACTLY." McKay said, backing away from me.


   Seriously, what is wrong with me?