Monday, February 19

Anti venom

A baby girl has been bitten by one of the many venomous snakes kept in the outdoor laboratory with glass walls. She is in a coma and will die soon if she does not receive the anti venom. All the other scientists wander around aimlessly because they have no volunteers to help in the brewing process. Exasperatedly, I tell them I will help if they will hurry their asses up and get it made. Walking down the hallway with one white lab coated woman with horn-rimmed glasses, she tells me what role I will play in making the anti venom. I do not understand her instructions at all.
We watch the other scientists get the ingredients by sliding the snakes around on a sieve with beauty bark. The snakes react to the beauty bark and secrete a liquid onto a cookie sheet, which the scientists pour into my mouth and instruct me to swish until they tell me it is done. The liquid tastes and feels like strawberry fluoride mouthwash. The scientists also look like dental hygienists, I now realize.

I spend the rest of the dream wandering around swishing the strawberry-flavored anti-venom in my cheeks, but I can't help but swallow a little. I wonder if this will adversely affect my health.

At one point I sit on a staircase next to a girl who tries to start a friendly conversation with me. All I can do is flap my hands around, trying to mime that I am helping to produce an anti venom in my cheeks for a baby girl in a coma, and drool a bit. I think it is unfortunate that the girl probably thinks I have some sort of mental handicap now, because I would have liked to be her friend.

At another point, a different set of adults in white lab coats is after me, and I try to hide from them by climbing up the rose trellis on the outside of the old house in which they are looking for me, but it only leads me to a large window, through which they spot me. While climbing down I lose the remaining fluoride/anti venom from my cheeks, but by this time it seems the scientists have forgotten about me and the baby in a coma and moved on to a more interesting research problem.

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