Grisly Dreams

I was jarred awake this early morning by a horrifying dream. The dream began where my waking night had ended, at home, you know, to further confuse me and convince me that I wasn't actually asleep.

I had gone home last night in a poor mood, so the dream began with that. I was getting ready for bed, when my friends called me up and invited me out to get my mind off of my sour mood.

The two girls scooped me up from my grandmother's house, where I live, and drove us over to one of their favorite venues. It was a large pool hall, with numerous rooms and areas with tables and plenty of seating. We had dressed to the nines. One of the girls had on a dress, the other friend of mine had a floral blouse with a skirt, and I chose to wear a pair of black tights with shorts, a solid-colored blouse, and my favorite pair of black heels.

When I came to the entrance, a stampede of rats flowed out from the entrance. Women screeched and my eyes grew wide as they parted to get around me, and I took an uncertain step backward. A woman who was clearly a regular at this place scoffed at me and told me to "suck it up" or "get over it" and went on in. When the rats stopped coming, I went inside to look for my friends, who had entered just before the rat race began.

Inside, we found a little table to sit at, and I excused myself to the restroom. I must have taken a long time in adjusting my clothes, because by the time I came back to the table, my friends were nowhere to be seen. I began the trek to find them and wandered around the massive expanse of the place before finally finding them in another room, seated at another table. I joined them, and turned my attention to the other patrons. I noticed a woman smoking a cigarette, and as I contemplated pulling out one of my own, a man working for the venue came over and rudely declared that there was no smoking to be had inside of the place, at which point she meekly put the cigarette out. I glanced just to the left of her, and saw a few men playing pool at a table, all with cigarettes in their mouths, and confused faces. Smoking was clearly permitted, and what had just happened was pure bullying.

I couldn't contain my anger and I began to loudly protest the sexism that I had just witnessed. I challenged everything and pulled out that cigarette, saying that it was fortunate that it wasn't me the man had approached, because had it been, I'd have certainly been removed from the premises. I realized everyone was watching my outburst, and many of the male onlookers were smirking. They seemed to think my anger was "cute". This only served to fuel my anger further.

In a moment, I decided to busy myself with my aching feet. I had spent a long time walking around in those heels to look for my friends, and once I've committed to a pair of shoes, I tend to allow them to do some serious damage to my feet because I'm no quitter, nor am I a "pata sucia" (this means "dirty foot" in spanish). When I removed the shoes, I felt searing pain. This was no regular shoe injury. Concerned, I decided to sacrifice the tights and I ripped the toe open to have a closer look...

To my complete horror, the skin and cuticle had become fully detached from the nail bed, and was hanging like a flap. Blood was pouring out and dripping on the floor. A gentleman, perhaps the only one in the entire place, saw the look of horror on my face and called for a medic. The medic, however, didn't take me as seriously as the kind man had, and he insisted that I climb down to the lower level where he was waiting. I bit back my tears, sat at the precipice, and slowly slid my way down from platform to platform until I reached ground level. With a nonchalant look on his face, he began cleaning away the blood from my toe. I knew that he wasn't understanding what had happened, so I reached down and lifted up the flap. The man actually screamed as a fresh wave of blood poured out. He mopped it up and began to pour alcohol into the wound.

When I realized that the alcohol wasn't hurting as much as it had hurt when he was only cleaning it, I knew I was dreaming, and I was released from my torture.

I woke up.

-Your Unsettled Elle