Saturday, September 13, 2008

I Hate Doing Dishes

It's funny how events happening to you while you're asleep affect your dreams.

I was standing over my sink, washing some dishes up after supper. The dishes were stacked up to the ceiling in piles all over the kitchen and i was afraid i'd never catch up before i had to make dinner again. It was a reasonable fear, i thought, as i eyed the stack of coffee cups teetering ominously over my head. I thought i'd do those next before they finally fell over onto my head and buried me in a mountain of ceramic. I was positive if that happened, it'd take years to unearth me.

I finished the plate i was working on and put it in the rinse water. I briefly wondered what happened to that dishwasher i had just bought last year. Ah, yes, it became disgruntled with overuse and ran off, leaving a drippy note behind that i could barely read. The ink had all run together. Poor dishwasher; i could certainly commiserate with it's feelings of unappreciation right now! I wished i'd been a better friend to the poor thing, and maybe it'd be here now to help me. I snickered at my ridiculous thoughts and returned my attention to the task at hand.

I climbed up a rickety ladder to get to the top of the stack of coffee cups and tossed a few down into the water. I was thankful i'd replaced my regular sink with a bottomless one, so i didn't have to worry about breaking the cups as long as i aimed carefully and didn't throw them down on top of each other. I gazed down at the distance to the floor. I saw the tiny black speck that was my dog nosing around one of the stacks of plates on the floor. I sighed, thinking if i didn't get down from here, he'd start licking the plates. Being in no mood to disinter my dog from underneath a pile of broken Corelle, I climbed back down and shoo-ed him out of the kitchen. Then i tackled the cups, which i knew wouldn't take too long as coffee doesn't really stick like baked stuff on a pan does.

I picked up the first cup and my sponge, when i noticed something odd about my sponge hand. It looked like my hand, and felt like my hand, but it'd taken on a surreal quality that i couldn't readily identify. I flexed it a few times, and though it was a bit sluggish to respond, it was definitely my hand. I couldn't decide if i was trying to distract myself from the heinous kitchen duties or if there really was something amiss with my hand.

Hand? Really, now that i paid attention, it was my whole arm up to my elbow that was looking more and more like a badly made prosthetic. I moved it around easily enough, but now when i tried to flex my fingers, nothing happened. It was starting to take on that karate-chop pose that a Barbie's arm perpetually had. It was DEFINITELY looking plastic now. I tried to drop my sponge, but couldn't; it was caught between my fingers that seemed to now be fused together. I put the cup down and felt the arm with my other hand. It felt like flesh to that hand, but seeing as how i couldn't feel the pressure or touch on the afflicted arm, it felt like someone else's flesh. Now that was just downright creepy.

I continued watching my arm become fake. As though that wasn't alarming enough, it began to blur a bit around the edges. Now it looked like a mirage of a badly made prosthetic arm. It was even shimmering a bit, like the heat coming off a desert road in the distance. I'm watching my arm disappear!, i thought in a panic. I wanted to call out for help, but i was absolutely fascinated by the process of my arm becoming incorporeal before my very eyes. As i noticed that the sponge still looked perfectly real and solid, it slipped from my grasp and fell into the water. It didn't exactly slip so much as my hand became so insubstantial that it could no longer support something so tangible and real. I looked from the sponge back to my arm, and it was gone.

I looked from my arm that ended in a nub at the elbow back to my other arm a few times. I was numb. I couldn't even feel shock. I felt curiously lopsided as i stretched my arms out together, one being double the length of the other, and terminating in a hand, where the other was smooth where it should have continued. I wondered dumbly how i was going to finish the dishes now.

When i woke up, i was laying awkwardly on my arm, and it had fallen asleep.

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