Worming Through the Psyche

Entry for "Invalid Item" . Word count: 640

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I walk through an oval shaped school. High school. Mahogany walls, broken up by floor-to ceiling windows on one side looking out into a courtyard. I stop occasionally to study a trophy case, a student’s painting. A girl rolls up in a wheelchair.

“I need help,” she says. She’s a larger gal with short, dark brown hair, wearing a shapeless large-flower patterned dress.

Without a word, I push her to the bathroom, but the handicap stall is occupied.

I wheel her back into the hall. We travel a while and I see a locker room. We go through, students showering and dressing from their physical education workout, but no toilets. I ask a teacher, a woman no more than three foot tall, blonde hair and wrinkled face due to many years in the sun.

“Not here,” the teacher says. “Bathrooms are on the next level.”

I find an elevator, and we get inside.

The girl stands, folding up the wheelchair and sets it in the corner.

I stare at her and wonder how she’s suddenly able to stand.

*slight change of perception*

We step out of the elevator into a solid waste management plant. The girl and I have set an appointment with a plant manager for a tour. Pipes everywhere, from six feet in diameter to three inches. The man, wearing brown pants, beige shirt, leads us through the labyrinth of pipes. I notice all employees wear hardhats, but the girl and I don’t. I ask myself why, and realize guests don’t need them. We’re not important enough. If we get injured, too bad.

Instead of getting to the next area using stairs or catwalks, we have to scoot on our hands and knees on top of gray-painted, cast iron pipes. The roughness makes holding on easy enough, I only for a moment fear falling to the floor now at least ten feet below me. As I reach the end, I find I lost our guide and the girl. They left me behind. I wait a little, but they do not return.

I step onto a catwalk and see two workers head towards a door. I follow them outside into a wasteland. The two men picked their way through the piles of dirt and garbage, and I continued to follow. They stop at a hole then quickly back away. Curious, I walk up to it.

“Careful,” one of the men says. “They can bite.”

They then walk away. Still curious, I stay, seeing movement inside the two-foot wide hole dug into a pile of black gravel. Out slithered a puke-green slimed worm with round head, tiny black eyes on each side of its head. It stares at me for a moment before slinking out of its hole toward me, all six feet of it. I run away not willing to see if it will attack me.

*change of perception*

Night time. People surround me, workers from the plant. We all sit on a massive wooden porch with tables and chairs. They need something, so I go to fetch it. I realize too late my footfalls attract the worm.

It appears from its hole, but it’s different. It has grown to nearly three times its original size. It’s no longer covered in slime, but dancing lights of white, pink and blue. The lights swarm around the worm in spirals. I’m intrigued. It comes toward me, it’s black eyes now bright jewels.

I know it needs to tell me something, so I kneel before it. On its back I find three necklaces made from glass beads, the pendants made of gold with small gold spires hanging from a round inlaid symbol. Each belongs to a goddess, the symbol of the pendant representing each goddess. I sense the worm tell me one of those necklaces belongs to me . . .

I awake in wonder.

Do I consider asking what a dream interpreter would say about this, or am I better off to remain ignorant?