Last night I dreamed about the end of the world.

It rained. Then it rained fish. (Dead neon tetras, to be precise.) Then it briefly rained brightly colored rubber dinosaurs. The water level rose (and presumably the less-often-measured rubber dinosaur level)until it was knee deep, and giant fish with underslung jaws and vast billowing fins, like Siamese Fighting Fish ogres, cruised through it.

We were afraid of the water, and tried to stay out of it. I was living with a pair of organic farmers and eating wild boar sausage. I later learned that my grandmother, who was now an elderly Russian/Gypsy circus performer, was living in a yurt way outside of town, and had been exposed to the water. Fortunately, it had made her almost young again, and she wanted more of it. Our town was infested with vampires, except that they looked like dark grey storks instead of bats. But they still hung upside down. A row of black inverted storks hanging under an overpass is still pretty creepy.

I had an Obligatory Mammal who stayed in my pocket and talked to me. I found this worrying, and operating on the Helter Skelter principle (i.e. just because you hear the Beatles tell you to kill people, why should you listen?) mostly ignored it. I wound up in a city, trying to get to an art show–the artist was some kind of mystic, and her art made me hope that she’d know what was going on re: the Apocalpyse.* I arrived in time to help her break down the show, and while carrying a box out, asked the burning question on my mind at the moment, “Hey, do you have a small talking mammal that lives in your pocket and tells you what to do, by chance?” She gave me the look of horrified humoring-the-madman that such a question deserved. I wandered off, disappointed. It rained again.

I found myself outside a toy store, worrying about my grandmother–worried in this case that she wouldn’t get more of the water that seemed to be making her young. I asked the Mammal to go take care of it. “Alright,” said the Mammal, in its small, sad voice, “but can you get me a publicist?” “I’ll work on it,” I promised. I wandered around some more, ruining a live-action shot of a Transformers movie. A white tram, like the kind they have at zoos, went by, with all the destinations on a white board. The first one said “GEARWORLD.” “Oh, now, that can’t be real,” I thought, “I’m obviously hallucinating THAT.” I took the tram anyway. A priest, who resembled a black-and-white checked Dig-Dug, was telling me about his expedition to go kill the stork vampires. I asked the Mammal to talk sense into him. The phrase “voodoo monkey puppet” was uttered, and I woke up.

There is no possible moral to this, but on the bright side, I did not dream of gnolls again.

*A cardinal sin in the art world–thinking you know the artist from the art is, if not downright dangerous, at least annoying.