Millicent the Ripper.
I can't tell yet if I feel sick because I was having bad dreams, or if I was having bad dreams because I feel sick. I woke up-- I woke Jenny up!-- shivering in bed, while she had the covers off her legs. Later, I closed the window & put on more clothes & I woke up again sweating, tossing & turning, whimpering. The dreams-- were about Habibi & Star Trek: the Next Generation? Some aliens had invented a forcefield that would let you exist in the vaccuum of space with nothing but an object the size of a postage stamp; it would even allow you to enter a planetary atmosphere, fires raging around you. To do it, you would just sort of slide "down" the hull of the Enterprise, like an incredibly long waterslide, until you shot off. Data went first, then Tasha Yar-- she was there, but I had a strong presentiment of her death-- but Worf refused to go. At first people thought it was because he was afraid, but it was because he suspected Doctor Pulaski of being a serial killer. You know how, in The Original Series, whenever there was a ray that affected people's brains, Sulu would take off his shirt & grab a sword? It was apparently the same thing with Pulaski-- Worf called her "Millicent"-- but she'd get all Jane the Ripper. She'd apparently captured him during one of these episodes & tortured him. I don't know-- I know that doesn't sound scary, but then the fields started malfunctioning, & I was alone in the black void, then I hurdled, Falling, ablaze, flames crackling through the energy fields, burning my body black. I landed in some sort of continental garbage dump-- mostly barren, but with just enough trash to make it a junkyard. Bad people lurked in it, wanting to take advantage. You were supposed to be able to just fly home with the field-- think lovely thoughts!-- but it just fizzled. I was exiled & alone in an ugly world. & then I started worrying about how I'd get illustrations to accompany my book review of Habibi. Just a stupid repetitive stress dream. I actually-- sitting here typing this-- don't think I'm sick. I just think it was an old school night terror. You know, the kind I used to get all the time, but that living with Jenny has largely erased. Shivering on the apartment floor under a nest of blankets thinking about magnetism, foxes. Bad, sick angel.