Ardroginium

Dream:

It was a workday. I had walked from my office to the office of another state agency to pick up something, but I got roped into their Spring Cleaning extravaganza and found myself replacing all of the fluorescent light bulbs in this strange metal contraption (there were quite a few). Suddenly, a deep rumble began to shake the building. Everybody rushed to the window just in time to see a wave of debris pushed ahead of a 2-foot high inundation of water plow down the street. It was a flood! I rejoiced - it looked like I wouldn't be heading to work for awhile and could goof off freely. I went into the restroom, which was full of toilets that more closely resembled chrome-accented modern chairs mixed with hospital beds. You sat down in them and they tilted just so.

The flood changed the landscape, and I got lost on my way home. Caspian and I (I'm not sure where he came from) stayed in a little roadside motel that surprisingly wasn't that bad, which sat inside a curve of the road, sandwiched between a moonlit sea and a dark mountain.

I drove to my parents' house in the morning to take a shower. I noticed these strange silver marks on the tips of the fingers on my right hand, almost as if I'd put my hand onto small drops of mercury. No matter how hard I scrubbed, I couldn't scrub those marks off. They continued to ooze a gel-like, gooey mercury-ish substance, and slowly grew larger.

Concerned, I showed my mom my fingers. She looked at me with fear and compassion, and explained that those are the initial symptoms of a horrible plague that came with the flood. It was called Ardroginium. She told me I needed to go far away, for the family's sake.

I sat on the floor and cried my heart out. I wailed and ranted. I suddenly knew how this horrible affliction would progress: The silver patches would grow larger and larger, oozing more and more silver gel, until I lacked any structural coherency and I drowned in it. Why did I have to die? I had so much life left, so many plans, so many tasks to do and goals to achieve, and all of them were for naught, in the end. I had nothing, and had accomplished nothing.

By this time, the silver patches had begun to appear on my face. Silver gel rolled off of my skin like luminescent drops of metallic sweat. Anywhere I went, people would threaten to kill me and told me to get away from their families. I tried to find solace at the home of Caspian's friends, L and I, but L threw a knife at me when she saw me, severing one of my fingers. Silver Ardroginium poured out everywhere. She told me that I was a monster for even thinking of approaching her and her year-old daughter. I cried and sobbed and slunk away.

I found a dark corner in the basement of one of the buildings of NC State. I sat, swirling silver onto the terrazzo floor, listening to the rain swirling through the gutters, as I choked and died.