I just awoke from the most frightful dream. I was amazed. An otter came up to me, and with its little forearms that look so much like hands, took hold of the stub of a pencil and wrote out two dates upon some bark. There were two pieces of bark with the two dates, and it seemed to be a range, a week or so. What the dates were, I do not know, but I remember the first date had a large ‘Q’ printed at the start.
My mother was there, and I told her to look. She saw the prodigy, but was not amazed. She acted like otters wrote every day. No one I talked to either believed me or took any interest, and I could not coax the beast to do it a second time.
And many things happened in the dream. I do not know if any of them are meaningful. The otter was at once an otter and my pet cat; my days at school were shown to me as a paradox, a useful waste; and we were all trying to get to an orchestra (all, which was mostly my family, but also my boss), but I was naked and slowing everyone down trying to dress. None of that, I think, is too important, other than that it all centered around a city, Portland Oregon, a place I had lived in as a child.
Then I was walking along a pier, finally in Portland after all the starts and stops of my dream. My foot hurt, and I looked down at it: it was gangrenous and pulsing with light. God was sorry for what was happening. All around me, the people started breaking out in these boils that also throbbed with the same light, their bodies exploding into cancerous growths.
I thought to dive for the water, but could barely move. I was forced to watch the people die. Russia had used a new bomb that was almost all radiation. It swept over the land like a miasma, an invisible plague killing some instantly, poisoning other slowly, like me.
I awoke in such a great fright that I could not move, and it was as if the presence of my mother was there. She asked me if I wanted to hear a riddle, but I was too afraid to give any answer at first. Finally, I assented, with something along the lines of, “Whatever is best.” I was shown white, cardboard moving boxes like the kind which hold documents in offices; they were all folded up, but they were ready for use.
And the riddle came slowly. Why does God not destroy places like Portland as he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah?
Then I was released from dreams and visions and felt as though all the goblins of the night were jeering at me from the unseen corners in which they live. Fear was alive in me, and I thought that I should see ghosts again.
And why does God have mercy on the world? He has not called his people away yet.
Rise up, O God, judge the earth, for all the Nations are Your inheritance.
Ψ 82
Tale Told 