I was running under the rain down a dark, wet, and mudded street when I stepped on something that was slippery. I slid, lost my balance, and fell. I broke my left arm. The pain was instant and it radiated to my neck and my other arm. As I grimaced in pain, I looked up hoping to have the rain wash the mix of mud on my face and the pain it temporarily hid. It was futile. Then I closed my eyes because at the back of my head a voice that told me to do so. Eyes closed, I saw nothingness in an infinite space of what looked like red-colored emptiness. Then a big dark spot appeared in the red background. It later morphed into a shadow of what looked like a man in cassock. Terrified, I opened my eyes only to find a huge man in cassock standing in front of me. He offered his hand and without much hesitation I reached for it. In a moment I was standing sided by side with the man in cassock. He was at least half a foot taller than me.
The man in cassock led me to an almost empty house. Inside the house there was just one piece of furniture, a two-seater couch. We sat on the couch side by side then he started to talk.
“I’ll give you four numbers,” he said.
“What for?” I said as I stood and faced him.
He lifted his face. The face of the man was unfamiliar. He had a scar on the left side of the space between his upper lip and his nose. Even in this dream I was able to recall that I had a scar on the same spot which had been very visible until I was 10-12 years old.
“What are the numbers for?” I repeated.
He didn’t answer the question. Instead he showed me a flash card with the sketch of a bursting cloud. Under the cloud were broken diagonal lines which depicted rain. Under the rain was the number 22 printed in what looked like the Times New Roman font. The number 22 was sandwiched between handwritten numbers 18 and 40. On the lower left corner of the flash card was the number 11, also handwritten.
I was puzzled. He then rose, handed me the card, and led me out of the house. We didn’t talk as we headed to the door. At the door we said our goodbyes to each other. I ran into the rain once again as soon as he closed the door. At some point I stopped and looked back. This was what I saw: the house now looked like a black outline in the semi-darkness, white lights leaked from its windows. At this point, I felt the pain in my left arms again. Then I woke.
When I woke I found my left arm under my body. I slept on my side – this is my most comfortable sleeping position. Then I recalled that the night before I actually slipped as I was running toward the gate of my house, under the rain, when I inadvertently stepped on the slippery portion of the gutter in front of my house. My left arm was really hurt because of this minor accident.
(September 13, 2009)
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