I Once Dreamed of My Principals Slaying Anacondas
(Adapted from a memory of a dream I wished to remembered upon waking on a weekday morning during on of my years in highschool)
I love to dream. It always followed sleep, and I loved to sleep. It's in this incorporeal realm of the illogical that I met and married my first love, where I found where I belonged, where I possessed flight and the ability to make everything right in the end. There were only two things withholding dreams from perfection: they were always so quiet (which I assumed was to make sure you did not wake up), and you forgot most of it in the morning (which I assumed was to make sure you still found reasons to remain in the waking world). I did not know the complexities of the human mind well enough to devise a way to make my dreams auditory, but I had read that writing down your oneiric experiences immediately upon awakening -- so I did.
For weeks I recorded everything I could remember, and soon I found myself recalling even the most minute detail. It was exhilarating. And then I had one about my principal.
It started in the gym, I think. We had all finished something, and were about to begin another thing, but we were interrupted by the quiet wails of some familiar face I almost recognized being swallowed whole by a large Anaconda.
"They're quite big," said someone behind me.
A hundred slithering, hissing, slick-scaled beasts of a foreign forest coiled around those unfortunate to be remembered too close to escape, and constricted. I had expected there to be sickening pops and anguished screams, but was met with breathless silence.
We all turned away, hoping to be the lucky one. Jesse and Sandra held hands and preyed, terror nailing their feet in place. They wished it was someone else next to them, but this would do.
One by one, student by student, a snake feasted, swallowing the children whole. The zookeepers did their best, but their tranquilizers did nothing, and when the tendril-like mass of scaled hissing encroached upon their safe haven of elevated benches, they dropped their dart-filled contingencies and the doors were locked behind them, and our panicked banging and rapping of desperation were left ignored, and faded behind them.
I would have died that day, in that dream with the others, but in between us and those salivating fangs of oblivion was our principal. It pains me that his name goes unremarked for while he did little for me in the waking world, was I escaped that dream and am here half-remembering it with you right now.
His bandanna swayed in the wind, and his arms rippled and swelled. He bit down, expecting to feel a churchill between his teeth, but remembered there were children, and continued feeling incomplete.
He charged into the snake's gape, a machete splitting down the front tip of the roof of its mouth, down to the base of its head. It gurgled, coughing, then the life in its eyes faded.
The principal's fingers peered out through the fresh slit, and he pulled apart it's skull; the tearing of the snake's hide and cracking and breaking of its separating bones made me shudder. The other's did not seem to notice.
He climbed out and stood atop its head, pounding his chest, taunting the rest to come for him. They did, and he smiled at their enthusiasm. He readied his sword, but before he could lunge forward, giant fissures cracked and tore apart the ground. Earth crumbled in bits and pieces all the way toward my toes. I looked down and saw the pure nothing. I wish to say that it said things, whispered things that stuck with me to this day -- but it uttered no such comfort.
The vile fiends tumbled into the blackness, never to be seen again. My principal did not even try to retreat. He stood tall, stared deep into the abyss, and accepted its emptiness as the darkness enveloped his being.
I woke to no alarm that morning. I sat up, trying to calm my labored breathing and violent shudders. I scanned my room, thinking I heard voices from just beyond where you could see in the darkness under my desk and opened closet. I swore I felt its controlled breaths brush against the nape of my neck; I could envision its twisted, toothy-grin while it watched me sleep and waited for me to turn and meet its eyes. I knew they lingered in the vents, masking their lustful pants with the blowing air. I wanted to hide under the covers and shut my eyes until they all went away -- but I was too old to believe that. I knew they would never leave, and they would inch closer, making sure to bump into walls and creak the floors so that no matter how tight I closed my eyes, I would always know they were coming.
I hummed a song I loved to myself; if I heard it, it meant it was all real.
There are things your mind makes you forget -- things it knows best left in dreams. It leaves them there because it knows once they are brought over, they are given a voice, and once they are given a voice, they'll never stop whispering.