The telephone rang in my dream but nobody was on the other end.
"Hello? Hello? WTF?"
Since I was awake, I got dressed and headed downstairs for breakfast, but every time I came to a landing another set of stairs materialized below me. I was going to be late for school.
"Shit."
In the kitchen, I made myself a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal, but the food stuck in my mouth, super thick, sticky and gummy, hard to separate my upper jaw from my lower jaw to chew, impossible to swallow. With difficulty and a little aid from a couple of fingers, I managed to remove the vile glob from my mouth. All but three of my teeth came out with it.
One by one, with great accuracy, I spit my remaining three teeth into a small paper cup across the kitchen table. A pretty woman clapped. I smiled a toothless smile. She took off her shirt and offered me her breast.
I could not find my car keys. I looked everywhere.
"Shit," I was going to be late for school, and it was my turn to read my essay. I wondered how I would sound without my teeth?
I arrived on campus but could not find a parking space.
"Shit."
When I finally got to the room, the door was locked. I knocked repeatedly but nobody heard me because someone else had just finished reading her essay, and the entire class was standing and applauding loudly. The professor was doing a little jig on her desk, clearly ecstatic with the writer's work.
"Magnificent!" she exclaimed, as she heeled and toed. "Interesting language! Great narrative flow! Such depth of feeling! Incredible insights! Wit so sharp, one could hurt oneself!"
"Holy shit. How can I follow that, even if I had all my teeth?"
The classroom door creaked open slowly. The professor climbed down from her desk, straightened her skirt, and said, "You're next, Rubin. Read your title and then proceed."
"My Anxiety Dream."
"It all began when the telephone rang. . . ."
RING. RING. RING. RING.
"Hello?"
"Ed, it's Mom. You're supposed to be in class."
"Shit!"
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