Poison

   Blogger is being dumb and not letting me load pictures.  So we're back to just plain text.  Time to use your imagination, kids!
   
I have had several dreams about being the same age as my students.  Not that I dream that I'm thirteen again, I think we're usually in early high school in my dreams.  But usually I'm just one of them, sitting in a desk with my feet up ignoring the teacher and worrying about the other things in my life.  In those dreams I've been befriended by some students and snubbed by others, and we generally make our ways through the confusing dreamscape.
 
Last night one of my students poisoned me.  Not maliciously.  She's one of my best students, and in my dream her goal was to be a chemist, so she put a lethal amount of poison in my drink just to see what would happen.  It wasn't her fault she didn't realize there wasn't an antidote to that poison.  There was nothing to do but go to school and wait to see if I would manage to survive somehow.  And she didn't want me to tell Mom, Dad, or the teachers so she wouldn't get in trouble.  Of course, I agreed.  I mean, it's not like she had tried to murder me, her action just sort of might lead to my almost certain death.  The poison made me ache and bleed from my ankles and wrists.  The blood was mixed with a clear, watery substance and would soak bandages and ooze constantly.  The fact that I wasn't bleeding very much indicated a good chance for survival so far.  But my mind was definitely not on the lessons my teachers were giving.  I was wondering if I would die, and if I should casually slip and "I love you" to my parents to make up for the fact that I wasn't telling them that I was doomed.  If I didn't croak in the first 48 hours, I had a good chance of miraculously surviving the poison.
   
     I kept changing bandages, watching the amount of blood and puss fluctuate throughout the day.  Sometimes it was just enough to bead out of the skin like condensation, sometimes my ankles or wrists would drip without my realizing it.  I remember worrying about the red spots on the school carpet.  But I couldn't tell anyone about them, because then they'd figure out that I was poisoned and my friend/student would be in trouble.  By afternoon of the second day I was still alive, but the oozing was getting worse.  It had also spread to my knees and patches on my thigh.  It was also getting harder to hide.  But I was almost safe--although I was informed that even if I survived the two days I might suddenly relapse and die anytime for three weeks.  But if I could just surive the day, I would be alive, my friend wouldn't be in trouble, and no one would have to be sad.  My last memory of the dream is sitting in a parking lot in the sun with my bandages off watching the poison-affected patches drip wondering how I could keep hiding them and if I would survive.