Hitler's Triumphant Return, with Extra Insects

In a dream, the other night:

"Oh? I didn't know there was anyone here." (I had found my way into a bomb-shelter, somehow, and was looking for somewhere to sit alone. I thought I'd found a quiet antechamber, but a pale smudge emerged from the darkness. It was somebody's face.)

"I'm Adolf Hitler."

"How do you pronounce that?" Because it was a dream, it made perfect sense that I had to ask for the correct pronunciation of a name I'd just heard spoken. It was as if he'd written it in the air with the tip of his tongue, and I'd plucked it down with my eyes.

"Adolf Hitler."

I started laughing uproariously. I've been doing that lately, whenever Hitler gets mentioned. Sometimes, if it's just his name, I manage to keep it to a hideous grin, but if there's a picture to go along with it, I can't help myself. It's enormously embarrassing. I don't think Hitler is funny. Indeed, I can't think of many things I find less funny. And yet, mention the Führer, and I'm away: hee, hee, hee! What's the matter with me? People will think I'm some sort of...of...God knows what.

At any rate, I woke up at that point. My lips, to my great chagrin, were stretched into a smirk, one corner up and the other down. I ate some microwave perogies, opened a book, and was soon sound asleep once again. The same dream resumed: crowded bomb-shelter, no privacy, Hitler. And insects. This time, there were insects. They looked like the crabs from Katamari Damacy, but much smaller, and with a certain hungry look. I started chasing after them with a vacuum, but it was no use. For every insect that got sucked up the tube, six more bunched together, forming a plug. They started crawling on me, and one of them burrowed under my skin. It ran up my arm, and around to my back, where I couldn't reach it to cut it out.

"There's an insect," I told everyone. "It burrowed into my back, and now it's stopped moving."

Everyone stared.

"Well? Someone has to cut it out. I can't reach it. Look, it's--can't you see it? See, that lump, there?"

They stared some more. Useless buggers.

"Come on! I can't just leave it there! Look at it! It's going to eat my spine, or something. I'd cut it out of your backs."

The commotion attracted Hitler, who, with an amiability I doubt he possessed in real life, got out his knife. "Stand still, then, and I'll do it."

There was little choice--I mean, who WOULDN'T let someone cut an insect out from under their skin, even if it was Adolf Hitler?--so I stood still. Hitler was just about to touch my back when I woke up again. (The smirk was back, in case you were wondering. Ha, ha: it's Hitler with a knife in my back! What a gas!)

I probably say it every time, but this was certainly the worst Hitler dream I've had. It's all right when he tries to kill me, because Hitler is the enemy, and that's what enemies do. When he's raising his knife for a merciful cause, however, what's a dreaming Rat to think? Now, Hitler is human? Now, he's some sort of friend? I'm supposed to be grateful to him? I'd turn around and coax the insect under his skin, to show my gratitude.

Later that day, I opened a full bottle of Sprite, and immediately dropped it on the floor. The soda spewed out with remarkable violence, spraying everything in the kitchen. It was on the oven, the cabinets, my feet, the refrigerator; and, of course, it was under everything as well. Gail got the Swiffer and I got the Lysol and towels, and between the two of us, we had it cleaned up in half an hour. I drank the rest of it later, but all the carbonation had been used up in that one triumphant blast. It was flat as Kansas, or a skinny girl's chest. Flat as my back without an insect. Flat as fresh-laid asphalt, and a guy who got run over by a Sherman tank. Flat as the spider that invaded my apartment last month. Not a bubble to be found. My nose went untickled.

...Ever notice that Sprite doesn't taste very good without the nose-tickle? What is that taste, anyway? Chilled sugar-water? Spring berries, juicy with the flavour of rain? Citric acid, diluted a hundred times? The stuff from the insides of cacti?

It wasn't Hitler's fault I spilled the soda, I ought to point out. I wasn't thinking of him at the time. I didn't remember him till I was discussing the sugar-on-floor situation with Gail:

"How far under the oven do you suppose it went? Did the Swiffer reach it all? Will a film of sugar be on the floor, do you think?"

"It doesn't matter, Socar. It's under the oven."

"But it could smell."

"Sugar doesn't smell."

"Oh.... But flies could come. Flies can come if you leave anything, any sugar. I got fruit flies once, when I had bananas. Same thing, sugar out in the open."

"No. Flies won't come. They have to already be there. If you had organic stuff lying around all over, there would be flies, but--do you see a fly?"

"...no. But--"

"No flies."

"Good."

(A pause, filled with cleaning sounds.)

"Oh. There were insects in my dream, earlier on."

"With Hitler?"

"Yeah. One got under my skin, and Hitler was the only one with the guts to cut it out. But I woke up before he got the chance."

"Ah-hah!"

"So, good. No flies."

"No flies."

There haven't been any flies, either. Gail was right. I'd also like to be right some time, but not if vindication comes in insect form.