The Outside

**The assignment was to create a short narrative based on a dream. Here is what I came up with."


The Outside

The outside world ended two days ago, but I will never again know anything outside of these riveted, steel doors. When the world ends, power must fail. When power fails prisons form in the most unlikely places. Still, the end of the world is no excuse to miss work. When the modern world exhaled its final dying gasp I found myself within the frozen dough freezer. I could have sworn that the exit was manually operated, but I swore incorrectly. The power failed, and so did my escape. No. I am not destined to freeze to death. Rather I will starve surrounded by fleshy masses of half thawed dough. I hear it again, a tiny clacking in the right corner of my steel prison. Skritch. Skritch. Skritch. The steady scratching times well with the drip, drip. drip of melting ice. They are my only companions, along with the fungal stench of rising bread. Skritch! Skritch! Drip! Drip! Skritch! I am not sure how long passes before the impatient skritch morphs into an angry scrape. Chunks of metal peel forward, and claws hook through the gap. Against Death, stainless steel walls prove quite weak. Fear builds, a raging inferno in my chest. Fur coated paws press through the breached wall, drooling maws and blazing gold eyes follow. A pack of wolves crawls through the wall and lurch for me, their immobilized prey. I finally shriek, run wildly and stumbled over boxes scattered haphazardly about. Suddenly I stop, an image flashes across my mind. I see photographs of pigs undergoing various stages of decay. Their bodies bloated with intestinal gases, and maggots...no...maggot masses swarmed their flesh. I am comforted. At least that wont be me...at least I wont have any intestines left to bloat me...at least I wont have any maggot masses. Rats can have the remains of me. Rats are much cutier than maggots...


Meaning: This was a very short dream for me, it happened in the span of about 20 minutes but it is packed with more sense than most of my dreams. The most obvious meaning in my eyes isn't even the haunting image of Death, but rather my fears and anxieties regarding work. I have worked in a bakery for five years and never truly loved the job. The wolves are symbols of debt, career and fear of failure rushing in to overwhelm me. I think of the decaying pig images because the series of images fascinates me and and haunts me. Death is a big factor in this dream, but I feel my decision to accept Death quietly is very potent. It's as though I would rather the wolves of debt and career failure overwhelm me than to put up a fight. It is a very defeated dream no matter how you look at it.


- Posted using the awesomeness of Salazar Slytherin!