Dream 7

The faces around me grew more strained, and I could feel my own eyes becoming as big as saucers, my brows pushed up to my hairline. Some of my co-rowers were hyperventilating, and even the once beautiful colors of the distant shore were diminished in vibrancy, sucked out by the sound and my inability to care.

The awful strain of the never-ending diarrhea spewing from between the sharp little teeth of Incessa was wearing all of us down to the last nerve. Except for the blonde woman in front row starboard. She continued to row with a smile, looking off toward the shore or watching a soaring gull, showing interest that none other of us could raise.

I pointed her out to Katie, who seemed surprised as well…. As surprised as she could be while having her life force drained from her through her ears. The sound continued in its horror, like the FBI broadcasting the screams of rabbits being slaughtered to the Branch Davidians.

When Rolando next came around with his mosquito-glazed water Katie and I hurriedly questioned him about the woman in front row starboard. "How does she do it? Why isn't she going crazy like the rest of us?"

Rolando looked at me with surprise in his exhausted blue eyes. "You can't see the trickles of blood from here? On the second day of your journey she found a pin in her pocket. She poked holes in both her eardrums. She no longer hears the sound." He nodded in a conflicted way, perhaps because his terrible punishment would be postponed through the actions of Starboard Front.

He turned to trudge back to his drum.

… so after I take my walk in the morning then I go into the gym and I lift weights I do two full circuits of each of the machines with three groups of eight reps each well actually I alternate one day I will work above the waist and the next I will work below the waist this is the optimal way to work out your body and always in reps of eight the people who know do it in reps of eight the right kind of people shall we say those people who work in reps of ten or twelve or oh my word fifteen they just aren't doing it right and I know because the right sort of person has told me and I know that this person only knows the right sort of information shall we say in fact one of my husband's friends recently gave me some wonderful new sunscreen well actually she gave me the little sample container of the wonderful new sunscreen well new to me but she knew about it before because she has money to buy this very expensive and proper sunscreen…