Late night. A great mansion. Dark wood-panels suck up the light. An unearthly wailing. Though it's quite earthly, really: the maid let in a tiny cat with a vast voice. I warned her not to--it was Siamese. We'll never catch it now, and it's a pest, yowls all night. Other small animals skitter in dark room-corners, but at least they're not vocal.

Time to shave, in the haunted house. I lather up and look in the mirror. Under my eyes, and between my eyebrows, bristles like sea-urchin spines poke out. Not just ugly--creepy, unnatural. The spines thicken and spread as I watch. A pattern forms, migrates inward to concentrate above my nose. A clawed, metallic, spiny beetle slowly forms, emerging from my nose-bridge. It's a good 4-5 cm long, and heavy. Not a true beetle or even an insect: the little monster has far more than six legs underneath. It's quite still, even when I tug it out. Unreactive.

There's no scar beneath. It wasn't eating its way out of my face--it budded off from me, was part of me I shed, like fruit from a tree!

I'm terrified of the "beetle", though it hasn't hurt me. I drop it in a jar, and put the jar in the freezer. It probably can't cut through glass--but I fear it can saw through the metal lid. I know I'm acting irrational, jumpy.

I look uneasily at the tired bags under my eyes, a bit afraid that they, too, are little monsters... waiting to hatch.

NOTE FROM 2000

When I wrote the dream, I slipped and mispelled "beetle" as "Beatle." Yet I didn't draw the obvious conclusion: the horrible thing emerging from me was... music!

Just as the dream warns, I put music in the deep freeze for years... and then, at age 40, set out to become a composer.

NOTE FROM 2002

Our surrealist band, the Krelkins, debuts on stage next month.

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