I dream of ravenous wild animals attacking me. There was a pack of wolves, a bear and -- most recently -- a giant snow leopard. It's always the same, so I'll just tell you the latest one.
I'm with several people in a bunker, fenced off by barbed wire. We're hiding from the hungry thing out there. Already it has mauled some of our number and bloody body-parts are freezing on the ground outside our enclosure.
Time passes, wind howling, people whimpering, and I decide that those random limbs must to be picked up. The smell of blood attracting predators and all that.
I check carefully, no monsters in sight, so I lift the heavy cement lid of our hidey-hole and climb out. Just then the great cat appears only feet away. Immediately it spots me and roars.
The people below me start screaming for me to close the lid.
But I'm frozen to the spot. The animal is so incomprehensibly huge! So scary and yet so elegant and sleek. I know I can't climb down into the hole before it reaches me.
I can't even summon the will to try. The leopard presses its snout against the barbed wire, nostrils flaring, ice-blue eyes locked with mine. I consider closing the lid so that the others would be safe, but decide not to startle the cat. There is something hypnotic in the moment I fear to shatter.
With an almost negligent swipe of its giant teeth it rips a hole in the barbed wire, widens it with a claw and leaps through.
My heart stops, a scream caught in my throat: all the usual stuff of novels, except I'm
feeling it. In the dream, it's totally
real to me and I'm about to be dismembered.
The leopard, a mountain of white fur, lands on top of me and bears me to the ground. Its fur is soft, its body warm.
And even as I'm waiting for the first touch of those awful teeth, I find I can't resist touching it. I feel hot breath on me as I gently stroke its belly. My face is pressed deep into its neck. It smells wild, wet ferile ...and yet somehow familiar. Cats. I've always loved cats.
"At least I'm enjoying my last few moments," I think, "and doing something extraordinary."
I keep stroking the leopard as it snuffles about my body and just before I wake up I think I hear it purr....
Today I read yet another post by a young woman whose cancer has come back. I have cuddled up with a monster and just because it didn't kill me the first time doesn't make it tame.
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phaedress's journal
