Morning. Alarm is blaring. I realize that it has been doing so for awhile. Green glowing numbers on the display out of focus. I blink. Shit. I'm late.
Weird dreams. Can't quite place them now but the flavor is still there, like that taste in your mouth before you brush your teeth in the morning. I lurch out of bed and stumble to the kitchen. On the counter is the tea kettle.
"Tea. Earl Grey. Hot."
The kettle just looks at me, sitting heavy on its base.
"Some day I'm going to live in a world where that works," I mutter.
I grab the kettle and pry the lid off, hanging the handle over the faucet while it fills, so I don't have to hold it up. I run a hand through tangled hair.
Dreams starting to resurface. A teacher sat at a desk. The teacher had a shrunken head dangling on the end of a hook-shaped metal coil. The coil whipped this way and that, pushing the head along the desk and rolling it along the surface so the teacher could mind her (her?) students with swiveling milky eyes. Pulsing red lights glinted through a flowery ruffled blouse.
Who was controlling the head? The coil? Or the woman? (Woman?) It groped along the desk like someone in the dark would grope for the light switch.
I shake the images from my head and shut off the water. I drop the kettle on its electric base and jam down the power button turning towards a box of cereal. Behind me, red light gleams under the kettle, pooling on the counter, and metal coils snake out from beneath the base.