It’s your high school reunion. The ballroom at the local Mariott is decorated with cheap streamers and white tablecloths, and there’s sad, rubbery buffet food on streamer tables.
Your old friend shows up with a mysterious woman on his arm. She has one of those old-timey fascinator hats with a veil over her face. Your friend exudes charisma and charm; the lady is slinky and mysterious, with a hint of a baby bump.
Random slices of American cheese complete the tableau.
You turn down a hallway, faced by banks of lockers from your old high school. Fetuses dressed in tuxedoes jump out of the lockers, chasing you. You try to run, but your feet have turned to molasses. They have evil grins and sharp pointed teeth; they’re laughing shrilly and yelling racist epithets in their tinny little elf voices, and just as they’re about to get you-
More cheese. Cold, pale orange slices of it, encased in plastic.
Hot ash blows off the battlefield. It’s the civil war, and you’re a union soldier. Somewhere on the other side, your friend is waiting. He wants to finish that argument, and he has a bullet with your name on it.
The trumpets blare and the men charge. Your aunt sits on a distant hilltop, fanning herself and wearing a gigantic hoop skirt. You don’t know if she’s there for you or him.
A gun fires and there’s a plume of smoke. The bullet with your name on it comes toward you, but in slow motion, like matrix time. You’re all like, “woah.”
…And suddenly, it’s the future. You and the friend are riding on hoverbikes above a psychedelic neon landscape, fighting each other with lightsabers. The industrial wasteland below you is dotted with huge pyramids made of American cheese.
Your lightsabers clash, sending up a shower of sparks. “Affirmative action is bullshit!” he yells, over the roar of the engines.
You ram your hoverbike into his. “Take that, you libertarian neckbeard!” you yell triumphantly. He wheels away, but recovers.
He slashes his lightsaber along the side of your hoverbike, sending up a shower of sparks. The engine sputters and you go into a tailspin.
“Voooooote Rooooooomnneyyy” is the last thing you hear from him, as the ground gets closer and closer. Lightning flashes in the clouds, and there is a brief image of an ancient mother goddess, heavy with child, in the sky. The lightening flashes again, and it’s your pregnant aunt, wearing slippers and a house coat.
The cheese pyramids are closing in on you and the elf-demon-fetuses with their razor sharp teeth are laughing shrilly in your ears. The fondue fountain in the local Mariott is overflowing with molten cheese lava, and the confederate army is charging. “Nooooooo!” you scream.
You wake up in a cold sweat at 3 AM, shaking off the nightmare you can barely remember. Only these ideas remain: old friend- racism- pregnant aunt.
You shrug, go downstairs, and make a frozen burrito.