squeak

When I was young I went on vacation in Florida.
I was wading along the beach. There was a storm brewing out at sea, so the
water was a mite murky. The water was a foot and a half deep if it was an
inch, I tells you. Having seen a news report the night before about
baracuda attacks, I was reasonably anxious. As I placed each barefoot
step, I knew I could be nearing a watery grave. Finaly, fate took it's
chance. I gingerly stepped down and as I did searing spikes of pain shot
through the tenderest section of my foot. I ran screaming to land fearing
the inevitable amputation. I have no idea how much time passed, but
judging from the position of the sun, and the movement of the clouds in
the atmosphere, it must have been upwards of a half-hour. When I saw that
my foor showed no sign of permanent injury, I dug deep and found the
courage to return to the area of the attack. I figured that the beast must
have moved on by then, either to harrass other innocents like myself, or
to prepare to do so. As the storm had moved on, and the silt had begun to
settle, visibility was much better. My search didn't last long before I
found my attacker, a one-foot alligator. But not a normal Florida gator,
this was a plastic child's toy. When I raised it from it's liquid lair,
and drained it's sinister belly of the seawater it had been holding, it
let out a loud mocking squeak.

embalming

I just woke up from the most ridiculous dream I've ever had. Looking back, it's hard to believe that it seemed as real as it did, but I was so glad to wake up and find out that it was fake. Three unrelated older men had died, and my youngest brother took a lot of interest in their interment. They were to be buried in the cemetary that was in our backyard. The undertaker preparing the bodies left for vacation with the job unfinished. We knew that two of the bodies had been prepared, but the third one, although embalmed, was not dressed for the burial that we needed to expedite. My brother and I broke in to the undertaker's office, and stole the body. We brought it back to my parent's house, who must also have been on vacation. There we did whatever my dreaming mind imagined needed to be done to prepare a body. During the process of moving the body around, he coughed. I figured that must be a reflex action, so we continued. After a few more twitches, he began speaking in Russian, which I also convinced myself was a kind of reflex. We knew that he was dead, and even if he somehow had not been dead when the undertaker took him, he had been embalmed which would surely kill him. He then sat up and talked with us. He seemed a little bit shook up, but on the whole was happy to be alive. I was less worried about the supernatural fright than I was about getting in trouble for something. We dressed him in my Dad's clothes and walked him down the steps and tried to get him somewhere quick. I woke up just this. Who knows what could have happened next.