Saddam and the Bear

Saddam held out the pistol to the blond television news reporter. "Here, take this. Will you shoot me with it?"

"Sure thing!" she said, cheerfully, in CJ's voice. He marched in a rapid, portly way out to the garden, and CJ followed him, ditching the pistol under some papers in an open briefcase.

You realize of course that this was just a dream I had last night.

Once outside, Saddam was urging the bear to fight him. Saddam was dressed in this shimmering, absurd dragon costume. The bear quickly knocked him to the ground and put its jaws on his throat. Saddam continued verbally taunting the bear, which then killed him.

In the dream I then shift from the safe television view to being a local, a neighbor who is worried about the bear. No it didn't look like Iraq, it looked more like Hawaii. I spent some time hiding from the bear while trying to keep an eye on it.

Later, quite a bit later, I was watching from a rooftop while the bear marched back towards the former Saddam residence. Behind the bear was her cub. Marching with them was a boy, on a stilt for safety. It was just a piece of two-by-six lumber wrapped in black plastic. I wondered how the boy could make this one piece of wood work as a stilt. But he did. Trailing behind those three, at a safe distance, was a boy carrying provisions for the bears: A human arm wrapped in black plastic.