Raymond Sufin's Mobile Tax Preparation Service
My sister and I were staying in this "motel" which was basically an old farmhouse with rooms available for rent. It was a total dive, and I'm not just talking about an older, more decrepit Motel 6 dive. I'm talking total trashed. Why we were staying there, who knows? But apparently, we had some history and had stayed there before.
Near sundown, we watched out the dirty window as this greasy haired man in a terribly outdated leisure suit pulled up in an old converted school bus decorated like a Barnum and Bailey Circus truck with "Raymond Sufin's Mobile Tax Preparation Service" on the side. He sold income tax preparation services out of it, and much to our surprise, not long after he arrived, people actually started showing up. Barefoot, dusty, and having walked a good distance, but there nonetheless to have their taxes done. I said to Amy, "There's a short story waiting to be written right there," and I made plans to interview the guy the next morning.
I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of a raven or crow violently flapping its wings--inside the house/motel room. In trying to catch the bird, it took a huge bite into my finger, clutched its claws around my wrist and just would ... not ... let ... go. I flailed and flung, shouted and carried on, but nothing was going to get this bird off my arm. Somehow I knew the only thing I could do would be to kill it, and so in a primitive reflex action, I started beating my arm against the ceiling to break the bird's neck (I was on the upper bunk bed, so the ceiling was the closest thing).
Exhausted I fell off the bunk. The bird no longer had me in its grip; instead I was holding the most precious black and white kitten with a broken neck. Its breathing was labored, blood stained its fur, its eyes were glassy like eyes will go just before death. But I knew it was in pain. The gasping and choking for breath nearly killed me, and so I rushed over to the medicine cabinet and began crushing up and mixing morphine and percocet into this paste so that the bird-now-kitten could die without agony.
The sun rose, the kitten died, and the mobile tax service bus had already left town.
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The two things I get conclusively from this dream are that 1) I am very aware subconsiously that I need to get my taxes done, and 2) even subconsiously I don't believe I could successfully break a bird's neck to kill it. The rest has left me perplexed all day.