Worm carbonara and the hubris of humanity
This is my first time writing an entry for this journal, so I don’t really know how to structure this. Apologies in advance.
In addition, a dream’s memory is ephemeral, so It may look like a haphazard chain of events because I forgot key details.
…In further addition, sometimes dreams are also just that. (Or are they?)
I think a key part of dreams for me is most of my dream content is stuff I kinda thought about during the day but not for too long. I guess this is because when you sleep your brain is deciding what kind of information to commit in your long-term storage sector and those kinds of thoughts where you think about it for a while but don’t finish on how you feel about them get kinda confusing to sort. (This is just yapping, I don’t know shit about the science behind dreams, sleeping, memory, the brain, or anything at all.)
The first part of my dream that I remember was me watching a youtube video about how a popular brazilian kids’ comic had fallen off in quality. What was weird about that though, is what their main criticisms were about how the comic’s powerscaling was beginning to not make any sense, talking as one would talk about your standard shonen battle manga.
He was distressed by the fact that – “known frauds” are now displaying durability feats equal to or greater than the established top tiers of the verse. This is because of panels featuring characters surviving absurd slapstick gags. And that newer characters have no “aura”Me in the dream was like “damn they do be kinda right tho” but it’s pretty ridiculous to talk like that about Turma da Monica. For my Argentinian oomfies, try imagining someone criticizing Mafalda for its powerscaling, or Peanuts for my north american ones.
The known fraud in question.
After going on about the “inconsistent powerscaling” for a good half hour or so, the youtuber would then switch to talking about an example of an older story, and how they got things right back then. It was a story about a character learning how to ride a skateboard. After his dad watches him fail numerous times, he intervenes and tells him he should try riding a longboard instead, because it’s easier if you just wanna go in a single direction.
He also introduces him to his longtime worm friend, which is literally just a worm who doesn’t even talk. After some convincing, the main character agrees and he hops on the longboard, with the worm friend at the front of the deck, the dad pushes off his child towards the middle of the park. Going full speed ahead, he crashes against a bench, and the worm that was sitting in the front of the deck was crushed and split in half. The main character then gathers and holds both ends of the split apart worm, and in tears, eats both of them. Then, there was a timeskip to him winning the national longboard skating competition. And after that, the video just abruptly ends in a cut to black, without the essayist even elaborating on anything.
Clingy buddy and bizarrely sought after delicacy in the dream world.
After that cut to black, I was taken to my own point of view, where I was in my garden, gathering worms from the soil and putting them in an empty little plastic container. I wasn’t planning on using them for fishing, though – I wasn’t even sure why I was doing that if I wasn’t even planning on using them as bait for fishing, but I decided I was “low on worms” (???) and had to stock up on a few of them.
After grabbing enough of them and storing them in the pot, I get off the ground and go into my home. I close the door and then turn up to look at the clock hung at the top of the house’s door leading from the living room into the kitchen. I noticed it’s 11:30 AM, and I haven’t made any preparations for lunch.
After getting stressed out and cursing my inattentiveness for a little bit, I suddenly take my palm off my face and look at what I’m holding in my hands, in morbid realization. I storm into the kitchen, as I had no time to waste if I wanted to eat the meal I had in mind in a timely manner. I don’t even know why I was stressing about eating lunch at exactly noon. Or why I thought eating worms was my best option at the moment. But alas.
While running towards my stove, I put the pot with the worms on top of the table and quickly light the strongest burner, and on top of it goes a pot with water that I then heavily salt. After it boils, I rip open a spaghetti packet with my bare hands and dump it all there. It has to cook for seven minutes, so I leave the stove and go back to my kitchen table. In the same little plastic container I was storing the worms, with their bits of ground and all – I crack two eggs and pour about a cup of whole milk in it. Then I throw in two generous sprinkles of salt and crack out a whole lot of black pepper. I vigorously stir it for like the whole 6 minutes I had left before the pasta was done and bam, I had my pasta sauce. After reserving about two cups of the pasta water, I drain the rest and add in my pasta sauce to the spaghetti, and mix it well.
After my exemplary mise en place and outstanding culinary technique, I wipe the sweat off my brows and look at the kitchen clock again and I see it’s 11:58 pm – A kind of satisfaction I’ve never felt before washes all over my body while I serve me a plate of some worm carbonara. I will state this again: I have no idea why I’m doing all of this or feeling these things. I can imagine myself being a worm eater, but I would never ever be a punctual person.
I eat a few forkfuls and not immediately, but slowly and gradually regret acting upon my flash of inspiration. While being in a dream made me a lot more open to using worms in cooking, my imagined taste of them was just as disgusting as any normal person would think. I tried to eat a few more bites, thinking I could eat it all if I avoided the worm bits, but the sauce was already steeped in rich worm flavor. Regrettably, I had to give up on my meal. The earthy ground wasn’t bad at all though, it was my favorite part, not even joking. I liked how there were crunchy bits and soft bits, added in some nice heterogeneity considering worms and spaghetti pasta have somewhat similar textures and mouthfeel.
Maybe I would have liked it had I added in MSG.
I get off from my chair, and head back to the living room, dejected. When I open the door though, I’m not in my house anymore. I was in some sort of weird LAN house where everyone was in a discord call with each other even though they were all sitting right next to each other. I stared at them for a while, thinking it was weird that my kitchen door led to a whole different place and the strangeness of the situation. I couldn’t gather my thoughts for very long though, because a tall dude I never ever met in my life or saw their face was calling out for me to play a game with them.
He was treating me as if we knew each other for a long time, so I kinda went and played along. The game he wanted me to play was a sort of augmented reality game which I don’t think there’s technology for in real life. But basically, we would stake out the windows of the door of the LAN house and sometimes, strange little clown creatures would hop by the sidewalk.
The game would give us AR guns (augmented reality guns, not assault rifle guns), and we would watch as those little clown creatures would pass the sidewalks, hopping around and creepily staring at us. Sometimes though, the clowns would stop and go “hah hah hah”, and you had to answer back “hah hah hah, we only want to play” before their third “hah”, or else they would kill you instantly.
After you did that, they would turn hostile and come after you, trying to invade the LAN house. Then, you were supposed to take out your guns and shoot them down before they got to you. After me and my friend were taking it easy after mowing a few of them down, we agreed that I would be the one to give the reply back for the next clown.
I nervously watch as a few of the clowns just stroll by the sidewalk without saying anything, just looking at me and smiling. I start to get worried I’ll freak out and start to answer before any of them says anything, which also gets you killed.
Eventually, one of them starts laughing “hah hah” and even though I was sweating cold, not even moving a muscle, I only start to move my mouth after the clown finishes his second “hah”, I try to speak as fast I can, but I’m not able to finish before the creature utters his third “hah.” He grabs a sharp kitchen knife out of his jester clothes and makes a mad dash towards us.
My friend signals to me that he’ll distract the clown as he runs aways, and I should stay out of his sight and only come out when he’s cornered by the clown, to which at that point we will then turn on him and fire at him until he dies.
I nod and quickly hide in the shadows of a nearby corner, while he sprints off to the back of the LAN house, as I watch the killer clown chase him with primal bloodlust. As the creature passes by me, I come out from my hiding spot before our planned time and shoot him down with my gun, alone. The clown takes a lot less damage because at that point in the game, you’re supposed to lose and you can only stay alive if you’re able to coordinate a lot of shots without getting hit once.
The fiend just lunges at me, and slashes my face open. Then another deep slash to the forehead. The blood covers my eyes, and I see nothing but deep red, unable to see anything else. Then a strong thrust and twist to my gut, and I lay down in the ground, as even more red covers my vision. I felt real, visceral pain from this even though it was supposed to be a game in a dream. I felt death closing in on me at the same rhythm my vision was having its bright, vivacious red covering it with a monotone, unfeeling pure black. That was it for me.
I was alive again in another time, another place, another sequence of events. This time I was accompanied by a friend I actually knew, although only from the internet. In my dream he had the appearance of the female character he uses in his profile pictures, but he had a male voice and spoke in spanish, to which I replied in portuguese, and we were both understanding each other perfectly.
We were in some sort of shopping mall-like building, just walking by and window shopping. Eventually, we stumble upon a floor that has every corner of it filled with those display refrigerators you see in gas station stores and supermarkets. We thought it was weird to have a full floor dedicated just to those kinds of products, especially a floor of that size, but we decided to take a look around and see if there was anything interesting inside those hundreds of glass doors.
Kinda like that, but they were white with gold finishes, almost having a luxurious feel to them.
The first fridges we observe have nothing but the usual content they usually have: sodas, energy drinks, frozen pizzas, packaged lunch meats, stuff of the sort. Eventually though, things started getting a bit more strange. They were starting to sell and announce needs for various rental services, all of them using a similar way of conveying it, a plastic bottle with a homemade paper or cardboard label writing out the details of the job like the skills needed, work to be done, where and when to meet, offered pay, etc.
It was just the usual kind of stuff you could find in freelancing websites or job postings. Me and my friend were actually discussing if we should take up a few of them as we continued walking and inspecting the contents of the different refrigerators.
Eventually we got to a refrigerator that was filled only with sacks of cement stacked on top of another. We were confused about this, until a stranger noticed our bewilderment and explained to us that the sacks of cement are kind of an open secret for people requesting or offering sexual services. The method used is similar to the other announcements using bottles and cans, but it was more in a concealed way, using euphemisms relating to construction work.
It was obvious stuff like “need my driveway cemented” or “offering pipe plastering services” and we were kinda laughing until we started seeing the prices some of them offered. I don’t really know what’s my real opinion on actually whoring my body out for money since it’s not something that crosses my mind very often, but I think dream me was very forthcoming with that idea. My friend tried to convince me, saying that I might regret it, but I just kept trying to argue that it might be worth the risk for the reward, tantalized by prospects of easy money. He kept raising even more sensible and compelling arguments, until I eventually just started saying “but for 4200, though? For 4500? For 5000?”. After some arguing, I think I eventually convinced him to let me follow through on my career as a male prostitute.
With that settled, we continue to browse the refrigerators. This time, the next sector featured glass mason jars. Inside them were grains of rice, but they were looking to be double their usual, real-life size. Written on the label were the instructions “BUY FOR 13.50, SELL FOR 15.90, PLACE HERE AGAIN”. I really have no idea what that could possibly mean in retrospect.
Things started getting even weirder when we walked into the next sector. The refrigerators had countless mason jars with living, squirming larvae about the size of a small water bottle each. It was one of the most disgusting sights I had ever laid eyes upon. In their labels, it was crudely written: “FREE LARVAE FOR PROTEIC SHAKE”. Me and my friend just increased our pace while trying not to look too much.
However, we suddenly notice one of the larvae manage to break the lid open, and knock over the whole jar on the ground, shattering it and releasing all of their contents in the ground. About 10 of them break free from that single jar. Some flopping on the ground like fish, others slowly trailing through it like slugs.
They looked almost exactly like this, just white, soft, squishy, squirmy.
We were paralyzed in shock. We stared at them creepily moving around in the ground, when one of them suddenly started growing purple bulbs. The bulbs would grow until they burst, and from the root of those burst bulbs, limbs started growing. Eventually, they metamorphosed into a terrifying, roach-like, insectoid-like monster with scythes in their arms.
They had the antennas of a roach, erratically twitching as they turned their faces toward us. Then, all of a sudden, the broadcast speakers erupted into a loud sound, with the message: “Alert, containment breach of larvae has been detected. If you stand farther away than 10 meters, you will be safe. Just calmly evacuate away from the creatures.”
Me and my friend, after being stunned in horror from watching their transformations, were now far too close. I looked back, to the start of the corridor, where, not far off, was a tumultuous gathering of people all had their eyes locked in the scene we were present in, their morbid curiosity guiding them towards the gruesome outcome that will surely soon follow.
All I thought in my last moments was how cruel it was that due to just a small difference in our positions at the wrong time, due to entirely circumstantial events, me and my friends were about to be brutally murdered. This time, my head is cleanly cut off, and I get the fadeaway to black instantly. In that dark interlude, I also feel sorry for my friend whom I couldn’t protect.
They looked very similar to this guy
After a brief while in that black screen, I find myself thrust into another completely different sequence of events. My point of view is taken to the inside of the bathroom in my home, where I’m watching the all too familiar scene I’m met with while I wait for my physiological needs to be fully taken care of. While I’m standing there urinating, I look at the toilet bowl, and see something that wasn’t there before:
A cockroach, floating in the toilet water, desperately struggling trying to stay afloat while wiggling their little appendages. For some reason, I find this amusing enough to let out an audible chuckle. I start thinking to myself how superior I am, a member of the human race, in comparison to the shameful and graceless roach, its last moments fighting for its life in a random toilet bowl.
I start thinking that perhaps, maybe even with all my shortcomings and character flaws, I couldn’t be that bad. I’m a human, and thus blessed with the almost limitless potential that humanity is known to have. Even with all my failures, I still showered in the virtue of my past ancestors, honored by their ingenious exploits in life and the impactful sorrow they left as result of their dramatic ends.
I don’t know why dream me started thinking this. I heavily disagree with all these premises, and that definitely wouldn’t be the kind of scene that would evoke these thoughts in me. But back to dream bliss, after getting bonkers high on his ancestor's ashes, he decides to use his remaining urine to try to further drown the struggling insect.
There wasn’t much left in the tank though, so that affair didn't last very long. As he was getting ready to close the toilet lid, the roach unexpectedly managed to rapidly swim back to the border, and climb the walls of the toilet bowl. The roach stood at the frontmost part of the seat, facing me. My point of view suddenly zooms in closer to the roach face, kinda like when a NPC speaks to you in a 3D Fallout game, and it starts telepathically speaking with me.
The roach tells me it is deeply disappointed in me. It remarks about how unsightly it is for me to display such a profound level of hubris and contempt towards a creature who was in a situation strikingly similar to my own. How dismayed I should feel, that even with all my life experience and past failures, I was unable to grasp these basic, simple lessons. After continuing its diatribe for a few minutes further, the roach suddenly stops and solemnly yet sternly says: “Listen,”
“For your transgressions against the beauty of the spirit of living things, I shall stalk you for as long as I live. You will no longer be safe in the vast skies of dreamscapes or the heavy ground of reality, for I shall trail you in this plane and onto the next.”
Like the roach’s ominous words were a snap of fingers, my vision once again cuts to black, but this time I wake up again in the bed I was sleeping, free from any more dream sequences and the absurdity of the situations they put me in. However, as I thought that, I see what’s standing in front of me. The face of the last visitor I had in my dreams, quietly watching me as I laid defenseless in my bed. This time, their size was increased to that of a small dog, and its pitch black eyes stared at me, each of them the size of a tennis ball.
I scratch my eyes hurriedly in an attempt to better my vision, but the being stands there. It stood motionless, its antennas not twitching a single inch, but even through no physical expression at all, I could feel its mockery. I keep staring at it, trying to focus my vision to see if my eyes are playing tricks on me, but it just wouldn’t leave.
Until its form suddenly changed to that of my sister’s dog, and then after a short while, it changed to that of my dad’s cat. Both of them weren’t even in the house I was currently sleeping in. After seeming like it showed me enough, it vanished, and I was free from what I would like to think were my mind’s own constructions.
That is the full journaling of the dream sequences I had that day. I felt like all of them were pretty interesting in their own right. The first one I guess originated from me thinking that the terms powerscalers use to describe things is amusing. The worm carbonara one I honestly had no idea, but I think I ate pasta that day. I have no clue about the AR clowns one, and the shopping refrigerators one just seemed like a bunch of stuff meshed together.
That last dream sequence was particularly interesting to me, though. I never had the remnants of a dream follow me after I actually fully wake up, and don’t fake wake up still in a dream like it sometimes happens. Could I actually be being haunted at this very moment by a guardian spirit of the beauty of living things and their struggles? Is it planning to teach me a lesson? If so, I apologize for the actions of dream me, I feel like I’m a lot more amiable to your ideas than your experiences with me in that dream would suggest.