Google claims I’m doomed to a self-destructive and self-defeating path. That, or I’ll find the death and rebirth I’ve apparently been searching for. But I’m pretty sure I don’t intimately know anyone who’s a Scorpio. Have I cut myself off from something? Is sex that important to me? As important as weed?

Forget that. Reason can have the waking moments. It’s the dream I’m interested in – without definition until I define it, without property unless I locate it. Unconscious quantum mechanics.

Handle the scorpion, she tells me. Protect him.

I do as she instructs, picking the yellow-abdomened arachnid up off the ground by his tail.

I rest him on top of my opened beer can. I’ve apparently been drinking. I don’t seem tipsy. He flaunts his clawed forearms at me from atop his Budweiser throne. He’s set for now, I imagine. A job dubbed well done before it’s done.

I see I’m stung on the tip of my thumb.

How fucking dumb.

Glancing down again I inspect the pedipalp prick. The blood slowly begins to puddle at the surface of my pale skin. A reddish crater turns maroon hot spring in seconds.

She scolds me from above for my arrogant blunder. She claims there’s little she can do. I thank her for her sympathy before the neurotoxin kicks in. An icy, deathbed high one would die for overwhelms my un-senses.

Or so I thought.

My unconscious persists.

I stumble out of the toxicity thanking passersby I’m still alive. Their quizzical faces can’t dissuade my invigoration. I’m still here. How thrilled I am to delay the inevitable return.

Rioters outside my childhood home request my attention. I fend them off inside my garage, one at a time. We flee down the street, chasing back the darkness beneath glazed streetlights. The pistol in my hand doesn’t fire. I’ve never pulled the trigger, I just know. It’s enough for them to flee.

Teleportation lands me in my bathroom, naked and dry before the steaming shower. My severed penis lies in my bloodied hands. The scissors remain partly open, resting upon the drain of the bathroom sink. I gaze up. In the oversized mirror he looks lost, a reflection of my stubbly face staring back at me.

Motionless and limp, I rest it on the counter. Inside the shower, scalding water burns the stump that’s left. It seemed a good idea at the time, a time I never had the chance to witness. What the fuck was I going to do with it now? Reproduction, bodily pleasure, what do I need them for in here?

Outside the shower, I can’t pry my pupils from my reflection. My beard snakes out from my skin, then fades to white wisps that float freely in zero gravity. Eye sockets that once beheld the beauty in the world plunge inside my skull.

The serpents slither between my bare toes. I run for a blade, but they turn to cheddar cheese when I chop at them. Party favors, I guess, if you grab some Triscuits.

My pupils dilate, coming to focus on the computer screen I dozed off in front of. I type “wikipedia” into the navigation bar. A jigsawed world manifests itself before me. Where do I find where I end and it begins? I click on the link that reads “Random article.” The computer does the searching for me. Until this world fades away once more.