Incubi, Butterflies and a Snake

Another wake-me-up nightmare. Snakes this time. Particularly a very large determined snake which followed me from room to room. It was about 20 feet long with a small head and a body as thick as a fat man's thigh. Somehow it could squeeze through the smallest of spaces. It never hurried yet it was relentless. At first I was worried about the animals but it ignored them. I was the goal. I woke when I looked up and saw a dozen pale snakes watching me from the ceiling.

Nightmares used to be a feature of childhood. Always had the same one where I was smothered in the corner of a room by an amorphous grey blob. That nightmare accounts for my tendency to dislike small spaces. As far as I can remember the nightmare never varied. Perhaps my memory is faulty but I don't think I had nightmares, or if I did very few, once I reached adulthood. I used to get the odd incubus laughing manically in my ear while I lay in frozen fear unable to even wiggle a toe, which incidentally was supposed to be the way to throw off an incubus, wiggle a toe and the body would follow. That was the worst feature of an incubus dream, the inability to move even though I felt as though I was fully awake. No matter how much I strained I remained frozen, like I'd been given some drug which incapcitated me physically while leaving my mind untouched.

Incubi visited mostly in the daylight hours, during naps. I suspect my weakened state, due to a dissipated lifestyle, accounted for their frequent visits. I was morally porous. How else would I succumb (is the word succumb related to succubus, the female version of an incubus?) so easily. At any rate, I haven't been *visited* for many years of which I am thankful. Instead I have these new, always different, nightmares. Rational thinking soon soothes my fluttering heart yet I find it odd that I am experiencing so many. I don't always write of them and perhaps I should just to keep track.

The air is alive with monarch butterflies. At least I think they are monarchs. If they aren't they look very similar. Occasionally a monarch will flutter past with another monarch attached to its abdomen in an amorous embrace. I wonder about the butterfly hanging upside down. It's wings are tightly closed, pointing like a guillotine towards the earth. Does it get vertigo? Does it get dizzy as it bounces through the air and have to fight the urge to flutter? Does it pray that it and its partner don't become prey for a passing bird?

I don't remove native cotton weeds because the monarch caterpillars feed on them. When we first moved here 20 years ago the land next door was thick with native cotton. We noticed hundreds of butterflies visiting the plants and when we walked the SE corner of our property, where the creek meanders through, we saw thousands of butterflies. They were resting in the trees. If we clapped our hands, the trees seemed to explode in orange shards of fire as thousands of butterflies erupted into the air. Sadly, the owner returned, stocked the property with dozens of donkeys and the butterfly colony disappeared.