The Slide

I woke from a dream in which death was, literally, a long slide. Two women with indistinct facial features and I were stationed at the top of the slide so we could shove people off when their time arrived. As was bound to happen, someone I knew, an apprentice I once taught and liked immensely, appeared beside us.

When the time came, I helped push her down the slide without question.

I woke immediately after this and now sit on my sofa in the pre-dawn, wondering why my brain does this to me.

—Mitchell Hegman