Europe After the Rain

A dream:
” I am propelled out of a black infinity towards a small circular light on the horizon. An aperture. After a time, I pass through this bright eye and am consumed by the light without.”

“I have absolutely no idea!”
Brendan answered with more than slight irritation, more interested in enjoying his early morning piss into the swan white toilet bowl, than discoursing at length on the topic of philosophy.
“Anyway Gandhi was a degenerate.”
From the bedroom a snort was all that was issued in response.
The issuer, a medium sized pig of indiscernible age, lay on its side on the bed, suckling a cigarette.
“I’ve just always felt… well felt that I should have lived in another time and place, from history I mean” Brendan continued.
”The Spanish Inquisition or Nazi Germany.”

Brendan stared at himself in the mirror above the sink. Touching his face, caressing the dark brown skin of his cheeks, his appearance rejuvenated his spirits. The change had consumed him. He felt the contrast between his body and the white of the wall tiles and sink.
Outside it was raining.
As the first rays of the new sun struck his body Brendan felt indestructible like a panther. He saw himself moving swiftly through the undergrowth of a deep jungle, attacking the genitalia on the carcasses of dead human beings. Later, standing in the shower he began to sing something from Wagner as the high power faucet washed all the pig shit of his body.
Drying off, he thought he heard a voice in the next room.
“What?” he cried angrily.
“We’re out of cigarettes,” answered the pig, more to itself than anyone.
For a long time Brendan was motionless, staring through the bathroom window into the streets below. The rain had finally stopped. He could sense their presence now, all around him. The panthers were getting closer.

Twenty-five stories below him, the people moved like ants on the floor of a vast concrete jungle.