We're in a small town. I don't know how I got here, but we're both here --
Jessica and I, and we're staying at a
motel of some sort.
The small town locale is a reoccurring theme for me in my dreams. Perhaps because I was raised in one. This town is not unlike any other small town, subtle in it's charms, but we are on our way somewhere, perhaps on a trip. We have all of our stuff with us - including my two cats Shittie and Tasha and my ball python, Basil. We are also traveling with Jessica's pet rat, although really she doesn't have a pet rat. For some very strange reason it shares Basil's cage with him.
The motel we are in is sort of dingy, but not too bad. The room we had rented is actually pretty large, with a big bathroom. This is good, because we for some reason have all of our pets with us. The carpet is a very ugly brown shag. The motel hasn't been remodeled in a very long time.
We leave to continue on our journey, but once we get on the freeway Jessica's car, Kevin, starts to run badly. We sputter off of the nearest exit ramp, while she curses our bad luck. We both hope that we can find a service station. Luckily, there's one right off of the expressway off-ramp. It's all very strange, however, because:
It's the exact same town that we just left.
After checking the car in, we decide to stay in the same motel again. Once we get in the room, I notice the empty six-pack of bottles on the floor that I had drank the night prior. I find this very strange and comment on how they must not do very much housecleaning here. When I turn around, though, I am greeted by something else even stranger:
We had forgotten Basil and the rat.
While we were gone, somehow the rat had scared Basil so much that he had pried the cage lid open with his head and had gotten himself stuck between the top of the cage and the galvanized steel lid. The pressure had suffocated him in a way, and his body was shriveled up and black. You would think that he had died, but he kept moving. He then tried to crawl back into his cage, but in doing so, something impeded his progress:
He lost his head. It fell off in a very disgusting show, right on the floor - plop!
In his cage, now with no head, Basil is obviously dead. But he wasn't dead. He kept moving around in the cage, just like normal. Jessica is so shaken by seeing this that she covers her eyes. I decide to pick Basil up and have a better look. The stump where his head was had healed perfectly. He was moving around in my hands as effortlessly as he did when he was a baby:
A snake with no head.