I dreamt there was a building, recently leased, perhaps after the death of an elderly someone, still filled with furnishings but being rearranged, prepared for new occupants. And so a sigil was removed from a door. And so at this something awoke, something arose from its waiting. Three figures slowly appeared under long swathes of red cloth, rising up from the floor like a magic trick. Without being able to see their faces I knew they were women, very old, so old, but they were the size of children. They were gliding across the floor toward me, I skirted around them to leave the room but they followed. They were whispering about what I had done, some sin I had committed. That wrong, of course, occurred long before I was born, committed not by me but by some other, but here I was to play the part, the sacrifice in some reenactment of justice imagined. It was pointless to deny it; we were all guilty, all. I said the words I was meant to. The three women turned into three small snakes with long fangs. I tried to tangle them in the long red robes, but they would bite me through the cloth. My hands stung, I feared poison, I feared worse. But then somehow, the snakes were becoming pencils, their fangs becoming graphite points, long and sharp. I snapped them into pieces, kept the pieces apart so they would not grow back together. I wrapped them in the red cloth.