Dreams

During the night the sleep of the adventurer is riddled with dreams. Playing cards that walk and talk and people that don’t. Drifting on a river with a thick undergrowth of forged iron on the banks that hold the direst threats. A laughing man with tattooed eyelids, who pinches him with a clothes peg and pricks him with a fang, then turns into a laughing woman with no face, who then holds up a mirror to show him the face of a thousand faces, constantly changing like a cloudscape, changing before they have time to register. And through it all, a voice intoning:
“The president has the answers. Do not forget, he is a man fearfully acquainted with the secrets of Nature.”
In the morning, he is tired and despondent. He doesn’t want to get out of bed. Certainly not to look up the president, which is what seems indicated.