MY DREAM OF A TURTLE
It started how every dream starts, all of sudden and all at once.
I found myself on a beach in Australia, I have never been to Australia and wanted to go to the Sydney Opera House. But there was the beach, and the sun was out, so there I stayed, partly to watch the end of a marathon taking place. The race was coming to a close, with the majority of participants exiting the water with the sun on their backs. As I watched the athletes cross the finish line, and culminate with their signature “end of race dance” routine, I noticed one man limping. I followed him with my eyes, trying to work out the source of his injury.
Once he had crossed the finish line the crowd dispersed as he fell to the sand, and a snapping turtle jumped off his left leg where it had been biting down. It got up on its hind legs, looking worried and scared, and making a B line for me, scurried up my body and held on to me tightly. At first I was afraid of this foreign creature holding on to me, but its size, and presence on my chest reminded me of a baby who just wanted to feel secure. As these maternal feelings washed over me, the creature morphed from a snapping turtle into a human baby.
This repetitive violence did slacken the turtle’s jaw long enough for it to let go of the baby - who then disappeared as bizarrely as it had appeared - but the turtle then fixed its jaw on my hand.
A swinging battle ensued where I found myself spinning around as fast I could, hoping that the turtle would let go. The force from being swung was enough to pry its jaws from my hand, and in doing so the turtle flew across the crowd and landed squarely and securely on my friend’s face.
This was the final straw, my anger exploded from my chest, coursing through my fists and depositing on to the turtle’s face. He continued to get in some good bites but by the time I had regained composure the turtle was bloody, beaten and bruised within an inch of his life. Remorse flooded through my body as I picked up his fragile remains; my eyes scanned the crowd then back to the turtle as it coughed up some blood.
“Is there a doctor in the house?” I cried, but there was no response from the crowd. They all stood there staring at me through their phone screens, as they captured the entire ordeal from multiple angles.
I ran along the beach, searching for anyone who was medically trained. Finally, after many disappointed shakes of heads and disinterested hearts, I found a vet willing to take a look at the turtle.
Placing a stethoscope on the turtle’s chest and checking his pulse, the vet shook his head and said, “There’s nothing I can do I’m afraid, this turtle was dying before you attacked him.”
It seems he was suffering from alopecia and would shortly be dead, so I gently took the turtle from the vet, who left us to say our goodbyes.
So under the Australian sun, with the waves crashing and the distant sounds of frolicking, I made my peace with the turtle. I told him how sorry I was for letting my anger get the better of me, for not trying to understand him, and for making his last moments in life full of suffering and pain.
The turtle turned its head towards me and with what seemed like the last of his strength, smiled and told me not to worry. He whispered, “I have lived for 450 of your years and in that time, a day is nothing but a minute.”
In that moment I comprehended time on a massive scale, I experienced change over centuries, and the fleetingness of my own existence. My chest started to overheat as it tightened, the pressure built up to my throat. I swallowed as the heat shot into my eyes and two tears dropped onto his shell.
The turtle coughed up some blood as it continued, “Life is its best when the soul’s at peace, but is just as good when something unexpected happens.”
With that the turtle died, and I started to wake up. In my final moments of leaving the dream, I felt so guilty for fighting the turtle. I started to think the vet had just told me what I had wanted to hear, to make me feel better.
As my eyes opened and my body awoke, my mind did not - It was still thinking of the turtle: so to justify the entire ordeal I told myself he looked like Kron the bad guy from the film, “Dinosaurs” (2000).