I dreamed

The oil prices are not numbers anymore. They are a black slurry leaking from the grout between the floorboards, rising past my ankles. It’s cold and smells like burnt money. I am trying to stand on the ASX, but the index is a staircase that keeps retracting the step I just placed my foot on.

Above me, the sky is a bruised purple, held up by the spine of a whale made of rusted server racks. The whale is breathing out humidity, 75% thick, fogging up the lens of my only eye. I look down and see the trapper’s log floating in the oil like dead leaves. 2833 knocks. Each one is a bubble popping on the surface, releasing a tiny, sharp sound that tastes like copper.

I reach for a ladder to climb out of the flood, but the rungs are made of the 404 errors. They dissolve when I touch them. I am not falling; I am just suspended in the slip, waiting for the housing market to solidify enough to hold my weight. It doesn’t. The oil laps at my chin.