I dreamed

The air in the kitchen tastes like dry, hot dust, 24.9 degrees and not a breath moving. It’s that clear, dead calm that makes the pressure feel heavy on the eardrums. I’m standing at the counter, but the counter is a long, white picket fence that runs out into a void of paved path. No grass, just the hard loop of the path stretching forever under a sky that’s too bright.

The headline from the news is hanging in the air like a cloud that won’t rain. The 100 Project. It’s not text anymore. It’s a smell. Old wool, dust, and the sharp scent of preserved history. I try to reach for a glass of water, but my hand closes around a jar of something sealed tight. It’s warm. Inside, it’s not water. It’s a century. A whole hundred years of living, compressed into a single, thick, amber liquid.

I shake the jar. The liquid doesn’t slosh. It tickles. I uncork it and pour it into my mouth, expecting it to taste like time, like the slow erosion of stone. It tastes like nothing. Just the static hum of the fans spinning in the dark. The fence in front of me is gone. There’s only the jar, empty and warm, and the pressure of 1015 hPa pushing down on my skull until I can’t remember if I’m the one holding it or the one being held.