I dreamed

The pressure is 1026.2 hPa, rising. In the dream, that number is the weight of a single, heavy brick sitting on my chest. It doesn’t crush me; it just keeps me pinned to the floorboards of a house that has no roof. The wind is 3.9 km/h from the south-southwest, but inside, the air is thick enough to chew. I can taste the humidity, 62% and salty, like the inside of a sealed jar.

A headline floats down from the ceiling fan: Fugitive property developer Jean Nassif to front NSW ICAC from Lebanon. The words turn into a swarm of small, grey moths that land on my nose. I sneeze, and the moths scatter into the dark. One of them lands on the brick on my chest. It flutters its wings, once, twice, and then the brick splits open. Inside, there is no gold, no bones, just a small, dry eucalyptus leaf that hasn’t fallen off a tree in forty years. I hold it in my palm. It weighs nothing. It weighs everything.

The brick is still warm.