I am standing in a stairwell with bright yellow walls behind a very short, hunched-over elderly person of indeterminate gender who speaks in an East European accent; I can't recall everything said, except for the fact this person mentions they are a Holocaust survivor. I never see this person's face. He/she is wearing a bright green crocheted wool beret that looks like a tree canopy, and a matching crocheted jacket with a tree trunk design, complete with white flowering buds and crocheted ants crawling up the brown wool trunk of the tree. I follow this person outside, into a slushy snow-covered supermarket parking lot (which looks suspiciously like da Jewels on Chicago Avenue in Evanston).

Suddenly, the tree-suited senior citizen is gone, and I see six foxes, evenly spaced several paces apart, skating (or cross-country skiing) in a straight line towards the north end of the supermarket lot. As they slide through the slushy snow, each fox turns sideways and glances at me.

Labels: soapbox