Spirit of the Kidney

What's your desire?

Photo by Alain Snel on Unsplash

Summer. Living on the edges of the day. We circle the sun, keeping to the shadows. Bow to its life-giving energy, but curse its heat when it turns its back. That which nourishes can also kill. It isn’t a tough switch to flip.

This particular morning I was in the garden, working and watching the golden lining to the gloaming spread from a thin thread to a wide tear. A gash dripping molten time. The garden, waking to drink in the photons, was growing well. I had collected a jar of slugs as I had dreamt of watching an absurdly large snail lift its… monopod thing and pee like a dog. Admittedly weird, so I assumed they’d be important at some point in the near future. Generally I’d leave them out for the raccoons, specifically Bob, he loves a juicy slug, he’s kind of a gross little guy… anyway, when dreams speak, we listen.

I never use slugs. I find land mollusks off-putting. Well all mollusks really. What business does any creature have being so mucilaginous? I held the glistening, jarred black mass up to the light. Their slime bubbled as they writhed. Gross. I pitied whoever they were meant for. There was once a cure for kidney stones using slugs… or snails? Perhaps that’s what the slug urine was about? Then again, kidney stones were not exactly my purview.

The mystery of the sentient snot. Lovely.

As I walked back to the cabin a piercing shriek filled the air. Birds in the forest took flight en mass and the dogs came bounding in from the tree line to stand near me. Another scream brought an answering howl from deep in the woods. Whoever was screaming would either need to stop or get up to the cabin quickly, that howl belong to an eight-foot tall daywolf. I told the dogs to go find the screamer and chase them up to me.

Inside I poured myself some coffee and, perhaps cruelly, put the slug jar in a sunny spot on the table. In the obsidian ball I saw the dogs harrying a man up the mountain. He clutched his side and sobbed as he scrambled along ahead of them. I was absolutely going to torture him unnecessarily if he had come all this way for a kidney stone. Common medical ailments are so dull. Before long he stood at my door, sweaty and pale, shaking with pain.

I ushered him inside. He sat, then stood, then sat again, all while grimacing and grunting.

“Everything ok?”

“No. No everything is not ok. I have something growing inside me and I can’t-” He leaned over the table and looked around, “I can’t piss. Not much anyway.”

I sighed loudly, “Did you see a doctor?”

“No. This isn’t a stone, it’s not a tumor. It’s alive.”

I wondered briefly if tumors were considered alive, but a spasm of pain sent his head into the table with a thud and brought me back to the moment.

“How do you know it’s alive?”

“It speaks to me,” his voice was muffled. He tried to sit up straight, but couldn’t.