Should nightmares be counted like potatoes or should they be measured like soup? Whatever stuff nightmare is made out of, should it be weighed in ounces, or measured out into containers, noggin by noggin, this many nights’ worth?
Every night just before falling to sleep and every morning just after waking up, Green Chile stepped on the scale and recorded the bright green number in a little green notebook. Their given name was “Green Chile”. They’d never thought much of it.
In between the day’s weighings there was give and take; Green Chile spent hours running, miles cycling, took steps. Green Chile weighed at least twice daily, but according to the green number’s steady decrease, gradually less and less of Green Chile had done so.
Lately however, weeks’ worth of lately, the green number had only wobbled in place, like water about to boil.
Aggravated, Green Chile turned to soup. Soup was an easy way to prepare a good volume of protein, vegetables, and little else, all together and all at once for meals and meals to come, meals that would nourish without being depressingly bland. Soup soon became all that Green Chile would eat for dinner.
Green Chile bought a big pot, such a big pot for such a small apartment. Green Chile made a big pot of soup once a week, scheduling equal portions to be consumed from one pot to the next, measuring the soup out into containers, tupperware by tupperware, seven nights’ worth at a time.
With soup’s help, the green number had started going down again. More slowly than before, but down. It was over this period that Green Chile started fiddling with the recipe. It was over this period that the nightmares started.
Green Chile long had noticed that the green number was smaller in the morning than it was the night before, sometimes almost five pounds smaller. Every morning this brief pitch was welcome, this happy false sign of progress. Green Chile would step on the scale, sit down to pee, step back on the scale, take off pajamas, step back on the scale, and so on, peeling the skin from the bright green number.
But since the nightmares had started, the pitch had grown steeper. More of Green Chile was lost night after night.
As Green Chile adjusted the soup’s ingredients week by week, there were systematic changes in the nightmares. Each vegetable, spice, or meat was a dial that could be toggled to create a uniquely bad dream. Proportionally more fire roasted tomatoes, the greater the distance fallen from a cliff’s edge; one and a quarter attackers per carrot; salting chicken just before preparation didn’t do much to draw out flavor, but letting the chicken absorb the salt for twenty-four hours prior to cooking meant deep and dear secrets revealed in the night, unspoken secrets exposed to someone untrustworthy perfectly disguised as a friend; garlic, immobility; onions, nudity.
Green Chile was perfecting the recipe.
This continued until one night Green Chile could tell that the flavor was just right; it was perfectly clear without need for a spoon. Green Chile stepped back to get a better view of the smell, walking to the other side of the studio. The green chiles were just right. Green Chile was wide awake, and a nightmare started to tingle across their gums.
Green Chile stepped on the scale, then Green Chile put on both oven mitts and brought the full pot of soup into the tiny bathroom and stepped on the scale again. The bright green number was five pounds greater with the full pot in their arms. “Green chile soup,” Green Chile whispered into the steam. Green chiles were the least ingredient, making up the smallest part compared to all others, but it was green chile soup. If one were to situate the pot of soup in a lineup of soups from preceding weeks, it might be something different. Next to the beef soup and the seafood soup, it would be chicken soup. Next to weeks’ worth of soups that were otherwise identical but for the absence of carrots, it would be carrot soup. But by itself and in comparison to nothing, it was green chile soup.
Green Chile measured out seven nights’ worth, eating the first night without hesitation. And then, rather than store the remaining tupperware containers in the fridge, Green Chile opened one of them immediately and placed it on the scale. Then Green Chile set it aside and stepped on the scale without the tupperware, then grabbed the tupperware while still on the scale, then at last ate the tupperware without moving off the scale. Over the course of the eating, the bright green number strangely and slowly went up. Then Green Chile went back for thirds, taking the soup by the same method: tupperware-less on the scale, then tupperwared on the scale, then sipping, chewing, gulping, all on the scale. Course by course, Green Chile went back for fourths, fifths, sixths, then finally, long since overfull, back for sevenths, until the whole pot’s worth was gone, or not gone but relocated, moved inside of Green Chile, slowly reconstituting itself into parts of parts of Green Chile, or into passing contents of parts of Green Chile. They licked the bowl, tasting only whispers of anything other than hot metal, the flavor of seatbelt. Weighing themselves one last time, even without the pot or any tupperware in their arms, Green Chile weighed ten pounds heavier than before the eating had started. What was the bright green number measuring? How much of that number was Green Chile, how much was Green Chile’s green chile soup, how much was something else?
Green Chile woke from the nightmare with a gasp, sweat outlining their position on the sheets like tape on crime scene pavement. Mechanically Green Chile walked to the bathroom, where their little green notebook lay open, lots of scribbled numbers drawn all over the face-up pages, difficult to decipher.
Green Chile moved to the scale and stared at the bright green number. Without writing it down, they turned into the doorway to look back at their tiny stuffy apartment. The windows were closed. The fan was spinning. Green Chile weighed twenty-five pounds lighter than their target weight. They were at least fifty pounds lighter than they’d been after eating all that green chile soup, if that had even happened.
Green Chile overall didn’t feel like they were dreaming, but the thoughts they were having about how much they weighed now compared to how much they had weighed before felt like thoughts only had in a dream. Green Chile knew that over the course of a night one would exhale water vapor and carbon and so on, which is what caused the little nightly drop of that bright green number. But it was hard to believe that they could breath or fart out that much of themselves in one night. How much air was in that room, and how much of it was Green Chile? Twenty-five pounds worth, stewing in oxygen broth, dusting the shelves. The ceiling fan was stirring around a nightmare’s worth of Green Chile soup. They thought about tossing carrots and celery in the air. They breathed in deeply. They were breathing in self, they drew in their self through their nose until they gagged and coughed.
Green Chile woke from the nightmare with a gasp. The fan was spinning. The windows were open and cool air was flowing in. The curtains sucked against the window screen then softly lifted away; the small apartment was breathing gently. As the curtains were pressed away from the window by the breeze, they fell gently over the sill like a dress slung over a kitchen chair slipping softly down, like soft hair loosed from a scrunchy. Green Chile’s body was warm but dry, neither hot nor wet.
Mechanically, they stepped on the scale. The bright green light was back to where it should be, holding plenty of weight but maybe slightly less than what had been neatly recorded from the night before. Nothing unusual.
Green Chile quietly walked back to the sheets to check for sweat. There was no moisture, but there was some kind of slight residue. A little salty, but not only salty. Peppery maybe, with a hint of lime.
savory