While I was with a friend or relative, she asked me to help her carry her two babies, as they were becoming a heavy burden.

I took the carrier, which turned out to be an open-ended denim sling with a handle, designed similarly to a fire log carrier. I was surprised to see that the babies were stacked one on top of the other, and both were precariously hanging out the carrier’s ends. Somehow this was my fault, and if something tragic happened it would be my responsibility.

I took one of the babies out. It was an odd infant, with a large, bald head and a tiny body. I began to feel uncomfortable. I took out the one underneath, afraid of what I would find. It was alive and had an enormous head full of thick black hair, but almost no body. Neither looked like any baby or human I had ever seen, and I was filled with a silent horror. These weren’t anyone’s children. They looked at me precociously as I asked myself what they were.

I tried to go up steps in a house, but they kept changing. They didn’t connect from level to level. I would reach the top of one set and be stuck, unable to reach the next set, which would be suspended near the first at an impossible angle. I was trapped. Again.