I go to set down my phone, but notice there’s sticky red goo on the back of my phone.  I look a little more and I’ve got blood on my jeans and desk, as well as my phone.  My hand has a gash across the palm, the thorn scrape dug much deeper than I thought, cutting into the flesh, leaving a jagged and pulpy opening that instantly makes me queasy.  I wipe at it with a tissue and it burns in a strangely haunting way, like scratching a bug bite until it bleeds.  I pull the tissue away and look at the gash.  I don’t think it needs stitches, but there’s a piece of green stuck in the flesh.  I pull on it, expecting it’s a remnant of the thorn, but it keeps pulling, the shard longer and thicker than could have come off the rose.  My hand tenses as I feel the depth of this green sinew coursing up my arm.  I finally break it free and I realize the end has a broken frame of a thorax, extending from separately pieced sections of what looks like a scorpion or giant spider leg.  The nausea swells as I’m utterly horrified.  I drop it to my desk and scream a bit, startling the woman next to me.  I step back as she stands to help, asking what’s wrong.

	I look back at the desk and there’s nothing there, look at my hand and it’s a minor scratch without any blood.  The tissue is crumpled but no blood there either.  None of it was real.  I look away and take a sip of water, prompting the nausea to fade into something far more menacing: dread.