The Dish and the Spoon - with Adagio

It was twilight in a small town in New Mexico. I breathed deep, walking home after closing my bookshop for the night. Taking a shortcut path approaching the cul-de-sac, I felt the silence creeping up my spine. As a long-time advocate for the unbridled pleasures and misdemeanors, I obsessed quietly on "The Cat and the Fiddle," as curiosity tickled my flesh. I was obsessed with the silhouette-like movement behind curtains of the homes as I passed.  
 
As I walked, I turned into a child and the neighborhood became the one I grew up in. The night was quiet and cold. I walked toward where I thought my home would be.  
The silence was broken by a distant sound of laughter and clinking like that of porcelain plates. I followed the sound and my curiosity led me through a front door that stood ajar.
 
I remembered the poem I’d read earlier in a small chapbook by a writer, Adagio.  
I smelled roofing tar scented debauchery  
godless fragrance of innuendos  
warming pearls in nakedness    
as fingers shadow falling snow  
of memories and innuendos  
melting obscenities  
 
A dish and a spoon thumped together in ecstatic joy. As the spoon struck the rims of the bowl, they both spun and twirled, slinging warm oatmeal over my face. I licked my lips and tasted a saltiness but nothing more. Then I smelled smoke like something burning in the stove.  
 
The dish cried out, “There’ll be no porridge for the children this evening.”  
The spoon said, “No porridge for them?”  
 
And saying nothing further, the metal spoon smashed into the bowl in anger and it broke into a hundred shards that sprayed across the floor, spilling the oatmeal it held everywhere.  
 
Everything paused for a moment. The spoon looked at me and asked, “Where are your clothes, young lady?”  
 
I looked down and realized I was naked and covered with warm oatmeal.
“Here, let me clean you up,” the spoon said with a sly look. I felt the spoon sliding up and down my body as it began capturing the remains of oatmeal sticking to my skin. Each time the spoon filled with oatmeal it traveled to my mouth and placed it on my tongue where I only tasted its saltiness.  
 
I felt a shiver run through me, not from the cold but from the surreal intimacy of the spoon touching my mouth. The room around me began to warp, the walls bending and the ceiling stretching into the darkness. The laughter and clinking grew louder as more spoons appeared. I tried to move, to run away, but my feet were rooted to the spot as if the oatmeal had turned to glue, anchoring me to the floor.
 
Each of what seemed like a hundred spoons had the face of a past lover and smiled, oblivious to my growing panic. I wanted to scream, to call for help, but no sound escaped my lips. The room spun faster, the laughter turning to mockery and jeers. The shards of the broken dish began to levitate, swirling around me like a cyclone of porcelain knives.
 
The spoons now began to probe crevasses of my body, even my ears. They each carried a charge of static electricity that ticked and stimulated me. Spoons pressed deliberately as if guided by the hands of past lovers. They entered me and brought a sudden uncontrollable orgasm. It was surreal to feel sexual pleasure mixed with such panic and fear. I knew I was about to die.  
 
In a desperate attempt to escape the madness, I closed my eyes tight, willing myself to wake up. The room seemed to pulse with my heartbeat, each throb echoing in the void. I could feel the sweat beading on my forehead, the heat of my body in stark contrast to the cold oatmeal that still clung to me.
 
Suddenly, the room fell silent. The spinning stopped. I hesitated, afraid to open my eyes. The spoons were gone, and I felt a weightlessness as if I were floating. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes to find myself in my own bed, the sheets twisted around me, clinging to my skin, soaked with sweat and drops of oatmeal.