Paperclips

​I drifted off into a deep sleep and into the land of dreams. 

​In my dream I was sleeping on my back and woke up staring at the ceiling. I looked over to my digital clock. It was 3:15 a.m. I lay there for a couple of minutes trying to catch my breath and then swung my legs over and sat on the edge of the bed. Looking around my room caused me great distress for some reason, so I stood up and turned on the light. 

Everything in my room appeared to be in order even though I felt that something was missing. My desk seemed to be largely in order but someone had recently been though all of the drawers. I tried to remember if I had needed anything from my desk the day before and there was nothing I could recall. There was only one possible reason for my disheveled desk and that was if someone had broken into my apartment as I was sleeping. This had happened once before but I had caught the crook in the act and he went running out the door. 

I continued to look at the desk and muttered a few words to myself. That's when I realized that I had a paperclip under my tongue. Why was there a paperclip under my tongue? The was no conceivable reason why it should have been there. I looked back to my desk in horror and begun to examine the paperclips in great detail. They had been spilled onto the floor so I picked them up and poured them back into the container. It seemed that some were missing but I couldn't be sure as to how many. I then coughed slightly and noticed the taste of blood in my mouth. The panic started to set in. 

It was at this point I started to believe firmly in my mind that I had eaten some of the paperclips during the night. I wondered what could happen if I did swallow several of them. Would they tear up my stomach causing me to bleed to death? Or would they get trapped in my intestines blocking the flow of food and waste? The end result being me getting poisoned to death. I guess the best case scenario would be a painful exit from my rectum. But what if the paperclips just stayed in my stomach and over time they began to rust and my stomach got gangrene and I died from that? Was it even possible to get gangrene in the stomach? I wondered about all of these possibilities.

I stayed up the rest of the night going over every possible what if scenario. Soon the sun had come up and I made the decision to go see a doctor. 

I arrived at the clinic and told the receptionist that I had a stomach ache. When I finally got in to see the doctor I told him that I thought I had gotten up in the middle of the night and believed I had possibly eaten a handful of paperclips. I asked him what he recommended. 

He recommended a psychologist.

And then I woke up...

And looked over at the paperclips on my desk to see if any were missing.