Dear wigleaf,

My friend Alex just started law school. She tells me over the phone that everyone she meets is so guarded. They don't want to reveal anything. All they talk about is homework. So she tries asking interesting questions. Like, would you do that treatment where the fish eat the dead skin off your feet? Can animals commit murder, or is murder not real in the animal kingdom? Man, that's a tough one, everyone says in a really bent-up-about-it way.

It makes me crazy, Alex says. But then Alex asks this guy at a party if he's had any interesting dreams recently. Yeah, actually, he says.

It's a recurring one. In the dream he's swiping on Tinder. And this girl keeps coming up, this gorgeous girl with long brown hair, she's in the sun, bright-eyed. The final photo on her profile is her best. But there's something weird going on with where her arms are, happening in the bottom left corner. You can only see the tiniest piece of it, the guy says. A knot of crimson, a mouth open and inhuman. It's subtle, but it's clear, and once you notice, it's like seeing yards and yards down to the very bottom of a glacial lake. It knocks your socks off or the awake back into you. The most beautiful girl in Washington, DC is skinning a live rabbit.

-C. Landau