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The human sinus system is a scam. How the fuck can I feel like I'm breathing through a bong, literal audible bubbling noises coming out my nose, yet when I go to clear it, fucking dust in my tissue. I'm being cheated out of mucus I know with certainty I am producing.

I had a dream last night. I was a young girl, a princess in a poofy dress, exploring a crumbling house with my friend the mage, who was of similar age and size. The decrepit building was in an old mining town, and one of the last structures still standing. The town had been abandoned for centuries, but we were not alone. The house occupied a thin place between worlds. A prospector, long dead, returned to ransack his old haunt, and Death followed him- a skeletal wraith in a duster jacket and riding boots. All of them were searching. The mage sought a wand, the prospector a map, and Death his Book, which would bring about the End. I looked for nothing, but found a loaded revolver. The mage and I struggled to quiet ourselves as the raving prospector howled madly, tossing the rowhouse in his searching. Now he looked for us, convinced we had stolen from him. We slipped into the basement through a chute, and I spied in the corner an ancient bag of dynamite, sweating nitroglycerine, and upon a table, a brown leather-bound tome inlaid with an enormous glittering emerald. This the mage seized, stashing in her satchel. I stowed myself in the closet, urging the mage to do the same, when the door at the top of the stairs burst open to a volley of gunfire. The mage, wounded, lay gasping before me and in shock and rage I laid out the mad prospector with three shots. His crumpled form lay at the base of the stairs. All was still, all was quiet, save for the rattling gasps of my dying companion. Then the slow chiming of spurs from the basement door. Death walked in no hurry, down, down, down. He paused only momentarily by the prospector, nudging with the tip of his boot, before turning his sightless gaze to the mage, and the Book. I knew that if Death were to read from the tome, the consequences would be felt far beyond this dusty basement in a forgotten ghost town. Through the slats of the closet door, I aimed my gun at the ancient explosives. I knew that striking them would mean my end, but that it would mean others might live. I cocked the hammer, Death's head tilted toward the sound like a curious dog. I choked back tears and steadied my breathing.I fired, the room illuminated with painful, impossible brightness, and then I woke up.

Designing a cocktail menu for my wife's Edgar Allan Poe-themed birthday party. All four of them are named for famous works. I got to The Cask of Amontillado, and it occurs to me that it should be a mocktail. Because there never was any Amontillado...