Jack Scoresby

My childhood friends from the lake and I are driving through the rural Oklahoma countryside in a black four-door sedan. The road we’re on runs through private land, which has us a little concerned. The anonymous landowner is cantankerous, and the road passes near the front of their house. What’s more, they keep hyenas. We encounter a pair on the road as we drive, and they run up and over the hood and windshield, cackling in harmony with the sound of the engine. Soon after that we approach the clan’s matriarch. She’s enormous, easily three times the size of the others, her fur black and mangey, her eyes yellow. She stares us down as we pass. She doesn’t move. She smiles and saliva drips from her yellow teeth.

We pass the house. If anyone is home, there’s no sign of them. An empty red chair is on the porch. On we go past the property’s gates that are worryingly open. We arrive at our destination: large and intricate aqueducts made of brownish-yellow bricks. We’re given a tour by uniformed sheriff’s deputies. Pristine and cool water cascades over the steps. The deputies explain that the water isn’t always this way, as every day at 4pm a local silt pond is flushed, and soon enough the water becomes muddied and foul-smelling.

The tour is over. We enter a concrete structure and descend down terrifyingly constructed staircases, sometimes falling for some 40-50 feet and only slowed by gripping tightly to the corners of the cement walls. We return to the car. We drive back. The hyenas are chasing a man. We think he can’t possibly maintain the speed to outpace them, but he does, at least for as long as we can see him. We don’t stop.

We’re at a house now. Playing video games. A golden retriever is with us. Her name is Cali. She was my mother’s dog, but she died many years before this dream. She’s anxious, because there’s a lot of people but none of them are paying attention to her, and so she wants me to take her for a car ride.

We get in the car and I drive farther than I planned. The hills are gorgeous, reddish-brown soil and emerald green grass bathed in golden sunlight. At the peaks of them you can see for miles, as if we’re in the center of a giant bowl gently curving up around us. I drive for such a long time and am so engrossed in the scenery that I run out of gas. In the yard of a nearby farmhouse is worse-for-wear 1985 Ford Crown Victoria. I help myself into it and try to make it back home, but the engine isn’t strong enough to make it up the hills.

The hyenas are back. Cali is barking. She’s very sweet to try and protect me, but these are hyenas, and one of them is as big as the car we’re in. She’s just a golden retriever. I’m holding her by the scruff of her neck, worried she’ll jump out of the car and be torn to shreds.

@thisawkwardmachine photographed by me. 05/03/2026

No porn blogs, please.

This is the last I'll be posting of the photos I took from my most recent time spent with one of my favorite humans.

@thisawkwardmachine photographed by me. 05/03/2026

@thisawkwardmachine and me, photographed by me. 05/03/2026

@thisawkwardmachine and me, photographed by me. 05/03/2026

@thisawkwardmachine and me, photographed by me. 05/03/2026

@thisawkwardmachine and me, photographed by me. 05/03/2026

@thisawkwardmachine and me, photographed by me. 05/03/2026

@thisawkwardmachine photographed by me. 05/03/2026

@thisawkwardmachine photographed by me. 05/03/2026

@thisawkwardmachine photographed by me. 05/03/2026

@thisawkwardmachine photographed by me. 05/03/2026

@thisawkwardmachine and me, photographed by me. 05/03/2026