The Sound

I had a dream a few weeks ago. I was at a place I knew to be the Jerusalem Study Abroad Student Center. I was on vacation and I could hear a slightly irritating sound in the center. We went outside and the sound became louder and more irritating. I looked around and found the noise: it was snowing (not usual Jerusalem weather) and people were crunching around in the ice. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. The racket continued as we drove around looking at a few nearby sights.
We returned to the school and a few girls took me into the cafeteria. The noise here was the same. They explained to me that because of current food markets, all their food had to be brought with them. This involved planning menus in advance. They further explained that most mornings they have toast with cinnamon but unfortunately the cooks here often burn the toast. That sound! It was the same sound but now in the form of people scraping off their top layer of bread. Scrape! Scrape! Scrape! I looked around the cafeteria and saw the students, hunched over their trays, tuning up their breakfast, and producing horrible music.
This was the last part of my dream that I remembered before waking up. I woke up with the dream in my mind and thinking it to be odd. Until…that sound! I was awake in my dark bedroom at three in the morning and that sound scraped and crunched into my dozy confused mind. I sat a minute and listened for the sound….it was coming from the wall my bed rests against that is directly behind my head. Gophers! My basement bedroom was hearing the nocturnal burrowing of gophers in our garden! They were destroying our garden and raising havoc in my dreams!
I pushed my covers to the side and hazily stood up. I faced the wall and knocked at the epicenter. The sound of crunching snow continued in my room. I knocked louder. Silence. Four seconds later the sound of a person scraping burnt toast took control of my dark living quarters. I knocked again, with real intent, banging hard on the wall using both hands. Silence. I paused, smiled to myself, and fell back in bed. I was moving pillows around when the sound began again. I sighed, took the pillows by my head, and made them the bread of a face sandwich that muffled the sound of a gopher burrowing in my garden at three in the morning.