Baby belt

I am standing out in wintry field with a group of people who are watching this long conveyor belt that runs alongside a fence. It's carrying big clumps of snow in a continuous motion, and dumping the snow into a rusted metal bin where it gets ground up by rusted metal teeth.

In a break in the snow, along comes a group of small babies. Human ones, just sitting there on the belt, bundled up in their pastel-colored winter garb. I watch the babies inch toward the big metal mouth and it doesn't occur to me that what is going to happen is bad. One of the babies falls into the crush of metal teeth but he's sort of bounced about on top of the gears, bruised up and thwacked about, but not obliterated like you'd think.

I instantly start yelling in my head, the scolding of a guilty mind: "Why didn't I DO something?!"

The baby who took the fall is taken out of the metal bin and placed on the ground, or maybe inside on some carpet, and he's disoriented and can't move around or stand up without falling in ways that contort his tiny frame. It's horrifying to watch.

I wake up to the sound of my own son over my bed, demanding water for the third time that night.