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Gately, the wraith, and the figurants (iv)

quote

Gately’s unpleasant dreams definitely don’t normally include specific gum-color and intense physical discomfort and invasions of lexical terms he doesn’t know from shinola.

Context

The morning-after audit. Gately, trying to decide whether the wraith is a dream, an epiphanyish visitation, or the Sergeant at Arms softening him up, lists the evidence — and "invasions of lexical terms" sits right between gum-color and physical pain as a category of the impossible. The vocabulary itself is what convinces him something external is going on.

In anthology