I receive an invitation from Tim Burton to join him in his world in his head. The invitation is delivered by his partner, Helena Bonham Carter. She and I take off on a fast and furious, wild and winding broom stick ride from my house to Tim’s home inside of his mind.
The ambiance within Tim’s world is dark and enshadowed, deep greens and rich golds. Sally and Emily from The Nightmare before Christmas and Corpse Bride are waiting with Tim for me. I am initiated into his Harem of Rag Dolls as its resident faerie foundling.
After being given unkempt and disheveled hair, eyes encircled with dark shadows and my very own gothique rag doll dress, we are set to work in Tim’s garden of wonders and delights, where the magick of his masterpieces in film are created everyday. The tattoo of my faerie wings lifts off my back to spread in all of its three-dimensional glory, the deep green of the tattoo complementing the garden, the neutral tones of my outfit and the hues of the lush colours in which the walls of Tim’s world are lavished. Thus I depart from The Dreaming …
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Tim’s World
The Grendels
I am in The Dreaming. I am being chased by the Grendel. I am scared. I run into a building filled with all of my friends from Facebook. I run into the crowd of them, hoping to hide myself, hoping that they will help me. A girl by the name of Janelle, also known as Olive Oil is there. She is our Grill Sergeant Ma’am Yes Ma’am. She orders us to stand in straight rows of an equal number, one behind the other, to form a perfect square of people. I am in the second row, left of centre.
The Grendel comes. He creeps into the building in search of me. Everyone reacts with disgust and scorn, asking “What the fuck is that?” The Grendel looks around. The moment his eyes meet mine a chilling and bloodcurdling scream in ripped from my throat from sheer panic and horror. He has found me! Grill Sergeant Ma’am Yes Ma’am Olive Oil demands that we all remain calm in the face of the monstrous.
Slowly the window behind Olive Oil opens, revealing a giant Grendel on the other side, arms splayed wide on either side of the window, leaning over and inside the frame slowly and hideously, menacing and intent. The giant Grendel completely dwarfs the first Grendel making a mockery of the fear I’ve felt thus far for the miniature Grendel.
Olive Oil remains calm but swiftly directs us to leave the building and premises immediately. Everyone hurries to the black SUV parked outside. I am in the front passenger seat next to a man named Garvey, and my friend Ramona is sitting in the centre of the seat behind, her small frame and face squeezed between the two front seats as she chatters incessantly while trying to “see” what going on up front.
I realize much to my abject dismay that I forgot my laptop inside the building. I must retrieve it and so, with a heart full of fear, I reenter the building. I am very afraid, however, the Grendels are nowhere in sight, so I grab my laptop bag and make a mad rush for the door and to the car.
I am now in the jeep and we are driving away from the building and down a metal plank road twisting and coasting from one side to the other like a rollercoaster, and interrupted intermittently by links where the metal planks making the road meet.
We drive on this rollercoaster road for a while, following the map on the GPS system of the jeep, trying to escape the strange, dusky, autumnal country in which we are trapped with the Grendels. When we have driven for some time, I realize that the road on which we are driving is actually a car racing course from the video game Mario Kart. However it is a course that the Grendels have devised for the purpose of capturing us.
We drive faster and faster to reach the end of the course, knowing that there will be more courses to come before we can reach home. We must win the Grand Prix cup in order to defeat the Grendels and depart from The Dreaming …
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Immortal Sisters
I am in a house I do not know outside of The Dreaming. I live there with my anime father and sister. We run around and play all day. We are happy.
Suddenly my piano tutor and her husband are there. They live in a room in our house. I visit them, and while I’m there my piano tutor leaves. When she returns she expects to find a family friend there. She expects to find me gone.
After she leaves, when she is gone, I ask to use the bathroom. The bathroom is painted peach, and there is a billowing golden bedspread surrounding the toilet bowl.
When she returns I am sitting on the bed with the billowing bedspread of gold now on it. She is angry to find that her friend has not come. She is angry to find that I am still there and have not yet left.
She says she expected me to be gone by the time she returned, and then asks me accusingly what have I been doing with her husband, who all this time has been wandering around in the background of the house in swimming briefs, humming to himself. I say nothing and The Dreaming shifts …
I am now in the bathroom at my workplace, which looks like the bathroom in my piano tutor’s room. I am still in the same house, and this is another room therein. I am masturbating to thoughts of my piano tutor’s husband [ew…] and I miss tuning in for the news at 5 and 6. One of my bosses is very disappointed in my performance and professionalism when she catches me in the act of pleasuring myself. She accuses me of having no passion for my job. The Dreaming shift …
My anime father and sister are sitting on a bed in our house. I walk by the room in the corridor in time to see him lower his face to kiss her on the forehead. At the very last moment she raises her face, and the kiss falls on her lips. I am angry and jealous, hurt and sickened and I walk away.
We find out that we have another older sister. She has been kidnapped by a Chinese mafia prince. We load our water-guns and break down the wall to out the fire and rescue her. We fight the fire, running forwards and backwards with our buckets of water and super-soakers trying to put it out. It is an intense operation. I don’t know what caused the fire only that it is connected to the Chinese mafia prince and my older sister’s kidnapping and so we must put it out in order to get her back.
My friend Georgi-Ann is there. She is simply standing still. Her feet are bare, and there are worms, caterpillars and centipedes crawling all around them. I tell her to move before she gets stung, we all do, but she does not move.
Suddenly the Chinese mafia prince appears on a park bench at the top of the hill, near the fire we have been trying to extinguish. I go to him and offer him a secret cheque of 2 000 000 US dollars if he will promise to return my sister, if he can convince me within three months time that he is no longer in love with her, but in love with me. Our sister is returned to us.
We are now again at the house. I am no longer alternating between being an anime girl and a real life one. Now I am a real life one, and my real life father and my step mother are there, and so is my real life mother. There is a little girl crawling all over me like a monkey. She looks just like me. She has my face. She is the daughter of my real life parents. But my father refuses to acknowledge her and walks away to a room in a house he shares with my step mother. My real life mother is sad. The little girl is oblivious, happy, crawling all over me like a monkey. And I am wondering if this little girl is me, and if that is how it truly was. The dream ends …
Friday, April 18, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Past
I am on a farm, on a factory compound. It is filled with cow-milking equipment. Now I am sitting on a flight of steps outside of a building which is outside of my vision. It reminds me of the steps of the music room of my old secondary school. A boy named Fred and his friends are there with me, surrounding me. Some sit, some stand. He is standing. They are talking. Fred and I look at each other on occasion. The dream shifts …
My guy Winter and I, a man named Rivenis and his underage girlfriend, are standing beneath a lamp post in the dark of night. The place reminds me of the Home Economics Rooms at my old secondary school, but because the lighting is so dim, it is difficult to be certain. The little girl is doing strip tease of Rivenis. I am making a valiant effort not to show my disgust at the disturbing and grotesque reality of a 26 yr old man taking advantage of an impressionable 17 year old girl in an inglorious attempt to ignore his own age, and focus on Winter instead. The dream shifts …
I am in a dusky, pinkish-brown room with a boy named Remi, who wants to borrow my laptop. Inside the laptop is a vast, celestial universe and he keeps “resting” his blue, plastic cups inside of the laptop, where they are set afloat into the deep. I tell him to stop, that Winter is going to get angry, because he wants to use the laptop after him. I try my best to get him to stop because I can sense Winter outside the building becoming frustrated. The dream shifts …
I am in a part of the compound that looks like … The Compound, also known as the Advocate. The cubicles are side by side in a horizontal line across the room, and two girls named Camille and Bea are sitting to my left. We are taking a test, but there are no instructions on my paper. I don’t know how to proceed.
We take a break from the exam for lunch, and suddenly I am in the lunch line in the cafeteria of my old secondary school, and my best friend at the time, a girl named Tranel Ifill is there. She goes skipping away to the past of my old secondary school and all the inhabitants therein, and I walk over to Camille and Bea who are also taking a lunch break from the exam. I ask them about the first question on the exam, the one without any instructions. They say something vague about it concerning a song, in a clipped, brusque way that tells me they don’t want to talk about it, so I leave them alone.
We have now returned to the exam room, and I realize that the first question is indeed the lyrics of a song sung by the artist Monica. I interpret it and analyse it as best as I can and submit my test papers. The dream ends …
Monday, April 14, 2008
Of Caterpillars and of Lions
I am at the old house. Small red and black caterpillars with red and black spikes protruding from their soft, spongy, bodies, looking for all The Dreaming like gothic wristbands, are everywhere, in the furniture, the curtains, the carpets and the clothes. The texture of their bodies, smooth and fuzzy like the leaves of ferns, contrasts with the glint and gleam of the metallic spikes stemming from their backs. They disgust and disturb me, causing my skin to crawl.
Suddenly Rafiki, the shaman baboon from the movie The Lion King appears in my dream. I myself am no longer human, but am Simba and Nala emerges from The Dreaming as well. We are now in the blue bathroom of the old house, and I reject Rafiki’s advice, and stubbornly refusing to explain the way I feel to Nala. Now we are climbing the cliff face from which Mufasa fell, and when I reach the top I am now Nala. There is a tree to the right of me and Rafiki joins me, squatting on a rock to my left of me. I lay on my back as I wait for Simba’s mane to appear over the top of the edge of the cliff like the sun. It does, and thus I depart from The Dreaming.
The Wizard and The Water Boy
I am a little girl. I am standing on smooth stones by the sea. The Wizard is there. He is teaching me water magick. I cast my eyes upon the ocean and with a wave of his wand I understand.
Now I am beneath the surface. Now I am under the undulating atmosphere of the waves. The water is cool. It suspends me as I sink further into its depths.
Now there is a child. A little boy. He is not like me. His skin is a pale, silvery blue, like the scale of a fish. His ears are long and pointed, extending beyond his head like those of a rabbit. He is a mer-child. A water boy. An undine.
He wants me to come to him. He wants me to play. But if I stay, I’ll drown. I turn from him and try to swim back to shore. But his will oppresses me, I can feel his childish desire drawing me back into the deep. He is not trying to harm me. He just wants me to stay. He is curled into a fetal position, distressed that I want to leave.
I break the surface of the water. I break free of his will. I clamber onto the smooth stones by the wizard’s feet. I breathe deeply the fresh air. I am tired and saddened. We all regard each other from our own realities. The wizard in his wisdom knows this is for the best. We play together within our minds for we can Never be … The Dreaming shifts.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Judgment
I am at Uwi, on a dusky, tween time even, where night is falling, and The Dreaming abounds. A girl named Ramona is here. It is during the time of exams and of tests. At the top of the clock tower, which now has an archway and pillars in the middle of it, whereas it is just a simple tower in the world of real, pacing from one pillar to the other within the arched alcove is the cousin of a boy named Enricco, and though it is impossible in the world of real, I drive my car up the tower’s spiralling staircase and run the cousin over, his body flung wide and hurtled from the tall tower to land limp, lifeless and bloodied on the road far below.
Ramona sees. Everyone does. I am now before a tribunal. Strangers bear witness to my misdeed. A few wonder why I did it. I feel no remorse, no regret until Enricco takes the stand. He speaks of his cousin, the friendship, the brotherhood and the familial bond they shared growing up, and then, just before I took his life. Everyone stands in judgment of me. I stand in judgment of myself. Now Enricco is asking me what I have to say for myself. Now I take pause to find my true feelings and I say ‘I am sorry’. The tribunal is dismissed. Enricco, grieved and distraught does not demand punishment, but everyone distances themselves from me out of respect for him.
I am left alone to think about what I have done. The Dreaming shifts ...
Monday, April 7, 2008
Cat in a Cabinet (from fur-child to spirit guide)
I am in The Dreaming, when at the bottom of a flowering bush appears a small kitten. I reach tentatively down for him, wary that he might scratch or bite me out of fear, and though he is hesitant and afraid at first, he in time begins to trust that I will do him no harm, and relaxes into my hand, becoming comfortable, playful and affectionate.
Suddenly one of my recently passed fur-children, a cat called Vanna, appears in a cabinet floating in the air, where he is watching games of cricket and football on a field spread before him, before falling to sleep. After some while passes, he wakes up and leaps down from the floating cabinet and walks over to me, shifting the dream from the field to my room.
I am now in my room, but still in The Dreaming, and I am talking to Vanna online. He types that he is outside my door, waiting patiently to be let in … and he brought crickets with him. Whether they are alive or dead, friends or food I am not certain, but I get up from before the computer and I walk over to the door to let him in, and in he strolls, graceful and cutesy with a mouth full of crickets. I guess they were food after all. Thus The Dreaming ends …
(To Vanna: Thank you for the visit Love, it is nice to know that even from Other-where, you are making sure that I am well-fed. I love you too).
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Hunted
I am just beyond the border of the backyard of a very old house. Beyond the border of the backyard is land planted with very old trees. In and around these trees are dark elves, there to kill me. They blend in with the trees, their skin, hair and clothing, a prism of gold, tan, olive and dark brown hues. They are there to kill me. One of them is not like the others. Her hair is obsidian, her eyes are obsidian. Her soul is obsidian. The mischievous smile stretching her mouth from ear to ear, is filled with malice, the glint of the black stone that is her heart. She tells me she is the creation of an artist I knew a long time ago, in a very old life. I walk past the dark elves into the house. They are there to kill me.
I am inside the house right now. There is hustle and bustle as preparations for nightfall, the time of mischief and murder, are made. Even my father is there for protection, and he is never there. My mother stands at the back door, fear wrapping its gnarled, gaunt claw around her mind and heart, suffocating her with its predatory menace, as she beholds the dark elves in waiting, some high within the trees, others crowding just beyond the border of the backyard, waiting to kill her daughter. She asks me to leave and go to a new house faraway, but I won't because I can't, because I am afraid to be without their protection, because I know the darkness would follow, because too, I am bound to the curse of that place.
In the window of the back bedroom, the bedroom closest to the back yard, is a mammoth demon elf, blue of skin, red of eye, frightening. His voice is the rumble and roar of thunder, it echoes and reverberates like a legion of lost and suffering souls, like a multitude of minions, tortured, tormented and damned. Every time I enter that room I feel trapped, seized, his face looming and stormy, imminent and terrible, rushing in upon me, wanting to devour me whole. My heart is filled with terror.
Suddenly a bunny made of clouds makes its way from within the throng of dark elves, around the back of the house to its far side. I sense something is secreted away within it, and yet its stealthy movements suggest that it is there to steal something from me instead. The bunny made of cloud climbs through a window on the far side of the house, makes its way through the heart of that building and leaves through the back door to rejoin the drove of dark elves just beyond the border of the backyard. There he offers them his secret, and two of them help to remove from his mouth what was hidden deep within his belly, a blue and white candy cane covered in blood.
The dream is lucid. There is a face beyond the window. The curtain takes the form of a spectral wraith. Hands made of darkness suddenly grab hold of mine as I try to close the window shut. Suddenly a giant sentient sunflower entity, holding itself very humanoid - the flower its head, the leaves its arms, the stem its body and the roots in a shallow pot of earthe its feet - is in my room. It has a benign presence. Then a giant sentient hawk entity appears in its place, its flapping wings, sharp beak and claws, and glinting, fiery eyes aggressive and its presence is malevolent. There is always, always, always a presence. Thus the dream ends and I awaken ...
Tim Burton and the Planet-Trekkers
Tim Burton, a group of explorers and I are in outer space on a fragment of ice, in a cluster of fragments, that were once a planet made of ice. An unknown phenomenon had caused the planet to shatter and all that remains of the planet now is the cluster of ice fragments.
We are trekking across the fragments, exploring each of them, leaping from one to the other when we are finished, using our rocky mountain climbing equipment, some sharp, huge hooks for driving into the ice tied to knotted ropes for our hands to grip and to anchor ourselves as the fragments are slippery. If we fell we would be lost forever, floating until death divided our souls from our bodies in the infinite void of space.
Suddenly a black wind in the form of a Frisbee or a discus, appears at the far end of the cluster, and I know instinctively that this discus was the cause of the planet’s untimely demise … the why of its shattered form, and it rushes at us. Tim, the explorers and I dig our hooks into the ice of the fragment on which we stand, our hands gripping tightly the rope, just above the knot, hoping that it will stop the impact from causing our hands to slip free of the rope, as we waited for the impact to come.
It does. On the rope I am the second from the end, with Tim and the other explorers save one gripping onto the rope above me. When the discus crashes into the ice fragment, the impact rips the hook from the ice, and sends hook, rope and people hurtling across and into the deep. I am lucky and am flung onto an adjacent fragment not far from the one we were on. Tim and the explorers however are swept away.
I keep waiting for a sign of them in the dark, and for the discus to reappear and finish me off as well. I HATE being alone in the abyss waiting for the end. But the discus does not return, and soon I decide to search for the others, as the only other option is to stay there by myself and wait to die alone. Soon I come to a stretch of land, made completely of ice, and there recovering from their involuntary flight is Tim and the team. We are very grateful that all are alright. They had been worried about me as I was the only one separated from the group.
We begin to travel across the vast expanse of ice, the memory of the black wind discus far behind us, and soon we come to the end of that land and the beginning of a river. We leap onto a piece of ice and down that river we flow-ted. It is a fast and furious white water journey on our ice boat that ends abruptly at a short waterfall which takes us into a partially submerged room. This room is very reminiscent of the Wizard’s study in one of my previous dreams … “it is an underground hovel, cluttered with books and artefacts and objects, most of which are foreign to me and I know nothing about.”
The other explorers are either too weary or too wary to care much about room around us, filled with artefacts and objects and knee-high water pouring steadily through the open wall from the waterfall and the river into the room that never rises passed the knee. But me and Tim are delighted at the paraphernalia esoteria surrounding us and start exploring it all at once. This is when she appears, the old witch to whom the hovel belongs. She is kindly and like the wizard begins to explain the objects and artefacts all around us. We move over to a couch as she does this and sit down, unmindful of the water reaching to our knees. Indeed we do not even feel the cold of it, and thus the dream ends.
Ed
There is a young man sitting on my bed. He has wild, softly spiked hair. His skin is pale, and he is dressed in a tight, black leather ensemble. His face reminds me of Edward Scissorhands’, it is drawn, sad and ghostly; and so we shall call him Ed.
He is sitting on my bed with a group of women. They are fawning all over him like nymphs over a Greek god. He graces them with the infrequent kiss but seems disinterested in their presence for the most part.
The group of women leaves, and I enter my room with a book on esoteria. Ironically, my room is the only room in which it is safe to read these books, and it is also his den. To my surprise, Ed draws out his own book on similar subjects from somewhere and proceeds to read. I sit on the floor beneath the window [my altar is not there] and begin to read as well. He lounges across my bed reading his book and occasionally glancing over its rim at me.
A boy named Remi enters my room. He does not like that Ed has taken up residence there, says as much, and leaves. I feel guilt but there is nothing I can do. This isn’t my room so much as it is Ed’s lair, and only somewhere I go to read.
Eventually me and Ed get close. I am fond of him as I am of Richard, the brother of the boy named Remi and attracted to him as I am to Kaze; not romantically or physically, but spiritually. Soon we read side by side, heads touching like conjoined twins, souls touching like kindred spirits.
One day he dismisses his group of women, so that only we two are inside my room, his den … our reading place. One day he sets his book aside, turns to me on his bended knees and draws me into a deep, tender kiss, where he gently touches the side of my face as if in reverence, as I sit on the floor before him. My book slides from my hand as I kiss him back. He lifts me into the air and pushes me softly back into my inner wardrobe wall, deepening the kiss. He has obviously been thinking about this for a while, but I am caught completely by surprise.
Ed: Part 2
Me, Ed and another person I believe are no longer in Barbados, are not inside of me, but are rather in Northern Europe somewhere, Belgium or Russian. At first there is a tween place between where we are and my room from the dream before, but soon it is closed and we are left alone in this other dream.
In this dream we are in the country side, walking down a country lane, with the woods lining either side of the avenue. There are witches in the trees. They are dressed like bohemians, young and fair, with reflective eyes and flowing hair. They swoop down from the trees like deadly angels, and before we know what has happened, before we can even run, our companion, Ed’s and mine, has been slain. Now she is a limp doll on the ground, dressed like a bohemian, young and fair, with reflective eyes and flowing hair.
Me and Ed run down the lane, and the witches glide after us in the tree tops. They try to separate us by a castle wall, projecting from the face of a cliff. Ed attempts to sacrifice himself for me that I might escape, but I refuse to leave without him, and so we both escape their trap and run again.
Now we are running through open country side interrupted by giant boulders. I can see us running from the eyes of the witches. I can feel their intent.
We run pass the bouldered fields, downhill towards one of those train station scenes you find on dated antique china or period porcelain tea sets. Across the tracks I can see the entire world spread out before us, dull brown and grey, undefined, and we are still running onward as I awaken.
Wizard
I am a youth travelling across a magickal land. My father has sent me to seek a wizard. I have heard rumours that this wizard is evil, and I consider not going to find him, I consider not following my destiny.
When I arrive at his abode, I discover it is an underground hovel, cluttered with books and artefacts and objects, most of which are foreign to me and I know nothing about. I explore for a moment, and then I go to bed or rather I pretend to go to sleep, for my intuition tells me the wizard is soon to return.
When he does, I am afraid. The rumours spring to life in my head and I wish I had run away. But then I realize that beneath his gruff exterior, the wizard is warm and wise, a Santa Clause and the White Wizard from Lord of the Rings hybrid.
I rise from the cot I was laying on, and he begins to explain to me some of the strange, unfamiliar objects cluttering his home. I am now his apprentice, and afterwards he sends me out to work. And so I work and learn for years to come.
Light
There is a hierarchy of planets in a vertical line. The earth and sun are there. They seem to be interchanging. For in one moment the sun is at the top of the hierarchy, in another it is third from the beginning, with some other planet at the top, and the earth somewhere else still. Suddenly the light of the sun when it is at the top of the line flickers and disappears.
I run, leaping, flying, down the line of planets as if I were on a road, or as if they were rocks in a pond, though I am vertically airborne and in the deep night sky of space. When I reach the bottom of the line, I find myself in this place, similar to my childhood home, and possibly some other place I have been before in my past. I am surrounded by women I know of and am acquainted with at The University of the West Indies, like Lisa, all of whom are gushing about the wonderful feeling of being engaged. I find myself in my childhood bedroom, and it is filled with gifts and cakes like a mass bridal shower, and I am tempted to taste the icing on a rose pink cake that belongs to Carolyn, a girl I know of and was acquainted with at UWI, who is also Lisa's friend, but I don’t.
The scene splits and changes and I am now in an unfamiliar garage and before me is an older woman, who is the reason for my flight from space. She reminds me of the mother of a boy named Enricco, but I don't believe that it is her exactly. She gives me a wind chime lantern to hang inside the ousted sun, and I leap and jump and soar back up the vertical line of planets until I reach the sun, and as I fly by I plunge the wind chime lantern into the darkened matter of its form, and as I pass it flares once more to bright, glorious life to light the earth and the line, to return to the top of the hierarchy of planets where it belongs.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Faerytale Cursed
(I found this picture when I was surfing the internet for art, and it instantly reminded me of the following dream.)
There is a girl. A young lady or princess, goddess or maiden, I cannot be sure. She stands on the edge of a deep, green, still body of water. She peers within its depth until she discerns a motion beneath.
Suddenly she is in the water, moving through its deep green, feeling the currents and ripples pulling her back to the safety of the shore. Before her a small mer-goblin is holding her hand and pulling her deeper still. She is not afraid, for she knows this creature. He is her friend. And with him only could she survive under the water, could she breathe beneath the weight of its body.
After they swim and see the sights beneath the lake, they return to the edge of its shore, and laying there, they communicate as only they can do … laying on their sides, face to face, staring into each other's eyes, their bodies a breath away from touch. I can feel the creature is in love with her, in lust with her, and wants for nothing more than to keep her with him, within his pond, forever, to be with her always, to create with her beings that are of them both.
But for her, a princess or a goddess or a maiden, I can’t be sure, he is a mer-goblin, not a man, and is her friend, and can be no more.
The creature’s long, webbed green hand splits into thin, tiny wires, as many as the locks of a Rasta, but fine, and with these he runs his touch down her arm, a delicate and weird blend of pleasure and discomfort. After this she pulls away from him and runs up the marble steps away from the pond and into the castle ruins from which they lead. They are the same ruins from my previous dream, except now the rich, lush, wild whimsical flowering foliage is gone, and the inside is lit with torches, casting the yellow stained stone walls into a dusky, pinkish brown, dim and shadowy still.
But the creature is full of heartache and hatred, and it pursues her inside the interior of the castle. Trapping her on the floor, he savagely rapes her with all of his love, all of his hurt. She begs him to stop, but he cannot for she must feel as he feels, she must feel the pain caused by one you love that she caused to one who loves her.
When it is finished, he draws away in shame, but does not leave, and watches her as if she might still have need of him somehow.
Then a stranger comes into their midst, and without thinking the girl, lying broken on the floor, still mourning the loss of her innocence, grabs the spiny, bony arm of the mer-goblin and drags him behind the nearest pillar. He is still her friend, though the feel of his hand in hers burns her, and the thought of him standing a breath away from touching her once again, makes her skin crawl and her flesh scream. Sensing this, the creature feels a lance of pain and guilt, as they both watch the intruder’s approach.
It is a man. Immediate the mer-goblin is filled with outrage and jealousy because it knows the man is here for her, that the man, and not him, is what she truly wants. The mer-goblin runs towards the pond, plunges in, and disappears into the deep.
I am the man, as I am all of the characters. I love the girl at once, and she, I, and I listen in fury as she tells me what her “friend” has done to her. I want to kill him, but she would not let me, but instead ask that I take her away from this castle, this place.
As I am about to, the scene changes subtly, and there on a hillside behind the ruined castle, is my old primary school, and I know this signals the dream’s near end, for it is a pathway back to mere sleep, back to waking, back to the world of mundane.
Suddenly, I am separated from her. There is another man. Someone neither of us knows. He rides a big, black, bull, and he charges me. I leap onto the second story floor of the school, but his bull takes the stairs and though there are obstacles all along his way - big, wired cages - he and his large animal still manage to make it to the gate on the second story, charging through all the way.
I leap down from the wall and run past my old cafeteria and all my old classes, knowing that as soon as he makes it past the wired cages along the passage I just left, he would catch me and I would be his.
I make it to the main door, hearing the galloping hooves on the cement floor behind me. As soon as I get outside, I leap into my car, and know that while I play all the parts, I am now myself, as I am in the world of dreamless. As soon as they reach the car, I start it up, pull out and roll, driving away as fast as I can. Then being myself in the dreaming, the dreaming ends, and I awaken.
(A picture I found on another internet art-raid that is very reminiscent of the mer-goblin in this dream.)
