Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Of Serpents and Servants and Sally Dog Tales


There is a serpent. Its scales are vermillion and indigo. I can see it under the cellar of the new house. I can see it through the cracks in its walls. It is circling and spiralling, crawling and stalking the servant and I in the house that should be safe.

We run. We run from the house, down the driveway and into the street. Sally is trapped behind the gate. She is trapped for I cannot reach her. She is trapped for she cannot reach the road. The serpent crashes through the ceiling of the new house, rams through its roof, and as it hoists its feathers-shaped wing of white and blue and green geometric patterns towards the sky, I realise it is not a serpent, but a winged and serpentine dragon.

Now Sally hoists a wing to the sky as well, geometric patterns and hues of green, blue and white identical to the beast’s. I understand that this is happening because I do not wish her to be squashed or to be killed. This is my will exerted upon the fabric of the dream within which I now exist. She will be seen as kindred to the serpent, she will not be seen at all. Either way, she is safe. The servant and I run. We run down the road, with the dragon in pursuit.

We board a van in Speightstown, hoping to lose ourselves in the human horde. The van drives off, but no one else onboard seems to notice the beast flying frantically behind us, searching for the servant and her master. When they finally do notice however, no one is more surprised than I, that no panic or chaos ensues, but rather that all falls silent instead. We can feel the dragon eyes, feel it evaluating and analysing our energy signature, trying to seek us out in the throng.

We watch with baited breath, wondering if the dragon will rend and tear the bus from the rear. We watch with baited breath as it flies past us, onward, in its seeking to destroy. We watch with baited breathe acutely relieved that it did not capture either of our eyes. We watch as it makes the left and turns, rounding the corner by Rock Dundo, and disappearing around the bend.

The servant and I return to the house in search of a runic glyph in a deck of card hidden in the tween-where within the walls. This card will destroy the beast. But it is very clever our dragon, it is gloriously clever, and it doubles back upon us, trying to reach us before we can reach the card of death. The entity which gifted us with the card returns to reclaim it as well. It is the quintessence of desire, this race against time, this race against hope, this race without end.

Unlike the dream in which the racing itself does begin.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

The Island of Tortured Crops


The land is plagued by daemon. They torture the people of the rock. I run away on a maxi-taxi horse with no name. I run from the country to the old neighbourhood to escape the legions pursuing me.

I must enter a strange and unfamiliar house. I must lock each door as I enter each room. This will slow them down, but stop them it cannot.

I reach the last room. In that final room, behind the last door there is a man tied to the post of a tree. He is just a man, and only an example of any other man. I must torture him to free myself. I take up the blow torch and I cleave the skin from his flesh with one hundred percent accuracy. As if it were practiced. As if it were writ. As if I were already a daemon myself.

The flesh glows orange in the wake of the torch like the coals and embers and fires of hell. Blood pours from the open chasm of those wounds like a river from the urn of life.

I must tie the man even more in an attempt to bind and lock the door. The moment I finish, the moment I turn to the door, the one leading to my freedom, the daemon pursuing me enters the room.

He tells me to keep walking, to keep moving and to never look back, and this I do gladly. The moment I cross the threshold however, I feel the tide shift, and I hear him beckoning me to return.

I keep walking. I do not so much as hesitate. The humans, the tortured, are scattered across the land, are scattered across the country, are scattered across the world.

They move in mysterious ways, full of electricity and energy, full of intensity and spark, dashing and shivering like lightning, only to slow, only to stop, their movements becoming stiff as they strike myriad poses, like flies, like dead things, only to zoom away once again.

The grace and fluidity of life has been bled from their bodies, but the bodies remember the song. The daemon find this dance and drama amusing, for they are the farmers, and they have harvested well. We, the mere crops, have been reaped and have been yielding.

This is the end. The scene is dead, the story is dying and so is the small world on the stage. Here halts the dreaming. Beautiful nightmares to you all...

Thursday, October 1, 2009

King Kong and the Magick Flute of Humanness


I am being chased by a crazy and enfuried gargantuan ape. It is a typical dream of pursuit and so I skip to its end. He is holding me over a towering cliff of a green, fern-coated hill and just before he crushes me, drops me, I whip out a magick flute an play a weird and whimsical melody. Truly bizarre. Surely fae. He is at once transformed into a human, with giant, meaty, hefty, fleshy-coloured hands in which I am still flailing. Yet somehow, I manage to push him over the edge, while I remain at the peak of that precipice, looking down on him flailing as he grasps a knotty knoll, a colossal grassy root that can take his super-human weight.

Out of nowhere, leaps a strange lad who snatches the flute from my hands and trips over the edge of the cliff face with it. I looked below me to see him land in the King’s outstretched palm, and I know, sure as anything, what is about to take place. He will play my odd little melody backwards, and in reverse, and restore the meaty manimal beneath me to his original form and fury. I turn to run even as I hear the bizarre melody backward and the enraged roar of a man turning into a beast. The pursuit is on once again and I return from the dreaming to awaken. May the dreams of fae befall you on this night ...

Of small towns and first loves


A man goes back to visit his hometown, a small town, with his new, beautiful wife. She wants very much to be a part of his story, to belong to his home and his life and his world. But he ignores her desire, and one day she finds out why.

He used to play sports with all of his friends, most of whom were male and one of whom told her that one of them was not; his first love. She played sports with the guys, with him, on the team. And she was the reason why he couldn’t include his wife. His wife did not belong, was not a part of the memory of the past that he shared with his special and significant someone else. She was only the present. Only ever the future.

The moment she is told, she understands, she is envious, and she accepts. You loved her. You must still like her a lot, and she must be so beautiful, god damn her, I must like her too. She must be the kind of beautiful that makes you love a person instantly and for always. Something of this reminds me of a Mandy Moore movie.

Shortly, briefly after, there is a terrible accident. One around the pillars in which the scene is set, in which the dream is lain. I don’t know why she ... there is a terrible accident ... and a train runs off a bridge. Part of it lands up right on a perpendicular bridge and another part of it slips and slides and skids down between the two bridges, and swings back and forth like a clock’s pendulum in the curve of an upside down arc below.

The wife is on the bridge when it happens but that is not when she dies. She stands there, waiting, for the second carriage, the one that swings like the pendulum beneath the perpendicular bridge to swing free. It swings back and forth and it comes back again, and every time it does, the space between the two bridges widens even more.

So she stands there waiting for the space to widen and for the carriage to swing free, until that very last swing, where it doesn’t and she knows, all hope riding on that moment, that if it was to swing free that it would have had to have been then.

She knew that if it didn’t swing free then and there, it would be the end.

The first carriage of the train, the one standing upright, falls flat upon her and the perpendicular bridge, taking her, taking it all, along with the second carriage of the train swinging in the curve of the arc beneath, down below into the water, and even further below that. I feel the impact, I feel it crush, and tear, and break, and mangle her body, and I hear her release ...

The softest cry of pain as she sinks beneath the surface of the waters, and dies, and is gone for always.

The man watches from the other bridge, powerless to save her, and he asks himself why didn’t she move, what did she wait for, why did she allow the choice to be taken out of her control, why didn’t she move herself, for herself, why didn’t she move. They had a baby girl. A daughter who’s now motherless because her mother was too weak.

Too weak to move, too weak to make the decision for herself, too weak to make the choice. Too weak.

Now he runs over his memories of their short, brief time together in his hometown, the way he ignored her, the reason why. He flashes back and he feels as if life has come to an end, because his life has come to an end, now that hers has.

And he’s walking and he’s numb and he passes his first love. She is an exotic daylight dancer. He looks at the small triangles of her breasts, and at the varying sizes of the triangles of the breasts of all her fellow dancers. Topless and beautiful, they sit in an obento box, wearing brightly-coloured, floral-printed skirts; and he remembers his new, beautiful wife and what she said.

You loved her. You must still like her a lot, and she must be so beautiful, god damn her, I must like her too. She must be the kind of beautiful that makes you love a person instantly and for always. Something of this reminds me of a Mandy Moore movie. She is the reason why. She was the reason why.

He remembers her attempt to be included in his home, and in his life, and in his small town, hometown world, and he ignores the memory of her words the same way he ignored her. The dreaming ends and I awake with an aching sense of loss and grief for these people.

People I’ve never met, people I’ll never meet, in all of my life.

(And it prompts me to send asinine, exceptionally inappropriate and utterly unnecessary text messages in the dead of 3:50 a.m. in the early morn.)

Sweet dreams ...

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Vodun Priest . Crimson Death . Yesteryear and Yore .


I dream of Beauty and the Beast. I dream of my mother dying. I dream of being chased.

I am running down the highway of dreams ... the Highway of Springing Gardens. I am being chased by an enemy, unknown and all red. They are beast and I am beauty. They are death and I am my mother. The crimson blood of their clothing is predator and I am prey. They chase and I run.

And presently I am running with others. Others are being chased with me. Others are the beauty, the mother, the prey. They are known and all white. They are the people of yesteryear and some are the loves of today. Me and my mate fall behind to protect our charges. One of the enemy, one of the Red, face off with us. It is a confrontation. A showdown. He is tenacious. I can tell.

He looks like a witch doctor in his blood red tuxedo garbs. He looks like a vodun priest of yore. He wears a top hat and his face is wizened ... senile ... insane. My mate and I transform into sparks and shimmer, unseen to all eyes but his own. I wonder in passing if this is how all the faeries died. Were they murdered by the priests who could see them, the priests who told everyone that they did not exist at all?

We obliterate our crimson enemy, vanquishing him though more of him still come. We rejoin the other people we defend, who greet us joyfully even as we run. I fly over head, my mate covering us from the rear, as we make our way through the Town of Bridges, leading my people onward as we go. I wonder briefly, shortly, if I have died.

I am dragged from the dreaming by the reality of oversleeping.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Kaili Kaos

Friday, September 11, 2009

Angi, I and the stolen scones


The world is a grey and damaged and desolate affair. I’m travelling through its debris and detritus with one Angi Sullins, who comes to withhold the doors of Dream where none can succeed, not even Herself.

We make our way to the belly of Destruction, to water-flooded-broken-lightning places, where electrocution dances in our reflection, and the smell of scones fill the dream.

We cut across the world through someone back yard, through their back door, through their back room, and before we resurface on the other side of their hovel, we partake of the freshly baked scones on the table in their kitchen.

Before Angi makes it out, the back door slams like the clapping hands of thunder and the woman of the house enters through her own back door.

She ignores the crumbs of scones upon our face, upon our hands, upon our grace, and accused us instead of being here to steal her doll, her daughter, her all. She is insane. We hurry from her hovel, her voices echoing egregious utterances within the wake of us.

We hurry out into the grey deep of a dead and dying world. I awake.

Alligator Love Affair on an Island in the Shade


There is an island. On this island there is a tree. At the base of this tree an ancient alligator sunbathes in waiting. The tree is swaying in the winds of change, blown against the psychic tides of what is and what will be.

I am aparted from my love. I must journey to the island with the tree, the island with the gator ... it is an island in the shade (sun does not exist here) where we will meet. I am swaying in the tree. The gator is flying. Its jaws snap to crush me, to squash me ‘tween its teeth.

I leap into the air bending the young sapling trunk from front to back, from side to side, narrowly escaping the jaws of life. Presently I sit on a branch and begin to cry into the sunset, and the gator, witnessing this, begins to stop.

It enters a humble hut on a hill of the island, a small shack, a quaint cabin, a shelter from the Tide. It transforms into the nurturer, metamorphoses into the Mother, into a transfigured Mrs. Went. It comforts me. It makes the sacred vow never to harm me again.

We return to the tree. It returns to gator form. It is now my guard. Arrived! My love is here! He has journeyed. We are joined. We are together again and at last. The sun is setting. The sun sets upon my dream.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Of faeries and gateways and death by dark water


There are two faerie girls. They are travelling across gateways and bridges, dreams and clear waters to visit the island … Barbados. They are off on adventures I cannot see, but can well dream.

They return in the dark of the night, happy-frolicking-trip, their skins covered in runic tattoos, telling tales of where they have been. They are crossing dreams and gateways and bridges to return to their fae island in yon distance, but where water once was clear is now murky and dark with the weeds and kelp of seas.

One faerie girl ignores the omen, diving off the bridge with goddess grace only to sink beneath the kelp and weeds and waters ... never to touch toe to sand ... never to resurface again.

On the bridge all left-behind hearts are silent-wailing and broken, as is the dream from which I awake.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Coney island towers and strange little men


Rivenis and I are at a coney-island faire. There are crowds and lines and people, stalls and tents and rides and we are standing in the midst of it on stone cold floors.

We cross the plank to the swinging pirate ship and now we are on the flattened top of an indoor tower surrounded by a square room. There is a bottomless, endless drop between the outer wall of the tower and the inner wall of the room.

Now there is a crowd of people on the swinging ship tower ride, and we are standing in the midst of it on stone cold floors. There are midget men. Little men. Little oompaaloompaa men. Dwarf men. Tiny men. Tiny faerie hobbit men. They punch us in the knees. They punch us in the joints. They punch us in our groins.

We slip and slide over the side of the tower clinging to its outer walls by punching the walls with our own fist. The impact creates suction like the tentacles of octopi or the cups on the feet of toys and knick knacks and bits and pieces of things stuck to the windshields of cars.

We alternate between the tower’s outer wall and the room’s inner wall punching our way around them both; watched over the side by the strange little faerie men who wait patiently for our knees and our pelvises and our groins to resurface.

Thus the Dreaming ends ...

Dark Magick Laughing Boujee Chase


The old house. I am here. In the rooms. In the yard. In the land. It is dusk. It is twilight. The sun sets, and night falls. I am alone. Momentarily, the air is filled with … presence.

A dreamy, chiming, magick presence … like faeries … like witches … like the fates and the muses of Dream. Presently there’re women, in the sky, beautiful ladies in all the air.

It is filled with their cackling, tinkling laughter and sounds of legerdemain. It is filled with a pins and needles apprehension, a feeling of unease and ill-will.

The ladies land and walk down my lane and come to my windows and stand by my gate. I run into the old house. I secure the windows. I secure the doors.

I hear knocking. I hear evil. I hear madness on the move. I feel it in the atmosphere. But they are new house windows. They are new house doors. Let the darkness and madness come.

I pull back the curtain of the front door and am greeted by two girls. They are boujee. They have boujee hair. Boujee eyes and noses and cheeks and faces. Boujee smiles on their boujee lips. Superior, spiteful, sweet.

They want into the old house. But I shall not let them. They try the side door by the drive way. Past the garage and all around. They try the back door by the yard. Past the old room and all around. They try the galvanized gate in the rusty metal paling. Past the old land and all around.

They try every entrance. Not one can be breached. We run around, back and forth, in and out, above and below, until it is done.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

This Little Piggy - A Tale of Hope


Rivenis, Winter and I are driving in my car passed the careenage. Winter is speaking to me once again. He speaks of his favourites among his different stories and the rpg tales he has created over the years. We park and enter what appears to be a nursery school in the heart of Bridgetown. Rivenis insists I read a storybook about This Little Piggy, because it is a story of hope.

Remi, the Dons and I


I am in the Dreaming with Remi. Desire abounds and is abundant. No one is convinced but all are willing to try, to allow second chances. We journey across my Dream in a house like his house, from a place of passion and want to one of hapless, helpless, languorous love.

When we arrive at our journey’s end we are greeted by a Godfather, a Boss. We are given a coconut cube and a chocolate treat to deliver to another Don. We are to sneak into his house and at a party held there, slip him the sweets. I am not certain if they are intended to help or hinder his health.

We arrive and are shown inside. Every popular person is there. We sneak to the vip lounge from where the Don is said to be hosting, but we are not suppose to be there. I sneak in while Remi stands nonchalantly on the outside. There are tall, glass displays but I am not sure what their exhibitions are - firearms perhaps.

The room is empty. The moment I move toward the back of the room (a space between the back wall and the perpendicular partition catching my eye) the Don’s protectors, his guards, big, bouncy men arrive, and though Remi attempts to intercept them, I must play dead when they enter the room to do a security sweep. Evidently many people die at this party, so I simply need to lay flat on the floor with eyes that are vacant for them to leave again. One doubled back to check though.

As soon as I rise to check the space between the walls the Dreaming shifts to place of matrimony. Remi has asked and I have accepted. Everything is good, and gorgeous and perfect. I am now a wife.

I remember the day we make love again for the first time in forever. I remember his legs being far larger, thicker. I remember his passion being different, stronger, and tasting different, more like passion, and less like cold, hard, ruthless, selfish indifference.

The Dream shifts.

Fight!


Aly gets into a big, burs’-ass, very physical, take no prisoners, fisticuffs fight with Terry at some gathering in her new apartment. As the altercation intensifies, a cow in the midst of the riotous tooth and nail throw down, loses its leg to the gluttonous orgy of violence that ensues. I go to apologise to Aly after the fight. She feels bitter and victimized, but I believe has learned her lesson.

The Dreaming shifts.

Monday, August 31, 2009

Of a horse and a dog and the Cavern of Death


I am in the old house. There is a horse there. It is a friend, and it is an enemy. It is in love, and it is insane. He chases me across the yard, across the corridor, across the room. I lock myself in a metal cabinet, and I am trapped. He menaces me through the holes in its walls.

I am walking, walking through the old neighbourhood. I can feel the presence of the horse, but he does not come after me here. I make my way to the Cavern of Death, though I shall fear no evil, for my friends are with me, their presence and their comfort a soft source of peace.

The close walls of the cavern are grey, the low roof is grey, the steps leading downward into its very bowels are grey. Death walks deferentially behind me. I never thought of it before as being polite. I am to be locked in a chamber, a cavity, a cell, with no food and no water, no companionship or stimulation. It is penitence and atonement. I must dwell on what I have done.

After some while, I am brought a platter of food, of creamed potatoes and cooked meats and corn without the cob. I am brought a cup of sour sop punch. I have paid my penance. I am free to leave and to live. Death will not leave its cavern for me. It will not follow me wherever I go.

I feel the encouragement and support of my friends, the well-wishes of those whom I love, leaving that place with me. I make my way back to the neighbourhood, wending through its myriad, multitudinous roads. A little dog named Sally is at my heels and by my side. Presently, happily I return to the old house.

The horse is there, laying in waiting for me. This time he cannot touch me, he cannot menace my soul, and I feel no fear. This time I am the one who chases him, for I am strength and he is fear, my will is stronger, and without worry. He runs and he leaves, scattering throughout the neighborhood about us, for I am no longer a place in which he can hide.

Sally stays on his heels to keep him going. No one shall look for him there. And he shall have no friends in the Cavern of Death, where he now goes. His penitence shall be long, and so too shall his suffering. There will be no platter or cup to signal the end.

I awake.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Beauty and Death

The boy Logan (Seek and Ye Will Never Find)

I am in the old house. I am a tiny, electromagnetic human computer, programmed to seek and ye shall find. Rivenis is my brother. He too is a tiny humanoid machine. We are looking for the boy Logan. I do not know what he is, or what he is programmed to do, but it smells of love, and is written in feeling and reeks of the unrequited.

Two men arrive to take me away. They shut me down and turn me off that I may be unconscious. There is a place, a person, a light far away, and we are moving farther from it. Our orders come from there. It sends Rivenis with us. He is assigned to protect me and to inform me of my own assignment. There is something I must do. Find the boy Logan. I drift. I accept. I submit. I give in.

The two men drive us down the Spring Garden highway to Bridgetown. One is driving. The other is receiving orders from The Light. My feet are in Rivenis’ lap. He has his orders too. The man in the passenger seat presently takes note of my hairy android legs, and unable to help himself, proceeds to start scenting my feet and kissing my toes and biting my heels; he is plucking the hair of my legs with his teeth. I drift.

Now he climbs into the backseat, and in positions impossible in that slightest of spaces, proceeds to take me. It does not feel like rape, because this is all from his perspective, and so it feels like pleasure. It is neither my pain nor my perspective, and so it feels like love. Like I have no will for it to be against. Rivenis does not protect me. I feel revulsion, for this is not my assignment, and he has failed his own. Find the boy Logan. I accept it.

When it is over and finished and done, we stop at the traffic lights at the Esso gas station at the bottom of the highway, at the beginning of town, and we take the left. The Dreaming lurches and I suddenly find myself thrown into a pool with African Maidens. A lone warrior is there. I know him not though he is reminiscent of my father. I must place the soggy, dilapidated sandals of the maidens onto their feet beneath the facade and the movement of the waters. It is a ritual. I submit.

There is fire and darkness in some distant part of the Dreaming. Perhaps the car we were driving crashed. Perhaps the gas station at the bottom and the beginning of the road, blew up. I am sad for I did not find the boy Logan. I did not seek and find. Now I am surrounded by waters, above and below, within and without, around and away. There is a bar. Alcohol is the blood and sweat and tears of the Morningstar. Do not touch. Do not give in.

Surrounded by African Maidens and a lone warrior, I step out of a television, for I no longer desire to participate in the Ritual of Sandals. They are disappointed. They wanted me to stay, and to want to stay. I however, depart. There are several tapes of several African movies my father has left behind him in his wake to return. Several more he has taken with him wherever he now wanders. I pack a suitcase. My mother cries alcohol. Now I can give in. Now I can give into it.

The Dreaming dies to reality and I return.

Aspidistra

Travelling Nightmares, Faerietale Dreams

I am travelling through worlds ... through forests, through mountains, across oceans. I settle on an island waiting for you to find me, waiting for you to love me ... forever. Now I am being pursued, into an alley, into a dead end, He has been chasing me. He is not you. Desperate I phase through the solid grey brick of the wall to my left and find myself through air, and wood and stone to the other side, to the inner side of a crimson castle. You are waiting there, Dream. You are kind. You care. You love, and you are lovely. You give me protection … sanctuary … hope. You are generous. You are considerate. You are compassionate. All the things he is not, everything I am no longer. He phases past the crimson curtain, those blood red drapes that veil the portal into your kingdom. He phases through air and wood and stone to land by our side mere inches between us. But he is clumsy in his transcendence and smashes the wood and stone in his passage. He is here, a snarling menace beyond ready to attack, to crush us with his dark and wicked will. But he cannot harm us here, not me, least of all you. You take my hand, my soul, my spirit and you guide it, leading me down into the dark of the corridor to a time and a place and a home and a how, where he cannot follow. And I am safe. And I am loved. You love me. The Dreaming comes to a close.

After Rain

Dark Doll

I am in a strange bedroom, it is unfamiliar and foreign to me, but at the same time it is also vaguely reminiscent of my room in Augusta and my room in the old house. My parents are there, somewhere, in another room. I cannot see them but I can hear them and feel their presence upon the Dreaming. I am readying myself for bed. I am preparing the room for the coming of the night time wolf. I make sure all the doors are locked, all the windows are shut, the covers are pulled up tight.

He is here. He cannot get in through the doors or the windows. I pull the covers down and tread softly to the door. I open it. There is no wolf. Instead there is a doll. It is male. It is soft and plushy, neither hard nor plastic. He has long, stringy, damp looking hair. He has dark circles beneath his eyes. He is dressed like a gothic prince, and reminds me of the artist, quiet and refined, like Keanu Reeves, Neil Gaiman, or Johnny Depp. The smile on his face is both sickly and sick.

Accompanied by Meteor

Stonehead and the Giant Snake



(I found this picture when I was pillaging the internet for art, and it was instantly reminiscent of the Stonehead in this following dream.)

I am in a black American chattel house with women who remind me of my friend Mandy and her mother. We are a house full of small animals, cats and dogs and rabbits. One of the animals darts away and out into the street. He is a small, black dog who reminds me of my small black cat, Lola le Fey. He is about to be struck down by the traffic, but at the last moment I manage to seize control of The Dreaming and slow down the oncoming slaughter so that he barely manages to escape to the other side of the street unharmed.

This is alternate dreaming reality number one.

Now I am in a black American red brick building, used for school, church and business. It is a compound for small kids and their adult caretakers. It is surrounded by woods and forests. In the back there is a quarry with cables suspended in the air over it that are transporting cargo freights. Then a man appears beside me. He is raw masculinity, pure, organic male. A natural fighter. A trained soldier. A perfect warrior. In the cargo freights suspended high about the air on the cables over the quarry we train for battle fighting imaginary obstacles and enemies together.

This is the alternate dreaming reality number two.

The warrior and I take a walk through the woods surrounding the compound. Beyond those woods is an open field on which a giant stone face sits with its mouth gaping open, and leading to the dome forming its head - mammoth and moss-covered. We make our way on the winding path of dirt and gravel towards its wide-opened throat, and we enter. To our left is a wall on the other side of which is a recessed pit falling down far below the ground level at the bottom of which is a pool of deep, dark, toxic green water in which reptiles of the same colour splash just beneath the surface, where I cannot see them, though I know what they are.

Further up the tunnel of throat, into the dome of head we walk, and we hear the murmurings of slaves, some near, others far off in the distance. They are gathering foods to cook, they are laboring on the open field, they are speaking in hushed undertones. We pass them and them us, but they do not see us. Now there is a rumbling. The earth is shaking. The stone head starts to crumble, but it does not collapse. Something is moving deep within it, deep beneath it, in the bowels of its brain, in the bowels of the earth. Suddenly there are huge, insurmountable boulders rolling down the winding path towards us.

The warrior and I leap into action, putting our training in the cabled cargo freights over the quarry to the test, scaling the wall and hanging upside down on the ceilings, using our chakra to defy gravity. The boulders pass but left in their wake is an evil aura, a menacing, murderous intent. Something has awoken. Something knows we are there. Something is coming and it is coming straight for us. I urgently tell the warrior that we have to get out of there while we still had the chance. We turn to run down the tunnel towards the open field.

The moment we near the forest surrounding the compound the earth outside the stone head explodes. From under the metropolis of domes enspiralled with winding paths and stairways and tunnels surrounding the Stonehead, a giant skeletal snake, made of stones and bones bursts forth from the earth, a raging roar blasting from its mouth. We have angered it, infuriated it. We have trespassed, and now it seeks our blood and death as the price, the boon to sooth it back to slumber and rest.

It pursues us through the forest. Our concern is for the children and their caretakers back at the compound. We arrive there at the same time as the snake. Everyone is frozen in fear by the share magnitude of it, its huge stone head opening, gaping, wide emitting another blast of a roar. My partner and I run around back to the quarry, hoping to hide inside of the cabled freights high in the air. But whether through smell, heat vision or whatever else, the large skeleton snake, a snake of bones and stones finds us always.

It pursues us from freight to freight, so giant that its head is inline with the freights despite their height in the air on the cables over the depth of the quarry. We run through our training regime, our obstacle course, this time fighting a real obstacle, a real enemy. We reach the last freight, the giant skeletal snake of stones and of bones bearing down upon us, when we are suddenly hurled without warning into alternate dreaming reality number one. On the same street as the near accident with the little black dog who looks like my little black cat Lola le Fey, as the black American chattel house, filled with women who remind me of my friend Mandy and her mother and small animals like cats and dogs and rabbits.

We are safe it seems for now, for the snake does not or perhaps cannot chase us in this world within The Dreaming, and so it ends.

A Faerie World

The Red Girl and the Dark Panther

I am the Red Girl. I am red because I am wearing a red hooded coat, and so the Red Girl is what I am called. I am a waitress in a tavern, the walls are made of red clay brick and the interior is duskily lit from the lanterns’ lights’ muted glow, creating a cozy, bronzed atmosphere, almost as if we were in an underground cavern, deep within the earthen bowels.

I serve a tray of food to a man and his woman seated on the far right of the cavernous tavern, beneath a lantern light’s muted glow. On the tray is a dirty baby turtle. He is alive and wading in stew. He is adorable. To my horror the man plucks him out of the sauce and pops him into his mouth, commenting as he chews with his mouth full how delicious and succulent live, baby turtles happen to be.

Then he plucks the baby turtle out of his mouth, seemingly unharmed and still alive and offers me a taste. Naturally I couldn’t bear to eat anything alive, least of all something so cute, so I pop it into my mouth, with a sigh of relish and a rub of my tummy and a nod in thanks and walk back to the kitchen in the black back of the building before I remove it from my mouth and place it gently on the kitchen floor.

To the far left of the tavernous cavern, lit by the light of the lanterns’ glow throughout the room is a thick, heavy wooden door, held to the wall by a thick, heavy, corded rope. Releasing the knot that kept the door shut, I slipped outside of the tavern into the shadows of the beyond night. Here it is like a junk yard but without the junk, just mounds and piles and heaps and stacks of rock and rubble and stone intermittently peopling an otherwise empty space.

It is here, to the far left, in the deepest shadows, I espy a silhouette of a large, cat, a dark cat … The Dark Panther. He has sighted me. He is now slowly, slowly, slowly coming. I run back to the thick, heavy wooden door, yank it open and make to retie the rope. But the rope is no longer there. There is now a string, thin, light, weak string, that couldn’t possibly hold the weight of the door closed to the wall.

I try valiantly to bind the door closed with the flimsy, fragile twine, knowing that with each passing moment the dark panther, made of shadows, made of menace, was nearing the door, nearing my doom. The door keeps slipping open as the corded string keeps slipping loose. He is here. He is behind the door. His intent is overwhelming. I can feel his breathe through the cracks of the wood. His strength is my weakness.

Suddenly he rears up and what was a mere moment ago an animal is now a man, yet retaining his bestial being, his primal, instinctive essence. Now I am on the outside, on the other side of the door. Now he is slamming me against the thick, heavy, wooden wall of it, just as he slams his tongue into the depths of my open mouth. I feel plunged into, I feel wrench away from myself to float in the mindless, sense-full, rapture of the moment. His eyes echo eternity as they behold me and I am flung without ceremony from The Dreaming.

1000 Year Woods

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Concerts, Quakes and Voodoo Priests

My friends, Shari, Nicole, Kevin and I are at the Barbados Community College to see a concert headlined by Maxx and Mandy. During the concert, when Maxx is onstage, there is a group of Bajan white girls swooning over the sound of his voice. This one girl in the group said she was so willing to give him what was left of her virginity if he would have her.

I seem to be stage managing the event. I watch them fawn over Maxx from behind the curtains of the wings of stage right, and then I go further backstage to help prepare Mandy for her set. She is holding the microphone and is stingy when it comes to allowing me to hold it, just for a second, as though afraid I’ll steal her light and thunder.

Now the concert is over and Shari, Nicole, Kevin and I are under a wooden and cement tent structure, but with a bunch of other people none of us know, other students from BCC presumably. Suddenly the earth starts to shake and quake. Shari, Nicole and Kevin run directly from under the tent, but I run around it, in search of Maxx and Mandy.

Not seeing them, I rejoin the others on the far side of the tent. I then proceed to jump from one point to another within The Dreaming. First I am on the road of the hill below my Aunt’s house in the country. Then I am in the backyard of the old house, with a white Rastafarian poodle dog and a little calico kitten.

They are my charges. I am being pursued now, but I cannot see and do not know what my pursuers are. I round the corner of the enclosed garage and walk tentatively across the unenclosed driveway towards the road. In the house next to the old house, through the track, through the lane, I see a band of Voodoo Priests, dressed in fine garbs, in dapper robes and regalia of deep golden yellows, contrasting strikingly against their onyx and obsidian skins.

I take my two charges along with my mother, who is forever peering fearfully out at the backyard and later over my shoulder and later behind her back. We walk quietly down the road hoping to slip past the Priests, who are the pursuers, and would have made it had the last Priest, a tall, ebony woman bedecked and adorned in golden garb had not spotted and exposed us to the others.

We have been seen. We run down the road as fast as we can, me with the white Rasta dog and baby cat in my oversized jacket, my mother trailing behind, watching ever fearfully. As we run to the end of the gap, the Voodoo Priests are transformed into Macbethean witches … crusty, mangy, and old. They shrink in size, and grow, and swell and spread in width. Their clothing changes from gold to sickly, sour, sewage green and black and deep purple.

They chase us with intent. Their crooked and bent silhouettes shriek as they float and glide down the road behind us. We turn the corner to the right and run up the road adjacent and identical to the one we just left. As we run up this twin street, I begin to lift, to fly, to soar. My charges are in my coat. My mother is behind me, but whether she is just holding onto my ankle or she is flying too, I cannot tell from my angle.

The witches fall behind us. The time is dusk, and the evening sun is before us now, flaring and shimmering as if made from faerie dust. It is a Faerie sun. I reach out and grab hold of it, and as I grasp it, and as it blazes within my enclosed fist, The Dreaming dims and fades away and I depart from the dream.

Zencii and the Parade of the Fallen

Spirit and Dirt

I am in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar place. Above me a spirit floats. I believe it is female but I an uncertain. Malevolent pressure is pushing down upon me, but I know not what it wants or what it means.

I run from my room into the room of my father and stepmother, which is down the hall. Again the room in not known to me, and neither is the place. I crawl into bed between them as a small child would. The spirit follows me and enters the room, but does not express or manifest itself as a floating woman again.

This time it is merely a Presence, and then the room is filled with earth and dirt as though an invisible excavator entered the room as an unseen force. We all run out into the hallway of that strange hotel. From the outside and through the floor-length curtains we could see the level of dirt rising higher in equal proportions as though the dirty were being poured into the room like water into a cup, except rising from the ground rather than being poured from the ceiling.

The sea of dirt is disturbed by the occasional tuff of grassy turf. Behind the glass wall and curtain panel it seems as a sea without ebb or flow … Without undulation. The Dreaming ends.

Cirque de Dischord

Of Old Schools and Faerielands

I am walking down the road to my old school. The road is now a river; artificially constructed, it is raised above the level of the ground, and flanked on either side by a sunken river bank. I am walking along the river bank of the river to my old school. They are people, neighbours and school children, people I know, all along the river length.

When I get there the school has become an underwater facility, part swimming pool, part aquarium, all partially submerged. I enter the building and am given a small, brown, baby seal to care for. But soon I am chased by people from the facility, whose task is to take the seal from me. I run through the ice blue water facility with the seal in my hand, hiding in pool filled rooms and air conditioning vents until I manage to escape to the outside world by the river bank.

Now I am no longer on the river road to my old school. Now I am no longer standing before my old school, the underwater facility. Now the river bank is an enrailed moat. Now the underwater facility is an ancient castle, standing behind me. As I turn to face the school-turned-castle, surrounded by the enrailed moat that was once a river and its bank, I find myself in an old world, a new realm, a magickal sphere into which I am gazing.

In this Faerieland there are two species of being - the Wise Ones and the New People. The Wise Ones are of magickal blood. They are the faeries and the centaurs, the phoenixes and the beings that are both animals and human at the same time. The New People are descendants of the Wise Ones. The magick in their blood is thin and thinning, and they want to be exorcised of it completely. They are human, but not yet human.

The Wise Ones are holding a council meeting. They want to stop the efforts of the New People before all magick is gone from their descendants forever. They want to make life as it were before the blood began to grow thin. They want to keep their own wisdom and magick, which has been fading fast thanks to the efforts of the New People to exorcise all ancient power from that realm, and to rid the Faerielands of the olden ways.

A group of magicians, explorers and I are deployed by the council of the Wise Ones to find a way to stop the New People. My friend Georgi-Ann is with us. We sail to a parallel shore. The land is surrounded by a river or maybe a sea. There is a railing between the land and the water. Getting off the boat and onto the land, we walk into a garden.

It is evening in the garden. The plants here are pond plants. Tall, yellow grasses, rushes and reeds in violet, peach and rose and the pale green of the willow trees surround a water-lilied pond, over the surface of which is stretched a bamboo bridge. The bridge is on the same level of the water, and so it seems that we are walking on the water itself. Scattered across the land flanking either side of the pond are the stone statues of old gods. The light of the setting sun is softened by the low-lying and undulating mists of that place.

Beyond the bridge is a tunnel flanked on either side by the sheer drop of tall crags and cliff faces, leading to a deeper, darker, cooler place, the jungle interior of those lands. Here the colours are brighter and darker than the paler, lighter colours of the waterside garden. Deep, jade, jungly greens are complimented by the burgundy and purples of the plants which are in turn contrasted to the tawny golden yellow of the suspension bridge stretch across the space of that clearing. The plants here also seem moister and mossier than those of the garden. They grow upon the faces of the walls of rock that diverged from each other at the end of the tunnel, at the entrance to the clearing to encircle it.

Georgi says she prefers that jungle to the garden, but I like the garden best. We proceed past the clearing to the end of the bridge to a place I cannot see very clearly and do not know. I only see our return back through the jungle, back through the garden, back to the boat. It is also unclear whether or not we found the way, but I intuit and believe we do. I awake from the Dreaming.

Squid Girl

Flight

I am in my old bedroom at the old house. The bunk bed I once shared with my cousins at their home in the country is now in that room. It is up against the only window in the room, the window of the far, outer wall, the window looking into the room. My bed, which would have been on the opposite wall to where the bunk is, had it been in the room, is not.

I am on the top bunk. I am gliding in slow motion from the bed to the wall straight ahead, to the wall on the left to the wall on the right, using each surface to propel myself with greater force to the next surface, building momentum as I glide until I am flying around the room. I pause periodically on the ceiling, before I descend slowly back to the top of the bed.

My mother enters the room. She watches me soar in slow motion above her head, from the top of the bunk to the surfaces of the walls and ceiling and back. She asks me what I am doing. I tell I am flying. She says she is not afraid that I can do it, but asks me how I am able to. I tell her it is because I believe in faeries and can do whatever I want. She watches me for a while.

Summer

The Tea Pot and the River Towns

I am Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I am walking down a town lane in Black Rock with my father, Maurice. He is holding Ms. Pots from the castle of the Beast in both of his hands; only she doesn’t have her face anymore and is no longer animated. Instead of china she is made of smooth, transparent crystal with gold trimming and looks like a hybrid of her former self and Aladdin’s lamp.

Ms. Pots is filled with hot water, and my father walks down the town lane in Black Rock showing all the people of the town his magick, wishing lamp. They all think he is crazy. After circling around the block we walk back up the lane again, and find ourselves on the outer wall of a reservoir. There are waterways leading to the centre of this reservoir over which floats a dark entity like an evil genie.

The Entity is being reprimanded by the human parents of little creatures for scaring their children, and after each parent rebukes it to their satisfaction they row off, sailing their small boats to the right of the reservoir and down their respective waterways. No longer Belle, but now myself, I follow a boat down the waterways, which are like suspension bridge roller coasters for boats, passing over and under each other under the reservoir.

At the end of each waterway is a small town, symbolized by one wooden beach gazebo-house, painted in bright, tropical colours. There are people living and playing in every “town” except the last one, which is empty. This was the town of the human parents of the little creature children, who were frightened by the evil genie of the reservoir. No one uses this waterway anymore. The parents have left because the children are afraid.

As I stand at the end of the water way, staring out at the sea, beside the abandoned town, the dream ends and I awaken.

Angels & Devils

Of Co-workers and Cousins, Acquaintances, Dinosaurs & Love

I am in the kitchen of a building shared by the radio station BBS and my old secondary school. I leave the studio of the radio station and go for a drink in the kitchen. From there I find myself at the beginning of the main school corridor and start to walk. Soon I find myself in another kitchen, which is really a small shop that was once a classroom. It is painted in a harsh green hue.

I order something from the shop and while there, my cousins come in to order something as well. They are also attending the school. They start to confront and condemn me about my pagan beliefs. As we leave the shop and continue down the school corridor, we make a u-turn around the block of classrooms to our left, making a left onto a paved road, passing a roundabout.

There on a wall in front of me is Winter. Irritated beyond words with my cousins I tell them that I need to spend time with him now, so they go on ahead with Winter and I walking behind. All of my acquaintances from The University of the West Indies are there. Suddenly we are walking on a peninsula of land, and as we walk, Winter and I are transformed into Indians, though I am not certain whether we are Native or South American.

The sea appears to our left. As we walk along the shore, I slip and fall on a wave, landing on the belly of a lime green snake. Suddenly another Indian woman appears, grabs and holds the head of the snake to prevent it from biting me, but her grip is too weak. The moment her grasp slips however, Winter catches the head of the snake as it swings around to bite me.

Then I fall into the sea, there is no land or seabed beyond the shore, I plummet into the dark green, murky depths of a vast ocean. Beneath the peninsula are hundred of snakes, too many to count, their heads are stuck in the under belly of the peninsula like upside down ostriches, and their bodies are hanging down into the water like beaded curtains.

Winter takes the snake I fell on, the head in one hand, the tail in the other and dives into the water behind me. He throws the snake over my head from behind me, still gripping its head and its tail in his hands, and uses its body to pull me back up to the surface and onto the land. He then drags me across the sand and behind a huge rock close to the end of peninsula.

Suddenly the body of land where the school was disintegrates and disappears into the sea. The peninsula of land we are on also starts to crumble and sink beneath the waters of that vast ocean. Under the surface of those waters the land becomes a flying dinosaur rising from the bowels and depths of the waves. It has a horse-shoe ear, like a lump on the top of its head, and it is under the arched alcove of this ear, that Winter and I, along with a little white boy sit and rest.

We start to have a low conversation about where we are going, and what we are going to do once the dinosaur lands. Of course being that we are in the ear of the dinosaur he can hear us as we speak, as well as feel us moving around, although we try to keep very still and as quiet as possible. Feeling and hearing us, he becomes annoyed and starts batting around his lump with his claw, going as far as to shove his claw in the loop of his ear to catch us, we evade his claw by running around his hoop ear until he decides to give up and settle back down to the flight. Either than or he accepts our presence, because the energy of the flight changes and is less menacing after this episode.

When we land on a new mainland the dinosaur lets us off its head and we make our way in land, wandering the new world. We find a boy there named Miles who was the only survivor other than ourselves from the school. He was flown to the mainland by a pterodactyl he reined with some rope. Everyone else on the old mainland at the school, my friends, my cousins and the staff at BBS were drowned. Thus The Dreaming ends.

Water Lily

School Recital

The members of an arts club called Chimera Opus are in a school hall at one of the local colleges on an island called Barbados. I am there as well. I have not been a member for a year or two. A girl called Petrina is now the President of the Club. She is doing a great job and the club is thriving despite its shaky beginnings. The club is at the college performing a recital.

There is an altercation between a figure of authority at the college and myself. Although I cannot remember the details of the altercation, I do remember stalking back to my seat arguing at the official and having a girl named Lee-Ann and a boy named Ian ask me what was wrong. After explaining the situation with them, I then decide to leave, and say goodbye to Petrina and the rest of the club.

In the corridor outside of the school hall I see other members of the club, boys by the name of Adrian and Dario, coming into the recital late. I tell them about what happened and why I’m leaving and to let Petrina know that she is doing a stellar and fantastic job running the club. They no longer need me here. There are no hard feelings and I am happy for us all. I then depart, and the Dreaming shifts …

After the Rains


Fred and the Faeries

There is a boy named Fred. To reach the place where we once were two other faeries and I must travel across the countryside. As we do we are transformed, becoming tinier and tinier as we fly. Soon we reach a pale yellow flower with a bright red centre and alight on its petals. This flower is at the back of a long line, and at the top of the queue is the boy named Fred.

Death and all Her Friends

Realm of the Past

From the portal of another world I am hurtled into the shallow waters on the shore of an ocean. From there I climb up the steps leading downward and into that sea, and at the top I see a large, freestanding brick wall before the wall of an old brick building, creating a small passage between the two. To the right of the outer wall is an old acquaintance of mine, a girl by the name of Crystal Cox, who is very bony and is carrying her grandmother, a very old, very decrepit woman on her back. The old woman is wearing layers of clothing, skirts and aprons, and has a rag on her head. Crystal is as young as when I first met her, a little more than a young girl.

I join her to the right of the outer wall. She doesn’t seem to remember me; as if I am no longer a part of that world, of that realm of the past. We walk along and passed the wall, climbing another flight of enrailed steps, the sea splashing against the foundation of the pathway on which we are walking. We round the bend of the path turning left away from the wide open ocean and onto a wide open bridge over a clear water careenage, very reminiscent of a similar overpass called the Chamberlain Bridge in a city called Bridgetown.

We walk pass the people milling around the path. Some are selling goods, while others are on their way to unknown destinations and others still are standing around talking. Crystal is still carrying Gran on her back. I look over the side of the railing, down pass the underside of the bridge into the clear water careenage below. The water is a pale teal or aquamarine. I can see the silver fish that look like miniature dolphins swimming around in the water just beneath the bridge.

There are other people also looking over the side of the bridge. They have rods and lines and are trying to catch the miniature dolphins. I stop and think about whether I should try to catch them too, when suddenly one leaps out of the water and floats before me, just above my head. He is attached to a string like a balloon and I know he is meant for me. I take the string in my hand, and walk over to where Crystal is standing looking out over the bridge into the distant blue sky. Gran is no longer on her back. Looking around I see her at the place where the railing ends, but before the wall of the building before us begins.

Here the path is craggy and unpaved, and is more like a bed of rocks piled high from the clear water careenage up to the underside of the bridge. I go and grab her, guiding her away from the bedrocks and back onto the paved pathway. Crystal then snaps out of her reverie and takes Gran’s hand and we continue along our way pass the building before us. Its outer wall is peopled with small, tiny snack shops and its interior is dark like a bus or train terminal. Standing at the first shop is a group of Wall Street stockbrokers and lawyers, all hidden in the shadows of the shop's overhanging shade except one.

The one standing in the light is the closest to me, and as Crystal, Gran and I pass by, he turns to stare into my eyes. He looks like a God. A heavy, tousled brunette mane, eyes a dark teal or aquamarine, deep and intense. Everything about his face, his bone structure, the line of his jaw and his nose are strong and perfectly sculpted; his lips full, shapely … soft. He looks like a model from GQ or a character from the cover of a romance novel. I stare into his eyes until we pass.

Now I am doing a dance. First it begins as an Irish jig, then it transitions to a hip hop routine, then I break down and start swiveling my hips like the hamster on the Blockbuster commercial. The entire dream goes silent. People on both sides of the bridge and the street, people I’ve passed, people I’m next and nearest to, even people I have yet to see have gone completely still. My mind’s eye does a sweeping, panoramic shot of The Dreaming. All have frozen. All are quiet. Back behind my own eyes, I lean over to Crystal, who once again is carrying Gran on her back and ask, “Do you guys dance in this world?” She looks at me with the strangest of expressions and asks in return, “What’s dance?”

It’s then I look around to see the countless eyes looking at me in shock and consternation, confusion and uncertainty. The Dreaming ends.

Iverna Deskerna

Flight and Lime

A group of people and I are flying over the ocean where the little mermaid once lived (she has since then married Prince Eric and moved to his castle by the sea in France). We are soaring, high-flying, gliding on giant bird wings, dressed in business suits. The women are wearing heels. We land on the spire of a tower in a town. Then there is a sweeping panoramic view of the crowded city, which then zooms in on a lime in a dirty street, under a table across from a stall. The lime is half-rotted and burst open from being underfoot and stepped on by the people milling about. Suddenly a heel appears by the lime. My mind’s eye travels up the leg of a woman dressed is a business suit, but whether it is one of the other women in the group of people who flew in and landed on the tower’s spire or whether it is me, I cannot tell. I cannot tell anything other than we have arrived. The Dreaming shifts …

Sunday, July 26, 2009

An Audience

Suitcase Unpacked

My parents, and I, are the old house. My dad is leaving to go on a trip. It is my responsibility to pack his suitcase. He reminds me over and over, he checks and rechecks again and again, but I still haven’t done it. I never do it. On the day he is intended to travel, he asks me if I have done it as yet. When I tell him no, he packs it himself, accusing me of making him miss his flight. The Dreaming shifts …

The Maiden

Mandy and the Mothers

My sister spirit Mandy and I, live together in a small, white apartment on an avenue lined with trees. Her mother comes over to visit and freaks out at all the esoteric literature on our bookshelves. We try to explain ourselves, beliefs and interests as best as we can but she still leaves in a huff of fear and anger.

Next my own mother comes over to visit and she too freaks out at all the esoteric literature on our bookshelves. Once again we try to explain ourselves, our beliefs and our interests, but she too is visibly upset, hurt and disappointed.

She reaches over to pick up a book from the shelf. The cover art is of a cherubim baby boy, with wisps of brunette curls, big, deep, sparkling eyes, the fattest cheeks and a tiny, rosebud mouth. He is facing to the left so we can only see his side profile, and he is floating in midair.

Starting just above his ribcage is the stem of an apple which ends just below his ribcage, almost aligned with his navel, where it then blossoms outward into a full, ripe, luscious, blood red apple covering his entire oblique, from just before the navel all the way across his right side to the beginning of his back.

The apple ends at the top of his upper thigh, from the outside of his pubic to the start of his behind. This apple however is neither the image of an apple before the cherubim baby boy, nor is it even a tattoo of an apple on his skin. It seems to come from within his body; the skin around it is filled with veins as if his body were straining to emanate it. It can be best described as a birthmark of some kind.

Behind the cherubim baby boy is a full grown man with an identical birthmark on the exact same place as the baby. Again the skin around it is filled with veins as if his body were straining to emanate the mark. Taking the book from my mother I place it back on the shelf, telling her it was just a romance novel. The Dreaming shifts …

Cassidy Meets Lithgard

Run Away

I am at the old house with all my friends and family. It is morning time, and the daylight floods The Dreaming in a way I’ve never experienced before. Winter is there, and so is a boy named Haig. I run from the house. Everyone is calling after me and I know they will soon follow. I slip into the track on the far side of the house next to the old house, and run in slow motion towards the end of it. It is misty here.

There is a trap, a web of vines, in my way. I unhook the end of it looped around the top of a twig from a plant on the left side of the path and pull it aside like a webbed curtain of vines, and it loosens as I pull and I see where it is rigged on a twig from another plant on the right side of the path. I quickly step through the undone trap, and loop the end of it around the top of the plant’s twig again to slow my pursuers.

I turn and run through the fog to the end of the path. Suddenly I am running along the side of the house on the Other Side of the old house. My chasers are trapped in the web of vines in the path two houses down from where I am now. Now I am ascending the mossy stone steps at the back of the house on the Other Side of the old house. The air here is cool. The morning and the daylight do not reach here. I make a left turn at the top of the mossy stone steps in the alley way that is cool where the sun and light of the day do not reach.

Now there is another house to my right. I do not know this house. I have never been here. It is vaguely reminiscent of a house in the country where my Aunt and Uncle and cousins live, but that is all. I enter the house, but do not remember seeing the inside of it. Now I am in the backyard of this house, which is paved with concrete, rigged with clothing lines and covered with tarpaulin.

At the back of the backyard is a web of ropes, stretching across the entire length of the backyard. The man who owns the house is repairing the ropes of the webbing but when I ask, he cuts the ropes and creates another hole at the bottom of the web for me to slip through. The ones who are after me are now at the side of the house on the Other Side of the old house. The man tells me that they are coming. I can sense that they are.

I slip feet first through the web of ropes. His backyard ends on a precipice and I drop down into a sloping gully beyond it. I make my way across the gully as fast as I can, knowing that if I stop they will catch me. It is beautiful in the gully. The trees are majestic, the sunlight through the leaves shimmers like faeries. It is a mystical place. The gully ends by a side road to the main road. I run up the main road, I pass a roundabout, and I make a left into another side road, canopied and enshrouded by tall, magnificent trees.

The air here is cold. The light of day reaches this place the least. I make my way down this side road, running, running, running into its peaceful and comforting darkness, while down the road, past the roundabout, through the side road, into the gully, up the precipice and behind a web of rope, my hunters remain trapped, unable to follow, calling me back to them … calling me to return. The Dreaming shifts …

Porcelain Chaos