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.

Kaili Kaos

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.

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.

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.

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.