Killcount

Mandy and I are at the bottom of the ocean, on the bed of the sea. The waters are filled with squids and jellyfish and octopi, gun metal grey, rabbit red eyes. We kill them all to death, until the waters are red and black with blood.

We are now in prison, we are now in court, we are now in custody, held hostage by our actions. The court house is underwater, the very scene of the crime. We are asked if we are responsible for the death of the creatures. We lie ... I lie. She lies. We all lie together.

They ask us again. They ask us one final time. We cave. We give. We speak truth together. We are condemned. We are sentenced. We are imprisoned beneath our watery grave. I wake.

Race of Blue Berry Strawberry Fruits

I am a little man, a young boy, a small youth. I am running a big race, a race against the world, a race against time. I run through trees, grasses, clouds. The clouds are wet, the grasses are fuzzy, and the trees are ripe with strawberries and blue berry fruits. As I break through the trees on the path run, I am triumphant, and plucking a blue berry, strawberry fruit from the lowest branch of the last tree, I cross the threshold and end.

Hot-Pink Hyena-Dogs

The Dreaming is attacking the dreamer. I am trapped between a wall of tall cliff and a wall of tall water. It slams into me, darkly, deathly. It bludgeons and bullies me, batters and beats me, until I am barely there. I am a mere whisper of who I once was. I am a meager echo of what I once could have been. I hold a life in my hand, young, innocent, fragile. Not unlike my own a very long time ago, and not unlike my own right now. The life is a kitten’s and I must breathe for it … even as I cannot breathe for myself, between the crushing, smashing weight of those walls. It presses me away. It presses me inland. It presses me home. It presses me to end.

I hang on.

We are inside. We are within. In the gullies of Dream. We are being chased by hot-pink hyena-dogs through the wood and through the trees. My babies are here. My kiddos. My charges. I don’t know how to teach this subject. We run. You cannot fall behind. It is as simple and as impossible as that. You learn it fast. You do it faster. We wade a river. We slip inside the back entrance of a hotel in the middle of the forest. We must find the man, who has the answer to a question, who has the key to a lock. The hyenas slip inside behind us, through the cracks in the windows and doors, through the wood of the rafter and the black of the basement. We must reach him, before they reach us.

We do.

Hotel safe, children safe, dark defeated for now, answers gotten and forgotten, keys kept only to be lost … I awaken.

Shadows

This dream is not my own. It is the dream of the man who sleeps next to me at night. It is a dream caressed and carved from the flesh of my own Dreaming. And this is it.

There is a dark shadow. It waits in the dark shadows. Behind the wall and behind the door waiting for its chance. Its chance to sit upon me. Like a dog upon a cat. Like a god upon a man. Powerful. Possessive. Persecuting.

Each time the man drifts to dream, the shadow runs. It runs from behind the door and behind the wall to get what it had been waiting for. Me. To oppress and to overwhelm. Me. To engulf into the dark and the shadow of itself. Me.

He snaps his eyes wide open to scare it away. To scare away the shadow and to save his love. Me. It runs back to the door and to the wall. Back to the dark shadows within which it is a dark shadow. It is a game they play for a while. All night to be exact. He is tired the morning after.

Dedicated to Testament, who saves me from the dark and the shadows, even in my dreams...

House of Dog

I am in a neighbourhood. A neighbourhood with a school to which I go. In this neighbourhood there is a great beast. A black beast. A dog, tall as telephone poles, huge as houses, terrifying as the sleeping dark. He snacks on the rooms of houses. And he is looking for me to snack on me too. To chew on me. To chomp on me. To devour me. To gobble me up whole. As he gobbles the rooms of houses up whole in his relentless search for my flesh, and for my femurs. I strap myself to the underbelly of a blue forde truck, the license plate starting with X marks the spot. The owners of the truck, aware of my presence within and beneath, have to drive me past the house of dog, as is my directive in the dreaming. We watch the loyal glare of the house dog's own eyes, the scent of my fear much more than a mere whiff wafting through the air, and under its nose and palette. It lets me escape.

Thing

I am in the dreaming. There is a beast here. It is as an ogre or troll. It is as the Grendel. Only in deep and final sleep can it be found. Only in the sleep within sleep can it be seen. It is to this sleep I sink, within the dark of the Dreaming.

It follows me. It chases me. I sense it but I cannot see it. I see its shadow but I cannot know its why, not until I sleep that deep and final sleep. I run throughout the dreaming, I race against the powerlessness of my dreams, throughout white icy caverns, throughout blackened, charred pits until I sink deep within the dark of slumber.

I see its face. It is hideous. Grotesque. I hear its name, but the conscious cannot conceive the sepulchral utterance of its curse. I smell the sharp sulfur of its existence within the deep and dark of me and taste my recurring fears. I feel its movements within the dreaming, beneath the unconscious, before my eyes flutter and I simply awake into a room as bright as day compared to the darkness of the where and thing I’ve just left behind .... if only for tonight.

The Fire Coral Narwhal and the Old Defeated God

I am walking on the shore of the sea with my loves. We are happy for the waters of the skies are blue, and we have each other and life is good.

Suddenly I sense a grave and dreadful danger behind us. The others are given to keeping the pace laid-back and leisurely, but regardless I rush and hurry them inland with haste, seconds before we glance behind us to see the fire-coral red hull of a giant narwhal bearing down upon us, borne with great speed on the waves of malice and killing intent. The eyes, sharp as teeth and shining like the morning star, emanate hate like the roots of all evil.

We make it inland, to the houses on stilts, and there I bear witness to the beginning of the end. Ensconced in the precarious safety of those stilted houses, I watch as an old god, gray as a fisherman, shoot tarot cards with runic quivers from an invisible bow out to sea. With each tarow he strikes the red beast, provoking its fury and unleashing its ire upon the hapless human souls too long and slow upon the sea's shore. As he controls its anger so too does he control the very fate and fabric of the human lives within its reach and realm.

I shoot a runic arrow from my own invisible bow, but without a card I have no real connection to or dominion over his divinity. Realising my awareness, he morphs from god to man, in which form I cannot see or touch his divinity. He is now Bryan of the Advocate, and as he tells to me in a voice wise with deception and duplicity, “You know, you can make a fortune with just the laces of your shoes”, from the Dreaming I thus depart.

Beauty . Death . Freedom . Illusion

I am travelling across a countryside in a caravan with all of the world. All of the world is in a caravan with me, every travelling cart filled its people. We journey through avenues of apple trees and orchards, pumpkin patches and autumnal air, fall and all its changes, beauty and death .... in the limbo of life .... in the ebb and tide of dream .... in the wax and wane of matter and permanence.

We reach our destination. It is an underground cavern, roofed by the giant, mossy roots of a god tree, anaconda vines interweaving amongst the rock and stone. Suddenly, there are fiery explosions .... there is heat and smoke and flames .... Liquid fire explodes from out of the air .... inferno roasting the world’s people alive .... to ashes .... to burnt, charred, cindered corpses and remains.

To nothing.

Those few of us at the beginning of the procession, glance back and scream in horror at it all, our feet taking us instinctively forward, while our minds and heart reach instinctively back for what once and never was. But, there is a way inside. There is safety ahead. And yet, as with all things, still it comes at a price. A costly one to pay .... for it is prison .... It is slavery. To escape the fire we cannot be free .... We cannot be free if we want to escape.

We jump .... we cling to the slippery ledge of salvation. A small dark, unconscious window above our head beckons us beyond. Freedom and death are what lie behind .... are what lie in the back of us, waiting to explode. Some of us slip through. There are those within of whom we are afraid, those who would catch us .... kill us .... convert us ... into something unknown and other ... for we ARE unknown and other.

They are dressed in white like angels, but carry weapons that looked like giant syringes, which they bludgeoned a couple of us to the ground and to death with.

It’s all the same .... catch us .... kill us .... convert us .... death is death .... there is no freedom. Only illusion. Only end. Some of us slip from the ledge and into the lava. Some of us sneak in only to be killed despite that. I hang in the balance, never to know my fate. The dreaming ends as all things must .... Goodnight ....