Of Owl and Water, Tower and Tree

I am in the tower of the School of Life. I want to skip class to go and help my friend who is being bullied. I ask to go to the bathroom. The School Marm tells me to use the bathroom upstairs, so I cannot slip away. I go to use the bathroom upstairs.

I come back to class and announce before everyone that it is flooded, and request to use the bathroom downstairs. Succinct and terse, the Matron of the School allows me to go downstairs. I slip from the tower, and run into the surrounding forest.

There, I rescue my friend from her bullies. Upon returning to the School of Life, I discover a colossal tidal wave about to crash into the top of the tower. I enter and run up the stairs and run down the corridors. It is dark. Students are in the halls and passageways panicking. I can hear their footfalls and confusion and screams.

I enter my now empty classroom the moment the wave hits the tower, slamming into it with the force of non-existence. It rips off the classroom door, and thrashes around the teacher’s desk, behind which I am now hiding. It tears alongside washing away the furniture of the classroom.
It does not touch me. From the top of the tidal wave a round gargantuan feathered head rises. It is Spirit. It is totemic. It is Owl. Her body, large and round, is covered with feathers of dark, iridescent blue, highlighted with hematite, flecked with pearl.

Her chest, home of the chakra of the heart, is covered with downy feathers of pure white light. Her talons, beak and eyes are a luminous, shimmering gold. She emerges entirely from the wave and gives chase. I turn to run, leaping from the tiny tower window to the meadow far below and into the forest.

I hide amongst the resting flower faeries. I hide amongst the sleeping mole babies, snuggling up against their mother as if I too were her baby. Owl seeks me. She sees me. She finds me. Owl is the Seeker of Truth … The Seer of Truth … The Revealer of Truth. She reveals me. I cannot run from Truth. I cannot run from myself.

In every dream, the dreamer is every power. I am the power of Truth. I am the power of Owl. I am the power of my bullied friend. I am the power of the School Marm, the Matron of the School of Life. I am the power of the forest. I am the power of the Tower.

I am the power of the tidal wave. I am the power of the power of the flower faerie. I am the power of the Mole Mother, and of her baby, and of myself. I am the power of dreaming, and thus The Dreaming ends.

Brightly-spun wonders,
Rev. Faemore Lorei <3.~

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 ....

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.

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...

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 ...

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.