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.

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 ....

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 ...

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 ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.