I had no idea that the dream Priscilla had was so vivid in her mind, when she spoke often I felt like she recalled them as distant memories, for she fought back fear as she mentioned certain details.
That afternoon over lunch, with Toki in the threshold, Priscilla began the tale which was her dream while in the depths of the dark sleep. She maintained that these were not her memories, that the view was so lucid and beyond herself that they must be formed in another living soul, a soul whose eyes she was trapped looking out from behind. Here is a brief recount of a great portion of what she recalled from memory.
Slowly my mind stirred back into the waking realm a dim gray twilight before my eyes, from a black slumber eternal where no memories existed, it was as if I were but newly born. My senses appeared to be dull and unaware of my predicament, they seemed almost numb, even my emotions were detached from my current surroundings, which my foggy eyes were starting to take in. I felt nothing, not fear from having woken from a slumber I knew not how long, nor did my stomach know hunger or my limbs know the pain of stiffness. Could it be that this gray kingdom, which was coming into focus around me, was beyond the lands of the living, was I in the solitude beyond death?
Just then, when my mind had begun to believe I was in the afterlife, something thin wriggled curving itself in frantic motions without pattern just above my right leg. As the fog lifted more from before my eyes, there I confirmed it to be a tale of sorts, covered in a coat of short and mangy black fur. I tried to tilt my head to glimpse the creature to which the tale belonged to, but my head simply slumped off to the side with a thud it hit my shoulder. Despite great effort in an attempt, I could not lift it.
For a moment I pondered upon how my neck had allowed so easily such an abnormal contortion as to allow my head to rest completely sideways upon my shoulder, though at least now I could see the cat. Yes, now in plain view was a sickly looking mangy black cat. The vile little creature seemed to be chewing on my leg. The gray lifted more from my eyes and I found that indeed it was, though I knew no pain from the nibbling of sharp teeth upon my right calf. I attempted to move my leg, as to shake off the tooth invader of my weary shell, but instead I blinked. With the effort as an earthquake did my eyes shake behind my their captive lids, until they finally opened.
Though now the cat had faded into a pulsing blue and green outline of that same creature. Where blood circulated near its skin was a murky orange, from its heart pulsed a deep purple out from which flowed veins of bright red. How had my vision changed as to allow me to see the radiation of heat, why did my eyes seem to hurt so, for that is the only word I can use to describe the flame which was ablaze within each socket, pain, these questions whirled in my mind. Amidst the fires of my eyes, I was answerless and could not help but think that I was not truly seeing the cat at all. The thin veil of gray passed over my eyes and grew thick until I knew no more.
When at lost last my mind swam back from the dark depths into consciousness I found that I had been stolen away into a far off place, or so it seemed. I was still sitting, but this time, I seemed to be in the center of a busy street in the middle of a vast city of silver steel and endless gray concrete in the violent heat of a humid summer. A multitude of towers sprawling up from the ground in every direction from where I sat, before me, behind me and on either side for as far as I could imagine to see.
Many iron wagons of various sizes and shape past by driven without a team of ox, horse or mule scurried by me as multi colored beetles on a quest for food. A multitude of people walking wove their way in and out amongst one another upon a sidewalk of sorts, for no wagons were upon it, save for persons riding upon metal bars with black wheels on either end from the most ragged looking young men and women with tall green or pink hair to what seemed a higher class, business men all prim and proper rolling about smoothly to check on their merchants. The warm breeze upon my face moved swiftly through as it funneled through the towering citadels, many with mirrors for walls, it was such an amazing feeling, it was my only feeling. In that moment I knew I was indeed alive.
Quite suddenly the veil rolled in once again, a plague of gray eclipsed my eyes. When finally the twilight rolled away, as a fog lifts mystically from a marsh, it seemed for the first time they opened of my own will. The grandeur of life’s abundance around me dissipated with my last vision. There before me was the cat, which was still licking and gnawing at the flesh off my leg, though I felt it not just there underneath the remains of the tattered rags which once had been my favorite pair of skinny jeans. At least I had recalled a memory, a feeling attached to a set of pants, was I alive or dead? Lifting my gaze, merely my eyes for my head I still could not move, from the cat to look slowly around. I was perched upon a plastic crate on a stone slab sidewalk, propped up against a dusty and ancient looking red brick building surrounded by large concrete towers. For how long I know not for all seemed as a dream.
I blinked and again was in the city teaming with life, people everywhere. Suddenly everyone stopped as if they had all at once become aware of some grave danger. They looked up, in quick secession, into the skies which had grown dark with low lying clouds, just above the skyline. The darkness above threatened an immense storm of tear drop sized rain and violently bright lightning amongst immense earthquakes of ever rolling thunder. Though no rain fell upon the vast number of men and women standing dumbfounded in the streets, nor upon the stopped vehicles, I once knew as cars, something else was falling down. The sky was thick with the falling of tiny yellow stars or possibly flowers, I could not tell, the size of snowflakes floating slowly downwards. Mingled here and there amongst the flakes there looked to be tiny fairy folk, swimming in the air with smiles upon minuscule handsome faces. As the white and yellow touched the skin of humanity they toppled over and did not move, whether death had fallen over them or they had been set in a state of deepest sleep I know not, for they did not wake when they fell with a crash to the concrete, nor did they stir when the cars and trucks, yes trucks that is correct word, began to collide in violent clashes of steel and flesh.
The settings stirred and changed all in an instant, once again I was sitting alone upon the blue crate on the street corner. The city was dark, though the sun had not yet sunk behind me; the buildings seemed to have aged a decades as many of them had begun to the slow process of decay around me. The sky was not as it had been in my last vision, for now there were dark clouds which were illuminated by flashes of blue and green hovering somewhere not a great distance in front of me below the skyline, there between two towers on opposite sides of the street. Most of the people were gone, how I cannot begin to fathom a guess; however several dozen of them though lay still and silent where they had toppled over. The skin of those closest to me seemed just as bright as the day they had fallen, though their clothes were much faded of hue and deteriorated, as if an age of the earth had passed. Despair stole into my heart in that moment, I felt and knew both at once that I seemed to be only half living in between dreaming and reality. Indeed if I was wholly alive what hope did I, a simple man counted amongst the few still living, have in such a city of darkness. My sight faded once more as all before me was stolen into gray.
What seemed like decades later my eyes rolled open to a most majestic sight, explosions of deep ocean greens and blues swam before me inside a cloud of thick gray smoke; The expanse of which was not high in the heavens nor near the skyline but was low lying, within the city itself. It was like watching the fierce beauty of an electrical storm, flashes of bright blue bolts flickered amongst the murky depths of blues and greens as it passed over the people lying about the streets, moving ever closer to me. Fear did not steal my as it passed over me, though I wanted to and that as a man I should have felt something at least. I knew then that even if I should like to, I could not force myself to feel alive. Once I had been so but now who knew now what I was, would I ever walk amongst the living again? The light in all its mystical poweress passed through me, I felt nothing at all, not the sorrows of pain nor the hope of life. Then I slept, as those around me, who aged not but did not live.
My ears rang with the sound of rumbling thunder, though when I opened my eyes not a cloud was in the sky. It was nearly dark, the sun or whatever was causing the radiant blue-white light was nearly sunk behind me, for the towers around me cast ominous shadows of obsidian. Then I noticed a small stone rolling out from the darkness between two towers nearby, when had come to a stop, so too did the resounding earthquake in my head. It had been kicked I swore it, for not of its own accord does a rock begin to roll, by what I swore was a man crouching just there, hiding and watching me.
A pair of catlike eyes flashed a glance of bright ochre flame from the shadows in my direction, as they did, I saw a mouth full of terrible fangs amidst a slender and pale beautiful face which remained half hidden beneath locks of jet black. Elongated ears jutted out from underneath the hair taller than the top of its head, this was no man. I felt the prey of a devilish hunter seeking a freshly taken meal, yet where horror should have been I was perplexed with wonder and intrigue. And then, all at once, the creature was gone as the dreamed stirred again... Would I wake this time into a world which I could feel and embrace with my own flesh, or was I destined to live in visions of solitude, more importantly, who am I? What is my name?
Priscilla let out a heavy sigh as she finished telling us of the dreamer whose eyes and mind she was held captive within. She had lived through much, for a girl whom in our old world would be no more than nine years old was much older inside, her soul was now ancient as the forest we lived in.
Whoever the unnamed being was, the soul was trapped within the shell unable to fade to death, becoming a ghost to wander once more. Would we, no, more imporantly could we ever find this being out there in the vast world in an ancient city.
In earnest anticipation of,
Jane
Without Charles
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment