dream to sleep

The sound of a thousand tiny voices echoing through the valley wakes me from my slumber.  The last conscious vestige of my mind remembers that I haven't been here since the last time I was actually here.  It doesn't matter.  This is always where I start, whether I remember it or not.  This place is that deeply rooted in me, as much a part of me as my soul, chin, or nose.  I look up, and realize I'm in the field, below the electric tower.  It hums softly in response to my attention, and for a second threatens to drown out the singing voices.  The sound of metal vibrating tapers off, almost shamefully.  Everything here is so steeped in regret.  I touch it with the flat of my hand, a benevolent gesture, but it blackens and hardens at my touch.  The fact that it's all beyond healing has finally seeped into this sacred place.  Even memory is tainted.  I pull back, and notice that my fingers are enveloped in a blue frost.  My fingernails are the kind of purple that makes people uncomfortable about their own bodies.  I can't tell which came first, the blackened steel or my frosty touch, and am unable to reason out which was the cause and which the effect.  It troubles me.  That's when I notice you sleeping at my feet.

You've had a million different faces.  Today you wear them all.  I see a little of the wolf, the child, my twin, the highway man, the sword, the ace of wands, my childhood friend, a washing machine.  You wear them all.  Your guise is always perfect, but somewhere in the seat of my heart, I know.  It's always you, and I always know.  You flicker in and out for a moment, like some sort of b-movie special effect.  I'm a little afraid to touch you with my frozen hand, so I nudge you with my toe.  You rise, shifting form and shape as easily as changing you mind, and we're on our way.

We take the path that used to have the hedgerow but now only has a tangle of briars on one side.  The other side has the ghost of a fence; just a few rusted wires and rotted out posts.  I can see little jeweled eyes watching us from the rotted out remains of the stumps that are posts as we make our way down the ribbon of immaculately trimmed grass.  I muse to myself that the path is longer than I remember.  In addition to the cold and wind which I know are there but don't really feel, it makes for quite an epic feeling.  I'm suddenly overcome by a profound feel of certainty that we will have to face many trials on this path.  We crest the first hill and I catch sight of the first, a flock comprised of thousands of birds.  They are all different sizes and shapes, yet still variation on the same species.  Large eyed and brown with speckled heads, their dismay tears from their black throats as they darken the air before us.  I look to you in this moment, and you're holding back because you can sense I'm afraid. I start to hum to myself at that point, a tuneless dirge.  It's not good; it's just something to busy me while my fingers slide underneath the flesh of my rib cage.  I hook them up and to the left.  My index finger catches on a rib, and suddenly, just like the little red vending machines at the zoo or aquarium, my hand is full of corn kernels.  It's just a handful, not much at all, but the cacophony and fluid motion stops and suddenly all eyes are on me.  Hard and unblinking, they stare from their spotted faces.  A few even open their beaks and pant, dark purple tongues lolling out, all dry and scaly.  I rattle my handful of corn once, twice, and before I can reach three I pitch it over the (ghost)fence and into the barren field beyond where it scatters and bounces and rolls downhill far away from us.  The hungry eyed birds debate their course of action for a split second before fleeing to the field where they proceed to destroy each other for the kernels.  The sight of them wheeling and dancing with death in the sky chilling and somehow beautiful, but the noise is blood curdling and with a glance you convey to me quite efficiently that it is time to move on.

Before we get much further I notice a bird on the ground.  It's not one of the killer flock but a sparrow.  Small even for it's breed, it lays stunned on grass.  I pick it up with my good hand, and it starts to come to, regarding me with contemplative eyes.  We come to sort of an unspoken understanding, and I put the bird in my mouth.  At that point a get an uncomfortable feeling of deja-vu, but it passes, and I can feel the sparrow's beak clacking comfortingly against the back of my teeth.  I turn to you to see what you have to say about the whole thing, but you've had your back to me the whole time, still watching the bloody massacre of the birds from afar.  The wind blows through your long/short/none/long hair and for a moment I'm overcome with a powerful sadness that reaches from the very ground up through my legs and into the core of my spine.  You turn around, face shifting from friend to family to foe to mine to friend again, and we continue on.

The next valley between hills is quiet, and I'm almost certain that the birds might be the only trial we encounter this time.  I can see none of the familiar mountains in the distance, and here, in the space between places, I feel our road might meet us with peace.  Then I see her cresting over the hill, wilting the frozen greenery all around her as she stumbles across the soft ground in her strappy high heeled shoes.  For a moment I think you've mistaken her for me, but I soon realize the rattling in the back of your pipes/throat/pipes is simply laughter.  Her hair is lightened by the highlights that I was never allowed to have, and a simple tiara sits atop her golden curls.  It's missing a few rhinestones.  I decide not to call out or mention this to her, not out of some once held kindness but because I know that (with only some small amount of satisfaction she'll always be the beggar at the ball now.  I think idly to myself that she should have some sort of theme song, to mark her passing though this place, but nothing immediately springs to mind.  I content myself with silence to mark her approach to our progress.

As we close in I recognize her face.  It's my sister, my step sister, grown into the little woman she'll always be.  We close in and she stands very still in her prom dress, visibly frightened.  It's a pink frothy thing that moves like the ocean as the wind that picked up plays havoc with her outfit.  Her hair never moves.  I try to pay her no mind, but her empty glass eyes remind me so much of her mother's that I'm frozen in time for a moment as everything slows to a crawl.  The billowing pink waves of her dress, which has grown to enormous proportions, are blocking our way forward.  Her painted face is no more or less like a doll's than it has ever been.  We are almost close enough to brush hands now, and I'm still trying to figure out a way around without getting hopelessly tangled and drowning in her sea of chiffon.  Now that we're close enough to speak, I hear her telling me she's frightened that I'll ruin this big day for her.  I tell her that her telling me she's afraid of me is like her telling me that the sky is blue.  In response she reaches up and tears out a hunk of her elaborately coiffed golden hair but my step mother is not there to see, so she sits down silently on the grass and I'm quite certain she would genuinely cry if only she could remember how.  I think of some witty phrase pertaining to alligator tears, but forget before I can say anything.  So we stand, you and I, and we wait for this tremor of false feeling to pass from her.  Finally, frustrated by her constant getting in my way, I tell her that her shoes do not match her dress and as soon as I say the words they become true, her golden slippers turning to clunky black mary janes.  She realizes this and dissolves into the ground slowly, first skin then flesh finally followed by bone, until only a few teeth and a tiara resting upon the now lifeless dress.  One good gust of wind is all it takes to send the dress fluttering over into the field beyond the fence, and with our path clear yet again we continue onward.

You flicker in and out again, leaving a series of reverse shadows in your wake as you continue to press forward, jumping in and out of this place as quickly as you change your skin.  I have to run to catch up, but it feels good.  It's all wind in my hair as I climb up the hill next to you.  We crest the hill together, shoulder to shoulder, and its a toss up as to who sees the next sight first.  At the bottom of the hill lays the smoldering ruin of what I assume used to be a person.  I think to myself that three is a sacred number, and that soon the trials will be over but I know that you'd tell me I was getting ahead of myself so I push the hope from my mind and let my feet carry me down where the wreck of a person is.

All of a sudden I'm staring up at you, or the sky, or both.  I'm not sure.  I can feel the papery crinkle of my skin as it smolders and flakes.  I wonder how long it will take beetles to take up residency in my eyes.  I'm tired, and I think to myself that I don't want to die in this no longer sacred place.  Maybe once, before the unfortunate truth of reality eclipsed its remembered beauty or something overly flowery like that, but not now.  Just simply not now.  I look up at you, and you've changed back to the washing machine in your grief, one greenish purple tendril hanging out from underneath your lid.  I applaud your decision.  Washing machines can't cry.  You rattle a little at that.  I tell you that if I have to go here in this way that I want you to dump me in the dirt beneath the white pine.  Old family spirits won't follow me there because someone, Olive the first corpse I'd ever seen, thought the sound of the wind through pine trees was unbearably sad.

For half an eternity you drag and drag and drag me on, and I look under the fence in It seems as good a place as any.  Also, I request that you take the bird out of my mouth.  It's gotten frightened, because the lapse in reality has forced it down into my throat where it sits, pecking furiously to get out.  I had always thought the bird in my throat was angry, not scared.  Knowing that it's just fear gives me an uncomfortable feeling in the hollow pit of my stomach and for the first time since the whole ordeal has started I'm glad that I'm dying.  Washing machines can't dig, however, so I try to do you the service of dissolving into the dirt.  First, there's the business with the bird.  You're really not in a position to help me with that either, so I have to use what's left of my presence of mind to roll over on my side and try to cough it up.  I taste blood and feathers, but that little bugger is pretty lodged in there.  I just kind of let my head roll back because I'm tired of smoking and burning and pecking, and I'm finally content to take the sparrow with me into the earth if it really wants to go.  I open my mouth slightly for a proper death rattle and it uses the force of it to finally rip through and leave a hole in my throat which hurts a little, though not as much as I'd expect, and I have just enough time to be grateful that it wasn't a whippoorwill and then I'm dead.

Being dead is kind of like being alive only with less moving.  Also, things are either much lighter or heavier.  My body, for instance.  Everything about that is lighter except my feet, which are impossibly heavy.  I assume that's because the dead are supposed to stay where they are for the rest of their un-lives.  What with being dead and all it makes sense.  I keep waiting to have some sort of real feelings about the situation but death has prepared me for a long comfortable stretch of boredom and I find myself just not caring.  I gather enough oomph to muster a passing feeling of fondness for you, and you toss your sack over your shoulder and cast a look back at me through your one good eye.

So many one eyed old gods to choose from.  I'd remember your name if I could remember your face, but death has a certain way of taking things away from you before you realized you had them.

Oh well, I’ve got a lot of time now anyway.  The focus of the world narrows to you, choosing to go forward and face whatever other challenges there are for you to meet.  Far be it from my corpse to stop you.  The wind picks up again and I hope that you manage to restore the magic or joy or whathefuck ever brand of nice this place used to have.  I know that's not your quest, but things have a tendency to happen around gods whether they're trying for it or not and I have just enough left in me to hope that's what your presence here will do.

It was a good run.  Then there's nothing but silence and darkness for a very, very long time.

I always wake up surprised to be alive.