a Dream is a Dream is a Dream

I write inspired by the madness of the Friday eve, its petty decadence of aimless men and women, sleepwalkers on cement lubricated by brew, spit and sticky sweat. Do they know they are dreaming? You never know until you wake up...

I dreamed some nights ere of a young woman who answered by the name Ferre, yet whose true name is lost in the dream, known only to Morpheus. She found herself standing in the midst of a spacious chamber, of tall pastel coloured walls broken only by a staircase, steep as only Dutch mountains can be, winding its way round the room. At its highest point stood something that can only be described as a Lovecraftian abomination, of barely defined shape, texture and colour. Yet impression cannot resist description, and my memory of it is of an entity a little like a starfish moving as a mockery of man; bearing the rocky, brittle texture and colour of charcoal, its darkness broken only by the edges of it shape, so sharp that they nearly glowed. As it started descending the stairs, slowly, Ferre woke up from her dream, shaking and sweating.

She found herself within the very same chamber, now darker in tonality, a tranquil, dark olive. Beside her stood her friend, whose name is, perhaps, Galla. She soothed the trembling Ferre, as she thought of the time before the nightmares, before the pills. Were the capsules the cause or merely the catalyst of dread? She looked at the container standing on the squat night table, her hand grasping what her eyes could but touch. Holding the flask by her heart, to the bewilderment of Ferre, she unscrewed the cap and dropped one copper coloured capsule, a miniature metallic egg. Confusion gave way to terror when Ferre saw Galla take one pill and place it into her mouth. They gulped in unison.

Sleep pulled at her eyelids, dragging them down, but Galla would not concede before a curtain call to her pupils. Her eyes endured the constant assault of sand, searing but unyielding. And since Galla would not go to the Dreamworld, It would come to her. Between the grains stuck to her lashes she saw a familiar shape still on the spiralling stairs. Before it even quivered, she had dashed to meet it, her feet swallowing the stairs in pairs and triads until they stood beside it, their hunger quenched. Then sluggishly, painfully even, their languid legs moved in unison up the last handful of steps to a tall door. Galla tentatively taped the door ajar and stood aside, letting the leviathan lump its way within while she motioned Ferre to scale the steps and follow her fear into the room.

Ferre closed her eyes briefly to gather courage and found herself before the frame. As soon as she had stepped through it, she found herself back in the same room, dizzy with the knowledge that her dread had departed forever. Another memory surfaced soon after, a shadow of a dying girl, leaving His side. But who was He?..

Too late. I awoke confused, nagged by a prophetic feeling. I stood and went in search of Father, he would know. I found him in the dressing room and recounted him my dream and collected my thoughts.

"The strange thing is..." I added, only to be interrupted by his brisk departure. The thought was broken by the bang of the door.

Distracted, my attention fell on a set of emerald garnments hanging from a rack. A mess jacket reminiscent of a Matador's. A suit, tainted by a dark stain under the left clavicle. Some trousers...

...and Father returns and looks into my eyes, concerned. Bloodied and tired despite the rest...

...I wake yet again, woken by Galla's kiss, a deep flow of liquid tenderness, but it's not enough. I look at Ferre and ask her. Her fleshy lips don't even quiver, her short hair a helmet isolating her, keeping her warm in her coldness. As I wake again, some machine measures the coordinates of my thought: "Where are you Ferre?"