a strange dream I've been thinking about for weeks.
I drifted off to New World, my body soft and taller. Freedom sang to me like serpents, tails contorting, pointing towards big houses and men who snarled.
I had to choose a name but they already called me “The Grace of the People”. I had to choose a face but it was already mine, with smaller features, darker, thicker hair, and a visible collarbone. They gave me a list of professions but I was already dressed in ropes and lace. None of the buttons worked, all greyed out, as if I had already agreed to this. A signed and sealed deal I had somehow forgotten.
Then they showed me the map, and said I was to choose a house. French gardens in the spring, ponds painted with lilypads around the back of great, big, beautiful, four-story monsters. And none of them vacant, for I had been given a purpose. Purpose in Old World was scarce. And I knew there was danger and that there were wolves and that I’d be sacrificing my legs, thoughts, SUBJECT-HOOD.
The ache to be hunted. The delicious ache of fear, danger. Never once in this life or the previous could I explain it. And I knew that shame would come, oh it would come and pierce, jab, slash as deep as New World’s rivers but later, much later in the night and I could not think of it now. No.
I tried them. One by one I watched on, eyeing basements and bedrooms and dark closets. I saw myself spreading across rooms, never quite moving but being molded. Not quite walking but being placed down. And all the time not recognising myself, but rather, someone doing performance art as my worst cravings, the ones that fester and rot deep in my stomach, and tease that they might come up with my food, or be killed in a scalding bath, or by simply keeping them so deep inside that they might suffocate to death.
But they don’t. And now they skip and pirouette through the streets of this town. The men are faceless because they don’t matter. They don’t at all reshape The Thing Inside. And every house is the same to me, every gore and push and piece of lace a blur.
New World is sloped, and the houses that draw the lines of the streets seem to taper off the higher I go. I can hear the peak - the soft babbling drone of the waterfall growing louder and louder until it becomes distracting. I continue to see myself float from house to house, but I’m continuously snapped out of these visions by the noise, and the sight of the flower lined path just a little higher that leads into the gorge.
Soon my spirit can take it no longer. The ache is still there, but it’s fighting a losing battle to the trance that comes upon me. I move, gliding like I have been, above this world, but now I’m following the path to the source of the noise. The visions grow shorter. Blurrier. I’ve never seen water so blue in my life. It can’t be real - not here.
Must beauty and evil live amongst each other? Punish? Ragdoll? Must there be such fear in beauty?
There are three girls chatting and laughing by the waterfall’s base. The blonde, perched on a rock, leaning back. The brunette, floating serenely on her back. Curls splash to the surface as the third pokes her head up. They look up at me like they’ve been expecting my arrival.
“Come on, there’s more back here!”
I’m in the water too without realising it. Screaming? Spit? Is this the cleansing I yearn for when the ache turns to a sting? I’m barely thinking about it now. Yarn? Pain? The visions are fading. But I’ve never known the shame to fade with it like this.
They lead me through the waterfall, which, to my surprise, conceals yet another rockpool, and another, a network of caves which makes no sense from the outside but which I do not question because this is all I could ever need, surely?
“I didn’t know it keeps going. How does it keep going?”
Blonde looks at me. Smiles. Tilts her head for us to keep going.
“Look who's waiting for us.”
On, on, on and on. It can’t be possible, but it is. Now the caves are opening up, welcoming the sun further in, and I cannot see or understand where in this place we have ended up because the gardens around us grow so high, so pink, so blue and green, sparkling in the sun, and everything glows so brightly I can barely see. Finally, we duck through a small opening to a much bigger rockpool than any of the previous, and there, in the corner, is…
“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming!” It’s my head chef, signature toothy grin on his face as he bobs up and down in the corner alongside, what seems to be, everyone I’ve ever worked with.
“We’ve all taken off work for this!” Eyes dark and sparkling, I know him. All we want to do is hug, and I feel warm.
“Come on, I need to show you around.” She… ah. She. I’ve never seen her hair in the water, the colour it turns. It’s so dark like this. But she’s the brightest thing there.
…Everyone. What is Everyone doing here for? It’s not for me, I know, and this is such a warm, fuzzy thing to know. It’s not for me that beauty happens. It’s not for anyone. Bad people can have good friends and bad things happen to good people. I can’t remember anything else. In fact, I’ve forgotten why I was here too. I’ve forgotten it all. There was something about beauty, something about fear, something about craving.
yousharknotpass
titsay
kaledo-art
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