Endless Night [May 20th, 2013] /./ [flashback/nightmare]
Even though it always started the same, Simba never recognized it as a dream.
Because it wasn’t one.
It was a memory.
Everything is dressed in warm colors, like living inside of a lantern—flickering oranges, reds, and golds. The edges are fuzzy, like old film, underdeveloped and blurred. His stomach always flutters and he can hear the murmuring and clink of champagne glasses. It starts faint, like everything is far away, muffled, as if he is underwater, swimming towards the surface.
And then, everything breaks wide open. He’s dancing, spinning fast around the room to the sound of a band. All the women’s dresses bleed into their partner’s black coats until they are just a messy swirl of black, the edges now gold and red and pulsing with light.
Simba looks down and Nala is smiling up at him. Her teeth are white and the corner of her eyes. Her skin is golden, her cheeks glimmer—reflecting the red of the decorations, making her skin look like its holding fire in it. And isn’t that always so true of Nala anyway? They cling to each other as they twirl, fighting over who gets to lead, Simba can feel his feet moving close to hers, almost stepping on the inside of her heels, but never actually doing so. The two of them are good at this—this back and forth that they do.
He blinks and his arms are dropped lower, his mother’s warm skin—more gold than brown, has taken Nala’s place and one of Sarabi’s hands is tucked around him as the other squeezes his hand tightly. She doesn’t speak, just smiles—but Simba can see the warm lights dancing in her eyes and feels his chest expand so big he’s sure it will explode.
The dancing seems to last forever, the songs melting into each other, his partners morphing from one person to another in seconds that last hours—blink, Aunt Zipporah, blink, Nuru, blink little Ama who stands on his feet as he twirls her around and around while she laughs.
Suddenly, everything stops.
Like the end of a roller coaster, Simba is lurched to a standstill. It is quiet now and he has a glass of champagne in his hand, standing shoulder to shoulder with Uncle Taka.
His father is a few feet in front of him, talking, but he can’t hear the words. It feels like he’s back under water, like someone is holding head beneath the waves. He knows what he’s saying though, as if his father has cracked open his chest and is speaking right into it.
I’d like to announce that after much consideration, Taka will be stepping down as COO and my son, recent Oxford graduate and my pride of prides, Simba, will be taking his place.
He feels his Uncle Taka’s hand squeeze the junction of his neck and shoulder and the feeling pulls him up again, into the static of applause so loud he feels the urge to run.
Run, run far away.
Instead, he smiles as his father raises his champagne glass to him. As Mufasa stretches his arm and Simba stretches his out in return, it as if the hall expands and suddenly, he can’t see Mufasa’s proud smile or the twinkling in his dark eyes, the lights like stars in them.
Desperately, he throws back his entire glass in one swallow.
As soon as his hand comes back down his father is right in front of him. Snapped to him like a thunderclap. His champagne glass is refilled and he drinks more of it to calm the rumbling in his stomach like a volcano about to erupt.
Mufasa puts both hands on Simba’s shoulders, they feel like stones. Instead of his hands, Simba imagines Mufasa is Atlas, tricking him into taking the world. At this distance, they look as if they are the same height. Mufasa is smiling. His teeth are bright and white too, blinding in their brilliance and expectation. Simba shuts his eyes against them.
When he opens them, Mufasa is melting.
His face, that dark brown, which sucks up all the warm gold, white shining on top of his cheeks, has started to drip like candle wax. Simba looks down and his hands are melting into Simba’s black tux, disappearing. It isn’t wet, but the warmth has turned cold. The weight is gone.
Mufasa steps forward to embrace Simba.
Simba’s heart is pounding in his ears as he feels those melting hands like water slip around his waist. He squeezes his eyes shut, clenches his jaw against the urge for all the champagne to come bubbling back out of him. He’s dizzy, dizzy, and his father is light as a feather in his arms.
When he opens his eyes again it is dark, his father and the party has melted away—gone like an ink stain spreading over cloth. He still feels dizzy, like a top that won’t stop spinning, inertia propelling it towards the edge of a table top and all the children too distracted to keep it from falling right off the edge. There is the sound of rushing water.
No. He blinks. It’s a car window rolled down. He can feel the cool air on his face, his head still feels foggy, the clear night can’t break into it. The road stretched in front of him is making him sick and he keeps his gaze focused on the spinning asphalt in the pale yellow headlights.
He’s going to be sick.
His hands are clenched ten-and-two around the steering wheel.
His arm muscles feel like jelly.
Is he going to melt away next?
And then he realizes: he’s driving.
And then the wheel jerks.
And then he hears: “Simba!” in his father’s voice like gravel.
Everything slows down.
He turns his head, so slowly that the road comes with it. When he looks his father in the face, eyes wide, hands reaching towards him, the road is there too—it’s swirling in his father’s chest, grey asphalt and yellow headlights playing there like a projector.
“Simba!” His father’s hands finally reach him over that distance between them, the one that had always been there.
But, the contact is harder than Simba’s ever been touched before, his father’s hands are metal and plastic and his voice is screeching tires.
His body slams against the steering wheel, snaps his head away from his father, who vanishes completely into the darkness of the night now seeping into the shattered windows of the car. Simba can feel his lungs contract, like all his ribs are bending so fiercely they might just snap. The impact is all in slow motion as he’s thrown forward in his seat. He can’t breathe.
He can’t breathe.
He feels his head crack against the windshield, the sound louder than anything else.
Sometimes, he hears the echo of his father’s final word: Simba! ringing in his ears as he jerks awake, gasping for air.