Empty Thoughts Of Madness

Dream One- The Black Snake

I stood on the stone steps that led down to the lawn of one of our frequent holiday houses in Devon, where I can remember my father struggling through a voluminous book called something along the lines of 'Black Mountain' where half of it had to be translated from French/German, and where I had first started my love of catching butterflies in the expanse of a back garden with my green fishing net. I would run adamantly after them, dance in loops across the lawn and once I had caught them, put them into my butterfly box and admire them before releasing them an hour later. I had (before the time that I realised that it was not beneficial for the butterfly to do so) had held them gently in my hands and used the dusting from their wings as eye shadow. Not only had it irritated my eyes, but in later life I realised that in doing so, I had hurt the little creature and probably ripped its wings accidentally in the process. I haven't been in that holiday house since I was about seven or eight.

I can remember the vivid blueness and the calmness of the sky, and the way that the shrubbery was a dense mass of a variety of greens and dark browns, and how, although it was evidently warm weather, that I couldn't feel a thing on my skin. I was in a t-shirt and shorts, and was the age that I am now (19 years old) even though my little sister was around four or five- chubby cheeked and cherubic with her brown hair plaited up high on her head and in my cast off red t-shirt. She was bent over the rabbit hutch on the lawn, smiling serenely to herself. Although I didn't actually see them in the dream, I knew from their presence that both of my parents were behind me somewhere, due to their shadows fluttering behind me, down from the veranda, and their voices coming in ebbs and flows.

From the steps I was stood on (as I was facing out into the garden, watching my little sister and admiring the colours of the garden) I recall seeing a coil of midnight hidden beneath a patch of fallen leaves, a palette of blacks and raven blues that looked silken to the touch, and my dream self had no inhibitions or sense of fear- just an inclination and a desire to take that snake (which after going over, I realised that's what it was) between my palms and let it wrap itself around my wrists and flicker its tongue over my veins, admiring its ethereal beauty.

It's body was cool to the touch and hard as bullets, but soft like the undersides of a puppy and as I picked it up (one hand taking its stomach and the other hand just behind its large head) I remember its black eyes looking at me nonchalantly, but in a way as though it knew every aspect of my life- my past, my present and my future.

In slow motion I can remember watching my eyes dilate in horror as the huge head reared back, revealing its long fangs, and the vampiristic strike of its jaws, and my silence as its teeth penetrated into my index finger on my left hand and clamped down tight. There were that few seconds as nothing happened and that snake and I stared into each other's eyes like a predator's and it's prey- before I remember my little sister's look of horror as she stepped backwards onto the lawn crying, and the patter of my parent's feet down the stairs as I cried out in pain.

Nobody reached me, but before the dream ended I can remember ripping that snake's head off my finger with my right hand and flinging it unceremoniously onto the lawn, screaming obscenities at it, tiny droplets of blood running in rivulets down to my wrists. The sun remained shining in the sky and the sky remained blue. I heard no words in the dream, just murmurs and noise, and like all dreams, it slowly faded out into black.