SRθ: Grim Inquiries (2023-2024)

Sit.28: The Dream

As soon as I walked through the door, I collapsed. My head felt foggy, my gut punched, and my knees went weak. I could barely stand straight before, from stress, and now I wasn't standing at all. Everything went not black, but grey.

WAIT

My whole body goes numb with shock
at something which has not yet transpired
what hands have bent those on the clock
and why are there so many fires?

* * *

I dreamt I was in an immaculate hall of fancy doors and staircases, white as snow and gold with brass, each leading to each other and to the next. Some went upside-down, others sideways, and gravity played little part in how I travelled them. Somehow, I managed to spend what felt like a blurring several days, even two weeks, of mental time trapped inside this winding illusion. I was finally done, and tired, and scared, and ready to lay down and quit myself to the careening void all around me and below... when I found for myself a door that led to something spectacular which I'd never seen before. It was a mirror, but like one made of water suspended in the air, in thin layering. It showed other versions of me, and my friends as I've met them, but completely different – same faces, different clothes, different worlds. Some had a strange, filmy, shiny material in cut-out pieces all over their bodies, like pasty armor, colors too bright for any cloth and dye. Others: grey suits, tight-fitting and official, in a city like the African one, but darker... much more pitch-black, and unfriendly-looking. The stone towers were cut as clean as gems, but still rough on the sides, with hard, square edges. Even the windows were perfectly-cornered black cutouts, depressions in a grey slate monolith. Then there were those in a future so far-off, they had animal ears and tails, and carriages flew, and nothing seemed to make sense in there... least of all their clothes, a mish-mash of fake-looking, scratchy material and metal buttons. Their skin was exposed like angled wedges, in the oddest places... some even at the thigh, and it tightly yet openly exposed almost their entire crotch. It was sexy, invigorating to look at, and most of all, incredibly strange. And I saw in each watery mirror a person just like myself, looking back at me, but with variant skin and hair – some of their styles were curled, others poofed, more waved, each of differing length. Colors varied too, ranging from black, to blonde, to brown, to outright obnoxiously red, and sometimes, a light skyish blue. Even their build and weight seemed to be unpredictable, and a cavalcade of bodily options waited behind each new portal. But every single one of them had some kind of chronicle on their person, and a wild, outlandish persona to capture their inner essence: a journal for one, with drawings of their cuter side made in pen with flowers across their hair; a box of light that contained flying words, with a poorly scribbled mad scientist in hatchety lines and messy, clouded tones; and a metal slab much the same as the box of light, where paint sprung forth rainbowed color into pure white space, from a pen with no ink – and on that page, from rainbow, formed a daring, animalistic child with bat wings, a tail, and light-blue hair. And it was me, too, upon seeing it – I could see in her face and teal eyes my own soul, smiling back at me. Then, in the past, I saw an Egyptian child of royalty (but not heir to the throne), who made stick-impressions on parchment and then again in clay, almost identical to the first set of marks for some kind of re-focusing ritual... perhaps in the hopes of making their vision more clearly refined, and to present a finer tale. To make their story knowable to the world.
Then, all at once, I was in a strange space with had no ceiling, nor any floor. And then, again confused and with no sense for where I was, I landed gently, floating into a room with a floor so shiny and marbled it looked to me like ice. But my feet held it strongly, and it seemed to be somehow rubber-coated, if anything. A curious mix of stimuli, if ever there was one. It was a lounge of some sort, where the furniture was blue and green, and futuristic. I saw a little girl, blonde, and she was playing in the distance. She had on a white dress, and seemed to have been left to amuse herself in this great, wide hall. She couldn't have been older than six. Despite my worries, I left her to it, not wanting to disturb an unbothered child at whimsy's grace.
As I walked, I saw my reflection – though I was nearly bare, in women's night-gown borrowed from my previous love, he- or they, I suppose, were dressed in a grey sweater with a hood. Their skin was paler than mine, which annoyed me greatly, to my own prejudiced misfortune. A metallic strip lined the front center, neck to waist, and blue denim pants clung to his skinny, spindly legs. They were quite unlike mine in their height and thin splendor, for my legs had always been quite thick and meaty, especially at the thighs. It made me feel sad to know I was the inferior copy between us, at least in terms of physical svelte. The elbows and knees had a tight black wrap around them, accenting some kind of casual athleticism. It looked like urban wear for a millenia not my own. His black gloves and shoes moved in sway as he danced, and he begged me to mimic him, which I did with some glee. Then I skipped away, and up a stone set of steps. Above me was the sheer bluish-green sky, with white-tipped cloudy mountains in the azimuth above. Just over the hill I was climbing was a carnival of some sort, and it seemed to be completely abandoned by the sound of things.
"I must be dead," I said to myself, "And this is clearly a sort of heaven! Perhaps I'm the only one who's made it this far through the doors?" I wondered.
I gained a higher vantage by straining my thighs and knees, trying to climb harder. For a moment, I did see what looked like a metallic and mechanical wasteland of fun and frenzy, with curled french accents painted on each trim and arm of each wondrous device – the place was empty of people, but intact, and seemed great fun to me. I wanted to go more than anything, believed myself worthy of it, but the steps turned from stone into a strange, fabric-gripping black rug, and pulled me back down as soon as I could run up it. It was moving by its own accord, like a flat, wide snake accoiling itself around a set of gears. The steps flattened from rough bumps into a sheer slope, and the metallic, rubber-coated railings helped me only barely to stay above. I found on the railing next to me a red dot, which was marked with the word, 'STOP', and when pressed-in, it seemed to halt the animal device.
I tried again to climb the stairs, inspiring myself with the words, "I believe in myself, I can make this leap! I can go the distance!"
But suddenly, the track started moving again, and I saw The Betrayor's smiling, bearded face, gleaming with slimy sweat and leering down at me with a heartless laugh. He said to me, "No, you can't."
I began to fall again, and slipped down, ever lower, into the abyss of the void. One question plagued me as I made my unfair descent: just what in the bloody HELL was The Betrayor doing in a place that looked like HEAVEN?