Dead Stones [manxman] [boyxboy]

bad dreams

Some nights Luke dreamed of Lisa’s hand dithering on the grey hook of her steel cane. Other nights he dreamed of that evil evening when he was preparing dinner to Lisa’s precise orders. One minute she was sighing, “Oh Jason,” over a phone message, the next minute her body was thrashing in the air then suddenly limping and falling over like a felled tree. He chose to thank luck for catching her in time. Trent chose to praise his habit of staring at people strangely. If Luke had been concentrating on dicing the potatoes into perfect cubes, instead of studying her face, trying to understand what she meant by “sauté the onions till they are soft and translucent,” there might have been a much darker outcome.

Some nights he dreamed of go. Perhaps of the biconvex stone wedged in between his fingers, burdening heavier with the force of his stratagems, the concentrated air of Hao before him, his mind and heart unknowable. Only through the energy of stones, he could feel some fabric of Hao’s heart. Other dreams were more of excited stones, stones zooming onto and kicking off warped grids. His body convulsed in spastic delight. He bolted awake, half exhausted, half exhilarated, hard with need. Light fanned from underneath the track blinds and crept illumination up the stack of papers on the desk and down to the dusty surfboard jutting out of the closet. The air wakened him to a musty odor tempered with the taste of packaged ramen noodles.  Then he remembered he had no right to mirth when ashes could not smile.  And he fell back, hollowed, into the damp sheets, closed to his eyes, and dreamed of Lisa shivering and scalded with sweat.