i exist [as the definition of nonexistence]

what do you dream about?

Girls made of jewels, castles built from ice, forests of mirrored trees. My reflection is always different. There is a man with twenty faces, and each one wants to eat me alive. Mama says the Devil is handsome, but I think he looks like a nightmare in a suit. The lady who owns the wishing well throws bodies into the depths, and her teeth are rows upon rows of gravestones.

There's an angel boy too, with large black eyes like buttons and wings that span the room he is trapped in. They're a pretty pearl color, like his feathery hair. I want to save him, but the chains around his feet burn me. His wounds ooze gold that smells like death.

Papa used to tell me stories about the Sand Man, but now Papa's strung up in the trees like a marionette. The Sand Man is not lulling me to sleep, but rather trying to wake me up with his five sets of arms, his touch that grates against my skin.

I dream about apocalypse, plague, disease. I dream about magic, murder, mayhem. I dream about past, present, future.

There is a house, and each room leads to the same room, a constant loop, and in each room there is a book. And the book is blank, but I know I have to fill the pages. I don't have ink, but I have a knife. And then a girl wanders into the room, and a voice tells me I love her, and I have to choose. Kill her to tell the story, or kill myself.

I dream about a staircase that ends in a wall. The wall is actually a window, and through it I see a man hanging himself with his intestines. The Lady of the Wishing Well is looming over him, back hunched and rippling like waves. Within the span of a blink, she snaps her head around to face me.

I dream about a kiss. It is a very important kiss. The lips dissolve against me until the person I am kissing envelopes me, and we are the same person, two separate minds. I am me and I am