Into the Light

Chapter 23: Demon dreams

Chapter: 23

"Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind."

Giordano Bruno

Her red linen dress gets caught in the door as it closes and locks. She feels the tug but thinks fuck it, and she walks forward as the seams slip, the threads uncoil and the thin fabric tears. It is reduced to a pile of rags hanging from the closed door. Blake cannot fight the smile.

"Hit me," he says to Devan. Her eyebrow lifts and then her hand slaps his face.

On the tattered bed, they consume each other with a gluttonous glee, bodies and minds focus to a single point. Physical pleasurable meditation, inverted, sideways, top to bottom, back to front, back to back, reaches the point of union. Eyes close and skin heats with flashes of steam. All possibilities unfold as Blake is of single purpose without any distractions. No fear, no pain, no one else. He is enveloped flesh and she is a goddess who grasps his neck. He contracts his diaphragm and the fumes escape from his lungs as her hand squeezes his carotid artery. Being choked around the neck and cock is too much for him and his trapped spirit is released.

He shudders while twisting the bed sheet in his fist. Glazed eyes roll back as the voices of the children mumble in the background of his thoughts. The lights go out for a moment and a flash cracks the walls of darkness. He growls a primal growl. The background voices bid him a farewell until the next time.

"Snap out of it, Blake... Blake!" Devan says a few inches away from his ear.

"That was great," he says as his eye red with broken capillaries blink open. She looks concerned.

"You scared the shit out of me. I'm never choking you out again. You started to freak out. You drooled."

"Don't worry. Everything is perfect. Everything is so clear," he says and knows that to clear his sight, he must blink. After Devan leaves, Blake cultivates a fervor as he tears his room part looking for his notebook. Relief comes when he writes down the words.

The next day, the bookstore signing Darius improvised has a small but animated line. His head and eyes ache from drinking with Stiggy the night before and aspirin does nothing. Behind a stack of books and Darius's eight by twelve headshots on a fold out table, Stiggy pops a vitamin and swig down the rest of his bottled water. He passes a bottle to Darius who is chewing on a handful of cashews.

Stiggy wants to enlighten Darius but fears it will be too soon, as the actions and accidents are looms and the fabric of change can rip violently. The first communion only enlivened Stiggy's zeal and he resigns to gaining Darius as an ally for later exploits. Darius and Stiggy part ways for dinner but make plans for the morning.

Back in his room, Blake washes his face once with witch-hazel, then with hand soap, and finally with a moisturizing bar scented with kiwi. He settles back in his boxers to read the rest of The Day of the Locust by Nathanel West and as he reclines on the lumpy bed a fog appears and passes through him. A fear almost tangible, as if it could grab him by the leg from under the bed, devours the room. Blake shuts his eyes and cannot feel anything. He thinks nightmares are made of this paralyzing miasma. A voice, a gentle voice, says to him, "Life is your companion not death and you must convince the third. You must tell him his ancestors invoked you in the dream. You are who he is seeking and he is the fallen Storm God.

Angry eyes open. Blake shakes like a soaked New Foundland puppy.

"Fine!"

A knock at the door interrupts his glare.

He grabs a black wool hat to conceal his sweating forehead. He looks through the peep and it is Devan with a white flower.

"What the Hell? The cap no shirt look doesn't do it for you. You look like Thuggy Smurf."