Dream Two

[synapticjava]

…I am all alone. I don’t know how I am, but I just know. I look around and all I see is black. It is really damp. I am sweating because this heat is crying its broken tears in the form of density. This heat, this dampness. It is suffocating me. I feel the blackness, the darkness closing in on me. The floor beneath me is tipping, slanting. I cannot remember this sensation. I know that I have felt it before…before those times deserted me. Something from my earliest life. I can feel the rolling beneath me. The rumbling and the creaking of wood on wood. My body feels weak. My stomach lurches. I do not know how to escape. I do not know if I can escape. But I have the sense that something is coming. Something dangerous. Something fatal. I must somehow escape. But my mind is confused because my body is thirsty. This suffocating madness is killing me. All I know is that I must get out. I must find the way out of this.

I take a step forward. So far so good. I can move. I hadn’t known if I could. It is queer how if you cannot see your limbs you cannot trust that they are there, that you cannot believe in them to do their tasks. You cannot know if your legs can make the motions to escape. You cannot know if your hands can reach out and grasp the nothingness around you. All you know is the quiver of your lip. You feel the thickness of your tongue and the closing of your throats. You understand the shortness of breath and the pangs of hunger nearly causing you to double over. These things you know, you feel. The extensions you do not. Your fingers and your feet you cannot trust. And it causes a slight attack on your senses. You can almost believe that you are floating on air.

Another step. Another and another, and more still. I wonder how long I must walk. I wonder if there is no end to this torturous hateful place. I wonder if maybe I have become blind somehow. Another thing I cannot trust. After what must have been a thousand paces, though surely could have been twenty at most, my hand before me grasps a wall – crude, and made of a harsh wood. I nearly burst out of my body in fright, yet in the same instant nearly double over in silent laughter. If there is a wall, there is a door – there is a way out! I know now that I can and must get out. The sense of fading time is hard upon me. Something is coming. Coming fast and coming hard.

Quickly I starting traveling with my hands – they never let go of the wall, lest I become disoriented in this blackness and not be able to return. My hands, now dry and parched and cut from this rough wall, are crying out in pain. Yet they continue to lead me to safety. They continue to lurch along this wall, with I in tow, in search of my way out.

Soon, after finding two corners, by which learning that this is a great room with no objects in, at least along the walls. I think this must be a storage space of some sort. Only I fear that I am the storage being kept here. Still I cannot remember why anyone would do such a thing, nor anyone who would do it. Who would imprison me in this private hell? And for what reason? The answers to these questions, as well as my safety, are the reasons I must escape. I must know my enemies so that I may know defense.

Quickly I come upon a door. In my hand I grasp the knob. The thought scampers through my mind that if some person would trap me in this room, surely they would not leave the door to my prison unlocked. However, I know that I must try this doorway. It may be the only way out. I may be my only lifeline. And another thought springs forth – what if what lies beyond this door is far worse than any prison of damp and darkness? What if what is only inches away is not my freedom, but my death?

I shudder and recoil from the door, as if the latch has scalded my hand. Suddenly the sense of racing against time comes upon me again and before I can stop myself, my hand is turning the door knob. The door gives, and springs open, nearly knocking me over as it swings inside. My prison is flooded with light as if with so many billions of diamonds. And I realize I am staring into a great abyss of heaven’s tears. This is a storm, the likes of which I cannot remember ever seeing before. I turn away from the rain and the false light the dark heavens have cast down. Before me, in this murky falsetto of light, I perceive what once was my prison – a wooden room. Not a prison at all – a living quarters, empty of its belongings. There is nothing in the room to give any indication that it ever once was an inhabitable space. There are no windows in this wooden room. I wonder if there ever were any inhabitants. I wonder if maybe this was a prison after all. No matter – I am free. I have escaped. But as I turn back to the tempest outside, realization strikes me – I have not.

I am on a great ship, three masts and that same many tall powerful sails shooting up into the air. The sails, though majestic, are torn and tattered, snapping back and forth in the wind driving this storm. There is no one in sight, when in fact everyone should be here helping, before the boat capsizes or strikes land and all is lost. Where is everyone?

All at once, wave upon wave of understanding and remembrance and familiarity crushes down upon me, nearly causing my eyes to burst from my skull. Flashes of images came crashing through my memory:

My capture, my enemies. The terror on this vessel. My enslavement in that wooden tomb. One by one, the crew members of this ship being picked off. Screams in the night. Still no one came to free me. Soon, there was no one left to do so. But the creature terrorizing the men on board surely could not know me or my fate would be as theirs. Scraping and knocking and pounding on the door of my cell. Calls of help. Screams that froze the blood. Grown men weeping and crying out for their mothers, their wives, their daughters. Calling out to God in their last moments.

I suddenly understand everything. These men were not my captors, they were my saviors. The creature haunting this ship came with me. They, those brave lost men, rescued me from my homeland, where this thing found me so long ago and terrorized me. It has killed my entire family. They too came upon this voyage to safety. These men were my father’s, this my father’s vessel. First my young brother, then my sister. After a time, my mother was found hanging in one of the fishing nets. Finally, my poor father was found, only days, or was it more? ago impaled on the captain’s wheel. One of the men saw it happen. He was out of his wits and when confronted, jumped overboard screaming. After hearing of my father, I must have gone out of my mind. I remember the crew locking me in that room, in fear the monster might kill me as well, or that I may beat him to it.

How long have I been out of it? How long have I been in this now too-tiny room, listening to the men screaming for help? How many days and nights have I been cowering in the middle of that room, afraid to admit anyone entrance, afraid to permit my exit? The condition of this ship whispers that it could have been centuries if days. I wish I knew. Time running out.

I know not what to do. Is the creature still here? Now that he has destroyed everything I hold dear, will he now let me live? Will he now leave me to be?

At once, I perceive I am being watched. I turn completely around. I see no one or nothing that could cause this sensation. Yet I feel it so overwhelming, I suddenly feel violated.

And then there is movement directly in front of me. My heart stops. My breath shudders to an end. I feel the life drain out of me and the fear freeze me to the waterlogged deck. Through my now unblinking eyes, I see this monster. He is quickly coming to me. Faster and faster he races. I can not even make out his shape. I perceive claws and teeth. I know he is the shape of a man. But a man he is not. Animal he is not. He is too solid and bulky for a spirit, too fast and silent for something from this earth. Too quickly he is right before me. Before I can utter a word or make a defense I…