Dreams II

Last night it was her. No, it was them. Some sick composite. One morphing into the other, fluid and liquid. No definite line between where one ended and the other began. There was a calculated cruelty in their eyes.

The house was hers, though, the first one. So was the father, I even called him Peter. I think that I might have called her by her name too, or referenced it, or maybe just assigned it after, later, in the dim light filtering through the blinds, in the haze, the muddled middlewhere.

The specifics are hard to grasp right now, every moment makes them slip farther away. I remember that house, a bedroom, a pool out back, and a chain link fence on either side of the yard running back farther than I could see. Bamboo mats, faded and dried by the sun, were tied to the fence. She was there. It was over, but it wasn’t. I knew better, knew that I should leave. That what I was seeking there would never be found, only dangled in front of me, just out of reach. But for some reason I was there. She made me suffer and delighted in it.

Other things are coming to me in a flash. How they tie in, and where they fit I have no idea. I’m not even sure if they are accurate. How can I be sure of anything right now? I see a strip mall parking lot. The roof of the building a red Spanish tile. Garish and somber. My view of the place is from a canted angle in the parking lot looking towards the building. The shot tilting up and to the left. Almost like a crane shot. Signs in yellow cut-out letters flicker above the store shops. She/they aren’t in this segment, not physically, but their presence overshadows the whole thing.

The only thing that was a constant was the eye color. The eyes were always brown. On that level it was always her. On that level it makes sense. It was always her looking at me in that way. Nothing else has ever made me feel so disarmed, vulnerable, hated and worthless. If you have never been there, then there is no way for me to make you understand. It is something that can only be achieved through experience.

I could do nothing but follow her around like a broken dog that knows nothing but the world, and hand, of his cruel master. Every part of me wanted to leave, to break free. All night this level of helplessness and humiliation is what I lived.

In the morning I woke jarred, with a hurt that ran from the hollow of my chest to behind my eyes. Scooped out and numb, the rest of the day I walked around skull-fucked. In my waking hours I refuse to give them any such power over me. At night, though, they worm their way out of my subconscious, tormenting me in that semi-lucid mire, body slicked with a cold layer of sweat, I know it for what it is, and yet I can do nothing but wait for it to play out.

I am shrink-wrapped in exhaustion.