Nightmares

     Warm arms wrap around me, carry me through the thick oil, lay me on a tumble of fallen angels’ wings. Snow and soft find their way to my brow, and the goose down beneath my head reaches up to cover my neck as well. For a moment a gentle cat’s paw presses to my cheek, but then it is gone, and the nightmares that sent me to sob under the sparkling silver needles return.

     For a moment only the distant boom of a foghorn echoes, but then the wolves tear into my flesh and I know they have found me from the rawness of my throat. They change and show me what I keep trying to avoid, tearing into the scars again and again. All those who have hated me rip my skin, bit by bit revealing the weak muscles and the shards of a heart beneath.  All those who I had ever loved, the ones I gave my trust, remind me of how they broke my mirror and myself again and again and again.

     They bring great vats of lemon honey that tell me it’s my fault, it’s my fault, it’s my fault, and drench the torn peach fabric. The red that’s everywhere dilutes and lightens, no longer black in the night and the trees and the cold. Slowly the bones break under the weight of years pushing everyone out, and the fabric of the lies binds tights as all the actors I’ve ever been pull upon it and start to drag the muscle free from the bones that have already started to splinter.

     I can feel the pain all over, just like the last day I had with the only ones I’d ever given all of myself to, the day that I ended with the press of a lever. My fingernails slide over what little is left of my battered body, tracing the places where scarred skin used to be, skipping over the slippery flesh that is no more. My eyes cry tears that I thought were lost in the fire of my creation, but this much torture brings down the tiny crystals of light as everything breaks and all is lost but the pain and the heat. Despite the drifts it burns, and I feel the shadowed heart move slowly, drugged by the tepid weight of all my sins. Then it stops as my eyes fly open one last time.

     They snap as they walk, moving closer, the silver of the moon scraping and clanging. They wrap me with thick beads, dressing me up for a fabulous ball. Then they take me the place I do not want to be, where all stare at the scattered scraps that are not nearly enough. They take me to dance, but my feet do not remember the steps as I plummet to the ocean below and they bring me back up over and again, never enough for the air to rush in, always too little with the slaps for steps that fall on cold silver coins.

     One of the crowd that drones on and on in the language of clowns steps up to me, taking me into his arms and spinning me away from the tormenters and garish paint on ugly faces, mouths stretched by fangs and dresses tearing at the seams of chicken legs. I fold my arms over nearly bare and get ready for the rest of the dream, knowing it will only be worse from here.

     But then the clouds embrace us, and twirl into a golden dress that lets me know it’s all okay. The boy with raven feathers on his forehead spins me round as wisps of mist twirl to join the sliver of moon. My feet remember all they’ve forgotten, twisting up into a dance to rival them all.

     The dream is a good one until I go crashing back to the cursed ballroom once again, falling through clouds that will no longer hold my weight. His fingers leave mine and the hair grows long and turns from night to day as he tries to get me back from the grip of those wretches’ things below. I see the lips that were so close for a moment grow tired and slow and say goodbye as the oil of those daemons fills my eyes, and finally as my body cries the whole of the world turns to night.

      Sobs wrack my body and an ocean pools to life around me. I go spinning through salty foam, breath tearing my torso apart and white crystals covering me as I drag the tangles of old razor to shore. My fingers nearly fall as I carefully untangle the wire around a fish tail on cold leftover volcano. I look up as screams echo through the empty canals, and watch as someone is lost to the waves. I try to get back to the water that brings all of the scars pain, because I know that child being lost to the waters better than any soul that had ever broken my heart. It is too late.

     I see a pool of black spread out as my fish’s tail dices the waves, and know the small head has gone under as oil spreads to where I cry. It wraps around me, dragging me down, saying my fault. The world is lost, along with her. I see the sky bloom into violet before it disappears beneath the oily waves.

         I am running. The sky is black with lost hopes, all I know is don’t stop, don’t stop, just don’t stop. I can hear whatever it is chasing me move faster, and I fly even more recklessly, feet trying to find rare holds in the thick grass. The voice of the beast cries out as I tumble onto the ground, beneath the pine that could have brought me safety, but now will be the marker of my grave as cold claws find me.

     I wake in an empty room that quickly fills with others in the battered stripes of the worst birds. My mother stands on the platform before me, with woolen fiber lace around her neck. Then the platform drops with an ear whistling scream and the noose turns to flame as the tears choke for the last time. Then my father is dragged from the crowd by soldiers with ravens’ skulls covering their faces and I know that the same fate awaits him.

     The cactus brown wraps round and round and then is yanked down in a puff of smoke, or maybe shadow. It envelopes him, turning him into nothing but the distant memory of a lightning storm. I fall to the cold tiles, holes filling me, empty heart ripping itself to bits with hunger for something that has never been, and will never be. My fingers burn down like candle stubs and the pain on my arms is renewed as flame and shadow twine around me. I realize, as the world is split into just these two and the endless pain, that darkness and light are really the same thing. After that it doesn’t seem so bad, to be burning and never quenched as the shadows swallow you whole.

     Because maybe there is something after. And maybe in the darkness, my parents and all those I killed long ago will wait for me.