Ain’t This Some Shit

The dream started as dreams do, with much theoretical randomness made manifest in shapes, sounds, and colors that have as much meaning as white noise. I knew it for what it was and allowed myself to bounce along the glittering and the spiraling with all that glorious Mad Hatter air. But there was a sense of distraction to the entire scene. Much like how one hides themselves from the recent bad news by going to a play.

Well then, I guess I better stop the goofing off and start dealing with this shit.

The maddening caravan of cacophony and flashing lights paused long enough for me to step off. I watched it recede into the distance, gaining clarity of thought with every inch that increased between me and it. I saw the other passengers of the wild dream trip. They were desperate to be caught up in the addiction of it all, and hurling furious epithets at any others that wanted to stop the carnival world and get off the ride. None of them looked back at me. To them, I no longer existed.

A movement catches my attention. There is a person walking along the scar the plowing wheels had made. He waves at me as he approaches. Once within earshot he yells to me, “Don’t step in any shit!”

Well, yea.

Then I note he is doing his best to remain in the tracks that had dug down to bare earth. As I look around, I realize there has been a sickly sweet smell in the air, as if a nasty flatulence had crept towards me from some trolling gentleman. As I look around, I suddenly wish I was at the play, for indeed I am surrounded by shit. Every where around me, are layers on layers of feces.

As my new companion walks up, he admonishes me to raise my dress hem so it will not be corroded by the masses of freshly laid, human sized, greenish tinted feces that covers the field as far as the eye can see.

I follow his advice, and see I am dressed in a steampunk costume. Shades of grey, white, and black with the occasional flash of red for accent. At least I have functional sturdy boots on. I have no hat though, I left that behind on the caravan.

“Everyone tries to stay on the ride.” I see he is dressed in a white salwar kameez with golden embroidered trim, but speaks with an American “Southern” drawl. “Anyone that tries to get off is ridiculed, and sometimes restrained. Why would anyone want to leave such fun and be exposed to all this shit?” He gestures, careful not to step out of the track. “What few on the ride realize, is that they are the ones producing all this shit in the first place!” He laughs heartily, but allows the laughter to die a slender death when he sees I refrain from joining in.

“Ahem. Yes. Well.” He tries to cover the awkward silence as we both look around us. In every direction, is an endless field of shit. Toxic shit. Balls and cords of the material have covered almost every inch of dirt and vegetation. Far away in the distance are mountains and trees. But the caravan had flattened the landscape as it approached, the better for the passengers to not be unduly jolted by the ups and downs of reality. “Well, I have no idea where we are. If you would pick a direction, Madame, let us begin to find a less shitty place to converse in.” He bows with great theater.

I get a glimmer that I’m dreaming, but the sickly sweet smell of the feces quickly chases away stray thoughts. “Was that building there before?” I point northeast of us, to a tall building I had not seen on my first inspection of the landscape.

He comes over next to me. “Err, um. Well, it was behind me, somewhat. In the glare, I overlooked it. Well, then. Let us proceed!” I am a bit annoyed with his commanding words. But, as I look in all directions, I have to agree, the building has a better chance of being shit-free than just standing around here. He holds his hand out to me, ostensibly to steady myself. I see through the faux chivalry, and realize he’s hoping I would allow myself to be dependent on him.

As I step carefully over and around the greenish mounds, I see him almost topple over trying to appear gentlemanly. “You know, you’re supposed to tiptoe through the tulips, not minefields. If you’re trying to impress me, knock it off before you wind up face down.” He comes to a stand still and starts protesting. I just grunt unladylike at him, and continue making my way forward. As I pull further away from him, he realizes I’ve nailed him and just starts ungainly, but cleanly, making his own progress.

The further away from the caravan trail we walk, the closer to the building we arrive, the less filth is strewn about the fields. “Just how much shit can a people make, anyway!” I exclaim once I’m able to take five steps without having to change directions. “And this is all still fresh!”

“Well…”, he jumps a few piles and quickly scampers back to my side. “There are a lot of people on the caravan. Don’t let the tracks fool you. The wheels are only so big, but the caravan is very wide.”

“The people still on, they’ve built up a whole way of living, haven’t they. It’s not just a diversion anymore, it’s a way of life.” I pause and look behind me. Unending fields of feces steam in the morning sun.

He stops and catches his breath. To my amusement, he tries again to present himself as the strong protector and all around know-it-all. “Yes, to them, it’s a way of life now. They don’t want to remember what it was like before they got on the caravan. They only want the fun and the party and the amusement.”

I think about my own experiences and what prompted me to want to leave. “And if no one else is providing the amusement, they have to make it themselves. That’s why they don’t want anyone to leave. They would rather have the lie.”

“And leave shit in their wake.”

“Won’t the caravan come to a stop? There are only so many places where this amount of waste is tolerated. Sooner or later, the party has to stop.” He doesn’t answer me right away. I look up, and realize he has wandered off. I glance around, fearing he may have stepped in a particular slippery issue and had fallen. Indeed, I soon spy his white cloth in a fearful lump. I call out to him, as I start to make my way over.

He stands up, beaming with glee, holding a cluster of mushrooms in his hands! “Aha! I knew I’d find some, just had to wander away far enough from the tracks!” The mushrooms were the size of his hands, dark brown like portobellos, but with a multitude of red and black dots that persuaded me to stay far away from them. I note he has broken out in a sweat, despite our relative slowness of movement. There is a gleam in his eyes that also concerns me. I make sure to keep my distance, from the mushrooms, and from him.

He holds them out to me. “Want a taste?” I shake my head, declining. “Good, they are hard to find and spoil quickly!” He takes one and quickly devours it. “Oh. Delicious. A very acrid flavor at first, but once you get used to it, it’s sweeter than sugar!”

“You found those, growing in the human feces.” It wasn’t a question, as it was a forced acknowledgement of fact. He just nodded as he eagerly devours another one. “You’re eating mushrooms that spawned from unprocessed shit.” He nods again, laughing. The mushrooms staining his teeth a sickly green and red. “You’re addicted to them.” He stops laughing.

“No! I’m not addicted! I NEED these! Otherwise the world would drive me mad! Don’t you know what it’s like on the caravan when no one is doing anything? When there are only your own thoughts and they stab you with the knives of your life over and over?” He’s furious now, and started stomping towards me, his feet accentuating the increasing delirium.

“Um. Yea. I was confronted with my own thoughts, and that’s why I left the caravan. You can’t live in Happy World forever. Life isn’t always happy. The caravan is a lie, one huge self-delusional lie. There’s fun times and hurting times, but they are both living. Dude, you’re deluding yourself. Why did you even get off?”

He stops advancing towards me. He holds out the remains of the mushrooms in his hands. “These.” He looks back at his deteriorating prize, and starts to chew on them again. I put some distance between me and the now glistening man. I note where the building is, and start to circumnavigate around him to get back in the proper direction. He notes my movement and clutches the melting remains to his chest. “I can’t find them on my own. I need one of you fucks to find it for me. Like a pig. That’s all you are, a feral pig gone to root. Or rut. I hoped you were a rutting pig, but that’s okay, I’ll take what you found, piggy. The ‘shrooms only grow for a person that’s given up on the caravan. So they grew for you. But I found them first! And they’re mine! All mine! So back off, piggy!”

I note with frightened amusement, that he is making more piggish noises as he greedily slurps the last of the mushrooms from his fingers, than I ever could in a pig squealing contest. The mushrooms now completely devoured, he roars at me to lead him to more mushrooms. But his speech devolves as he yells, losing consonants and inflection, until he can only squeal at me. He starts to charge towards me, slogging through the feces that dot the ground between us. But he slips and crumples forward in a ball of collapsing cloth. The cloth jerks around for a bit, then a large male pig emerges. It is clear the mushrooms have transformed the man into this pig.

He runs around, squealing, oinking, and making other pig noises. He stops now and then, to root directly in the strewn fecal matter. When he lifts his head, it is clear he has found more mushrooms. The transformation from man to pig is completed quickly. The feral pig looks at me with a porcine eye. He glares at me, as if to charge, but I stand my ground.

“Run, pig. They’re coming for you.” The pig understands my words and begins to run around frantically. Finally he picks a direction and runs off as fast as his cloven feet can carry him. I look ahead to see what he could be running towards, and see the caravan in the far distance. I am not surprised to see it.

I turn my back on the caravan, the pig, and the madness inherent in both. Facing the building squarely, I continue on, passing less and less feces as I do. Onward and onward, the field becomes nothing more than bare dirt, then random tufts of grass, then thick waves of grass. Up ahead, the lone building rises tall from the small city that surrounds it. As the scene subtly changes, I wonder again, if I am dreaming, but the thought is chased away by suburban smells of bakery shops and car exhaust.

As I walk up to the edge of the city, I find myself in a strange borderland of urban and rural environments. On the grass of the field, is a standalone brick pizza oven. An artisan pizza maker and his assistants stand at rustic tables filled with fresh vegetables, sausages, and meats covered with muslin. The oven is hot and ready. There are people at nearby tables, patiently waiting to be fed. But the chef had no pizza dough!

On the nearby concrete of the city, is a pizza factory. Henry Ford would approve of the mass production techniques of the stainless steel ovens and the precision laying of mass-produced marinara sauce, homogenized cheese, and precisely shaped pepperoni flavors food stuffs. There were boxes to be filled and plastic wrap to be sealed. But the factory had no pizza dough!

Looking around at everyone waiting for pizza dough, I look over my shoulder, and see a bakery delivery truck. The driver is no where around, and the contents of the truck have been rummaged through. Inside, I see boxes that are labeled for the artisan chef and the pizza factory, but the dough has been pulled out and mashed into one giant blob of pizza dough! I call over the chef and the factory supervisor to see for themselves.

The supervisor is beside himself, he’s ready to cancel today’s production and send everyone home. The artisan chef stand there poking at the giant blob of dough. “It’s not mixed completely. I can see that my dough and the factory dough are still separate.” He looks at me. “Can you see the difference?”

The supervisor is still going through hysterics as I lean in closer to look. “Yes, I can see the difference. Most of this dough is pale cream. But there are blobs of darker beige here and there.”

The artisan calls his assistants to bring over a spare table, cloth, and knives. “This will go faster if you help us out. All you have to do is cut the dough. Here’s a table for you to work on, and I can spare you one assistant.” A teenager comes to my side. Rosy faced, almost like a cherub, he is strangely cheery about the situation.

The supervisor, despite having a solution so close at hand, is still frantic about the situation. I call over the shift foreman, and ask if he can spare a person to run pizza dough to the factory as I separate it. The foreman volunteers for the position himself, and soon has a portable conveyor belt assembled to the table.

Both groups of people have such faith in me, that I am compelled to give it a shot.

Hands washed, dried, and gloved, I start pulling and cutting at the pizza dough. Despite the mixup, the two types of dough separate easily from each other. The artisan dough is collected in a large bowl, that the artisan’s assistant personally runs from my cutting table to the chef. The factory’s dough is slung to the foreman, who shapes it into the size and form the factory equipment needs to perform to optimum efficiency. The supervisor stops flailing about and watches as I separate the dough fast enough to keep both pizza operations flowing smoothly.

I am reminded of the phrase, “separating the wheat from the chaff”, and in doing so, achieve lucidity just as I toss the last of the dough to the foreman. The factory now has enough dough to fulfill the ordained quota for the day, and the artisan chef has satisfied customers. The supervisor just turns and walks away from me without a word, but the foreman thanks me profusely for helping.

The artisan chef sends his assistants to break down the table and help me clean up after slinging the dough around. He tells me that his customers watched me, many of them thinking this was all part of an elaborate entertainment. Those that knew about the predicament, did not explain to those that did not. I get a queasy feeling in my stomach, as I am reminded of the caravan again.

Now late afternoon, I am again drawn to the tall building that dominates the small town’s cityscape. As I turn the corner to my destination’s block, I hear two friends talking. Brad Hatter and Alice Murasaki are strolling along in the afternoon sun. Hatter has something wrapped up in long swaths of dark cloth. He alternates between carrying it in one hand, and holding it over his shoulder. He speaks in bright tones to Alice. She’s dividing her attention between his words and the ice cream that is threatening to drop all over her white and purple dress.

They stop at the entrance to the large building long enough for Alice to finish her ice cream. As she throws away the napkin in the public trash, she looks up long enough to see me. “Keri! There you are! Come on!”

Hatter and Alice wait for me to finish walking down the block to catch up with them. I know I am dreaming, but to see people I know in the waking world, here in the dreaming world, always makes me wary. Alice wraps an arm around mine. “Come on, Keri, you’re just in time.”

“In time for what? And, if you’re here, who’s taking care of the bunnies?” Alice stops and looks at me strangely.

“In time to see what Brad made, and you know I have rats, not bunnies. Are you okay? And why do you smell like bread dough?” She caught the catch question, and answered properly. I relaxed a little towards her.

“I had to slog some dough around. What did Brad make, and why is this building so familiar?” I leaned against her gently and turned a suspicious eye on Hatter instead. Hatter returned the studying stare, but with a gentle smirk on his lips that irritated the hell out of me. I wouldn’t be surprised if a certain Bastard was hiding behind Hatter’s face, after all he hid behind my best friend’s face once already. I’m sure masquerading as Hatter would be even more humorous, to him.

“Come on inside, Keri, and I’ll show you.” Hatter’s voice was teasing and lyrical, not at all threatening, and with no undertones of concealed glamour. He opens the door, and with great flair, ushered Alice and me inside. Alice elbowed me gently as we entered, and whispered an admonition to behave. She followed the whisper with, “This is Koshari’s building! I thought you’ve been here before!”

Looking around the lobby, I saw nothing that stood out to jog my memory. “Koshari? Koshari Braggins, right?” I knew him as a friend of Alice, but didn’t know he was of such import to have his own building in a dreamscape.

“Yea, that’s the one! You’ve met him.” Hatter calls us over to the elevator, where he takes us to the top floor. I forgot to count floors as well as eye the control panel, so I have no idea how many floors Koshari’s building has. It felt like a ten floor trip, but in dreams, nothing is as it seems.

There is only one apartment on the top floor, a penthouse suite. Alice enters first, followed by Hatter, then myself. The suite is arranged as a meeting place. Chair, tables, and bookshelves abound.

Hatter loosens the cloth wrappings on his prize and shows it off for Alice and me to see. It is a tall staff, hand worked and hand carved. Runes are burned in a spiral that descends around the length of the staff. I recognize some of them, but refrain from speaking their meaning out loud. I know I am very close to a boundary of ownership, and I don’t feel like pissing off any Aesir, Vanir, or Thurse at the moment.

It is well done, however, and I remark on that. It is a labor of love and devotion. And it has been accepted by the Aesir it is dedicated to. Even several feet away, I can feel a resonant warmth from the staff. Any concerns that Faggot might be hiding behind Hatter’s face is summarily dismissed. Hatter accepts my compliment and winks at me.

“It talks. Want to hear?” Alice brightens up at the question. I wonder what the hell is my dreamscape about to surprise me with. Hatter starts tapping on the head of the staff and thumping it lightly on the floor. He is playing the staff like a percussion instrument, giving it a voice of rhythm. Alice and I listen and feel, both of us smiling and nodding along in rhythm.

She pulls a chair close to Hatter. He is deeply engrossed in the rhythm he is playing, to the point I wonder if the rhythm isn’t playing him. Not all drums have a skin. She closes her eyes and starts clapping along with him. I feel a tug to join, the percussion calling me with every thump. I want to join in, but I have no canes nor staffs of my own, and clapping would not be enough for me.

I intentionally step back a bit, to give me sonic space. I watch Hatter’s face, he is deep in the ecstasy of the rhythm. He may be in the same room as Alice and myself, but he is not playing for us anymore.

Quietly, I step away from them and go to one of the adjoining rooms. Here is a set of lockers. All of them are locked. Surprisingly, I reach into my pocket to find I have keys to each and every one of them. I puzzle over this for a moment. Why would I have keys to lockers in Koshari’s building?

Well, since I have the keys, might as well use them, right? (Right?)

I check all the lockers in the penthouse suite. I find many staffs and canes, but none of them are mine, so I don’t even examine them. I lock up the lockers as I close them and continue on.

In the main room, Hatter and Alice are still jamming with each other. I am relieved to see her happy, and glad that Hatter and I are starting off our real life friendship on good terms. But, I’m not in the waking world at the moment. I’m dreaming, and feeling an almost desperate need to find a cane or staff to join the impromptu percussion band.

I leave the suite, and start checking the other lockers, one by one. Unlike the penthouse loft, all the lockers of the other floors are in the main hallway. There is no need to enter the other apartments to check them. Yet, still, after ten floors (including ground floor and loft), there are no canes or staffs that I could use. All those I find have been claimed by others, and I do not have the right to take them, even for a short time.

Just to be thorough, I take the elevator to the basement. There, in a pile next to the furnace door, are partially worked, and unworked sticks and branches. The sign on the wall above them reads, “Rejected Wood Here”. To be sure, I read the sign, look away, then read the sign again. So much for the “tried and true” test of dreaming. The sign remains the same. Most of the rejected wood has obvious flaws that make them unusable for canes or staffs.

In a workshop, I find new and refurbished canes and staffs laying on a table. These have no owners, or were given up by their previous owners as they upgraded. From this pile, I can have any that I choose. I tap and thunk and wield each cane and staff, but none have a sound that would resonate with me.

Finally, I turn to the rejected pile outside the furnace door. As I reach through, I find a branch has lept into my hand. Pulling it out, I see why it was not accepted. The branch is barely an inch and a half thick, and very flexible. It is also curved, warped, and bowed almost to the point of non-Euclidean geometry. There is not a single inch of straight wood anywhere in this branch. Because of the flexibility, it will not hold a person’s weight. Because of the extreme curvature, it could not even function as a costume piece. One end was partially cut, partially shattered, as if someone had tried to trim the end and the branch violently broke while doing so. But as I tapped it against the floor, the sound it made echoed through my body and resonated deeply in my bones.

My initial intent was to bring the branch up to the penthouse, and join Hatter and Alice in their percussion jam. But as I continued to test the branch, something came over me and I found myself trapped in my own rhythm. With the something, came someone who descended over me like a warm cloak. I started dancing to and with the rhythm. My feet adding another layer of percussion to the room.

The descending warmth was gently overpowering, closing my eyes and opening my mouth. My voice sang a strange song in a strange language that I did not recognize and yet completely understood. I danced and tapped unrelentingly to the song, an old man’s song, while the scent of strong rum swirled around me in the air.

For a brief moment, I had a choice. To allow the presence to flow over me, or to cease the riding and become myself again. I made the willful choice to surrender to the presence. I did not feel in harm’s way. If anything, it was like the dance of an old friend. The scent of rum intensified and for several hours I played on the branch like a stick drum, shuffled an old man’s dance, and sang a warbling melody.

Finally, wistfully, the song ceased and the presence lifted off of me. As it receded, I all but collapsed against the closest wall to rest and catch my breath. As I sit, I note the sign above the rejected pile. Some of the wood had obscured it earlier, and my digging around revealed the burn date for the wood. Tomorrow. Not for this piece, I had to save it.

Having rested, I went to an unclaimed locker, and verbally told it that it was mine. A symbol appeared on the locker, that told all who could read it that I had claimed it. I was worried how the out of shape wood would fit in the slim staff locker, but as I examined the branch again, I found the wood had straightened itself out! It still had a crooked, knotty look to it, and it still had not a single straight inch anywhere in its length, but it now fit inside the staff locker.

Just as I locked it inside, Koshari came out of the elevator. “There you are. It’s almost sunset, time to lock up the building.” I’m still confused at Koshari’s familiarity, and at the existence of the building in general. But, hey, it’s only a dream, right?

Koshari checked the furnace and the boiler, while I verified all the lockers were indeed shut up tight and locked. He entered the elevator landing a few step before I did, but when I closed the door behind me, he was already gone. When I went to the elevator, I noted that the floor sign was now saying 10th Floor. When I turned around, instead of facing the Utility Room door, I was now facing the grand windows at the top of the building. In the alcove where the grand windows were set, I saw a clump of cloth tucked into a corner. Sticking out of the cloth, was the butt end of a rifle and the glint from a scope.

Just as it registered what I was looking at, I heard a boy cheerily call out from the stairs, “Hey Lady! What’s going on?” I look over to see two boys were sitting on the stairs. The one that called out could be about fourteen years old, the other boy is slightly younger, about thirteen years old.

I put on my best Don’t Shit Me face and tell them, “It’s time to shut down the building. Every one out.” I glare at the older boy. The younger doesn’t think I can hear him loudly whisper to the older, “No, not yet! We’re supposed to meet here tonight!”. He gets slapped for the outburst. As I suddenly pretend to drop my keys and pick them up, I hear the older whisper back, “Shut up, he’s sneaking in after lockdown!”.

“Well, this floor is done. And the elevators are shut down, so you two. Downstairs. Now. I’m right behind you.” I start for the stairs, but they don’t want to move. As I approach them, I deploy my Glare of Irritated Mother. They look up at me and instinctively run down the stairs. As they run down a flight ahead of me, they think I don’t see them as they run across the floor and ascend as I descend.

I don’t give chase, instead, I catch up to Koshari and tell him about the boys, the rifle, and the third boy supposed to join them tonight. He smiles, nods, and tells me to continue checking lockers as I descend.

Finally on the ground floor. Hatter and Alice are waiting for me. Hatter has wrapped up his staff in the black cloth again, but now it’s tied with a leather thong. Koshari emerges from the elevator with the rifle slung over his shoulder, and a boy’s neck in each hand. The younger is crying from fear and the older is threatening empty promises. Hatter holds the doors open while Koshari roughly tosses the boys outside. Koshari removes the rifle from his shoulder, and snaps the balsa wood mockup over his knee, throwing the pieces after the boys.

As Hatter, Alice, and I leave, Koshari locks himself into the building. He knows where the third boy is going to sneak in at, and intends to deliver some disciplinarian advice, personally.

“Keri, you missed all the fun!” Hatter is still in good spirits. “Alice was dancing. DANCING! I needed a witness to blackmail her with!” They both laugh. As we say our goodbyes, Alice notes I have a rum scent around me.

“Well, Keri, who was your dancing partner?” Who indeed. I have an idea who it could have been, but that’s best considered privately. The three of us say our goodbyes, and each walk a separate direction away from Koshari’s building. As the sun sets, the dream ends.

Make of that, what you may.