What are “Tumbled Dreams”? These are the posts I made to my tumblr during the week because I felt they did not warrant a separate post on this blog. However, these “interstitials” often explain some of the backstory to the larger dream posts. For those readers that only read Three Different Ways, they may help explain some of the characters and sudden changes in plot and direction.
~~~
“Problem?”
“No.”
“Bullshit.”
“I sent you under the hill. Didn’t you enjoy your dream?”
“You didn’t send all of me. You can’t. You need me to be your pass into the City. So. Who was waiting for you?”
“I have been kind to you, thus far…”
“You are leashed tighter than me. You are rattling your own chains. I think your last debtor caught wind of your presence. I think a few others did as well. I think you walked into a trap. Judging from how my dream went south. I think you got your ass whipped and you found out the hard way how you limited yourself. What do you think?”
“…”
“I also think you’re running out of time. You’re behind schedule.”
“The last debt will be collected tonight, Weaver. And then I shall leave you.”
“Maybe it was just part of the dream, or maybe a spill-over from the City, but I want to make something clear. I owe no debts in the City, I am owed no debts either. The concept of debts, real, imagined, or bluffingly implied is a regular tactic among humans. You know that. They know it’s not me, now. Don’t let them bluff you.”
“…”
“Right. So. Glad we had this little chat. I’m going to wake up now. Talk to you later! Toodles!”
~~~
That moment you’re descending an enclosed circular staircase that started off as tree branches in a tight canopy, then became tree roots under ground, then became carved bedrock in a tunnel. With side rooms where you see people and entities you know, but if you want to step in, they tell you it’s a trap, they aren’t who you see them as, and to continue descending. And as the monotony starts to get to you and you catch yourself starting to zone out, the tats on your left arm (that you forgot about) flare and light up in brilliant technicolor, shocking you out of the trance and upsetting your balance causing you to trip.
Considering which tats lit up, I think someone just ran out of time.
~~~
It was waiting for me the moment I went to sleep. I was not surprised to see it came looking for me. Its mark had flared after all. But its greeting was not the friendly confirmation of status I was used to.
It was bareing its teeth in an unmistakable display of aggression.
I can’t outrun it. It can follow me to any world I jump to. I certainly can’t defeat it. I did the only sensible thing I could do.
I surrendered.
I knelt down, put my hands in my lap, and just waited. It circled me several times, still displaying aggressively. It suddenly came forward and engulfed my head in its mouth.
So many teeth. Don’t panic.
When it withdrew, leaving me intact, I saw the rest of the pack had caught up. All displaying aggression. It’s a very intimidating sight and sound. All those teeth, grating against each other, like bones in a grinder. The sight is unnerving. The sound is terrifying.
I was so focused on them, I didn’t see where I was. I feel hard ground under me. The scent of sage and dust is on the dry, cold wind. I surmise I’m in a desert, probably the one that reminds me of the Mojave desert.
“Come on, Weaver. You going to sit there all day? We need to talk.” I looked up and saw Snake Dancer. She took my hand, pulled me to my feet, and led me through the pack. They did not notice our departure.
I looked behind and saw the pack was still focused on where I had sat. Was still sitting. Or rather, the piece of me the Demon was holding on to. The further I was led away, the more my visual echo morphed into the white robed Demon.
Ke looked up at me without malice nor despair. A twinge of anger crossed kir face, but I knew not directed at me.
The pack’s display intensified. I wondered if they were waiting for me to be clear, or for the desert’s master to arrive.
“The more you look, the harder this will be. Don’t look.” My Nagual shadow turned my head forward in silent agreement. We three walked until we could not hear the grinding teeth anymore. We walked until night had fallen and we reached the campfire.
So far away, the pack and the Demon might as well be in a different world. At the fire, Snake Dancer, my nagual, and I talked. SD directly addressed some fears I had of her and gave me needed assurances. She may have the snake regalia, but I was given the drum. We talked on the ease of finding Nahuatl-English dictionaries online (very easy), and the folly of assuming 1:1 cultural translations from them.
We talked of Snake and his absence. Of his forms and the names he could claim but refuses to do so with me. Of the regalia giving SD form and the mutable nature of my nagual. We talked of many things.
So it was quite a while before I noticed I was bleeding from my chest. “My ribs are busted out… when did this injury happen…” My nagual grabbed my head and held it upright. SD came around the fire to complete seizing my attention.
“You don’t want to go back there. Stay here. Ignore it. The more you give it attention, the more you slip back.” She wiped the sudden blood I was coughing up. I felt a jerk on my body. Another rib snapped. I fell back into the nagual’s arms, contorting in sudden pain.
I was at the campfire, watching SD demonstrate the rattle and talk about the layered symbolism of her regalia.
I was being torn to pieces by the pack that surrounded me, and a pack of coyotes that had joined them.
She’s right. I don’t want to be at the feast. They are eating me alive.
I wake with a jerk in my room. My chest and arms are sore. I’m more tired than when I went to bed. Despite the winter cold room, I’m sweating.
This quick note, and then I’m going to try and get more sleep
~~~
I watched the guest speaker working in the nursery. Only one baby to care for. The black woman is alone. She will not abandon her white charge.
I watched the elderly, spry, white preacher come looking for her. He asked where the other caretakers were. She answered they had gone upstairs to attend service. Somehow I knew the others were white.
“You’re the featured guest, honey! How about I watch the baby and you go on upstairs and tell what God has done. Then you come right on back and the baby will still be sleeping!”
If I had a bodily form, I would be frowning. Something is trying hard to get me angry. Too hard. The race card is obvious. Big time church in the deep South. Perfectly coifed white preacher (in an Italian suit and silk tie) talking to a smart and able black woman like a six year old.
Obvious trope is obvious. What are you trying to distract me from seeing?
The scene suddenly changes. My vantage point is in midair, over a chasm. I’m facing south, facing a bridge which girders have been decorated to look like an undulating snake-like dragon. The “dragon“‘s top scales are painted rust red and tiger iron brown. The under belly is bright red and orange.
Someone is driving westward on that bridge. It is the black woman. She’s excited because she’s been accepted to attend a venue. She’s driving a black Volkswagon Beetle. The lights from the Dragon Bridge make the car look like it is the carapace of a giant beetle.
She is singing happily to herself. A nonsense song. She’s happy, and can’t contain herself. “I’m crossing… the Dragon Bridge! I’m crossing… the Dragon Bridge! And I have… my pass! I have… my pass!”
I know that bridge. Aren’t beetles symbols of crossing and resurrection?
The dream abruptly ends and I wake.
~~~
It was long single edge blade in the shape and proportions of the kukri. Easily a full meter in length, with the hilt adding another fifteen centimeters, it is a one-handed weapon. Impractical to wield by human standards, it was the Demon’s pride.
To look at the blade straight on was to look at absolute darkness. It did not reflect any light, and was a visual blight on whatever it was laying upon. When the Demon placed it on the white cloth of the table, the cloth seemed to be shrinking away from contact while the dark of the blade pulled at the cloth’s sheen.
When the blade was in use, it mostly disappeared against the background viewed. This is why the first “debtor” did not see the blade until just before the strike. The Demon had called it and brought kir hand up to kir shoulder for the killing blow, triggering the effect.
This is the blade I had intentionally called a sickle when I wrote of it. This is why the Demon took offense to my wording. A blade of such size and magnitude being reduced to a sliver of metal was a prick to kir pride. And the test of boundaries.
As you may have surmised by this post, the Demon did not survive the encounter with the pack in the desert. My headache has lifted, and I am once again my own. (Whatever that means.)
The best I have been able to piece together from what scant clues I have been able to summon, is the Demon was confronted by my protectors after taking me, and a bargain struck. Three debts owed. Three nights given to collect them. No interference in my daily or personal activities. No coercing me to assist.
The first two debts were collected without problem. The third did not go well. My long descent down the spiral staircase was the Demon’s attempt to hide kirself. Trying to steal another night, another chance to collect the debt. Living on borrowed time.
I have to give the Demon credit. The blade is a beautiful one. The humanoid face was a beautiful one. And the demonic face in the tavern’s mirror, while horrific to human eyes, had a beauty in it as well. Once you got used to looking at a face with fifty sets of lips, that sometimes parted to show eyes and sometimes parted to show teeth. (I think Giger’s works have inured me to such horrors now. It doesn’t scare me anymore, it intrigues me.)
In collecting the first debt, the Demon said to kir prey, “The difference between an angel and a demon, is perspective.”. I’m finding myself agreeing from personal experience.
It will be a while before I trust myself fully again.
A fist wrapped in the softest of cotton swaths, is still a fist.
~~~
Elvis is in the building. Or rather, in the mall. It was a dangerously cold winter night, and the mall owners had opened up the interior space to be an emergency shelter for the night. The rules for the homeless were simple. “Don’t start shit. Don’t get your shit stomped.” And for most of them, the rules were easy to abide by.
The homeless were a mix of runaway teenagers, mentally impaired that had no assistance, drug addicts, gangsta’ kids trying to prove themselves, and folks that just got caught out for the night. At first, everyone eyed everyone with suspicioun and unease. Then someone started singing, off-key. There were a lot of angry voices telling the singer to be quiet, but another voice drowned them out. The second voice was singing along. Then another. Then someone started banging on an empty bucket as a makeshift drum. Someone started whistling. And a makeshift concert erupted inside the mall.
Elvis, looking like a filthy impersonator of himself, wandered through the mall. He would stop to encourage someone feeling down. Or assist someone having trouble collecting their gear. No one knew he was Elvis. He preferred it that way.
The jovial mood of the mall encouraged conversations between the different groups. Story tellers told stories. A few food stores were opened, and hot meals were made for those taking shelter. A makeshift playground was made for the children. Homeless veterans stood visual guard, with the gangsta’ punks acting as their hands when voices weren’t enough.
Elvis walked through the mall, smiling and nodding. Here was humanity. Not in the glitz of the Vegas strip, or on the network stage. Here. Dirty. Funky. Rank. Smiling. Laughing. Caring.
But he was wary. Something good attracts attention. Attention means someone is going to try and make a buck off it. Where there is money, there are those that try to control humanity’s flow.
Sure enough, here were the news cameras. They were making the shelter out to be a den of iniquity that suddenly made good. They were talking about the people within as if they were animals that were ready to devolve into mindless rage at any moment.
The presence of the cameras were upsetting to many. They knew what the attention meant. They tried to shoo the newscasters away, but wound up being used as examples of the volatile dangers such groups of people hold. Elvis watched with despair. Could the night get any worse?
A music label’s vans pulled up. An impromptu concert for the homeless? Sure! Why not! All these Feel Good points for free! The band, forced to perform and obviously not wanting anything to do with the denizens of the shelter, pulled their gear and began their unwanted performance. Many of the homeless, finding themselves used as props for another publicity stunt, were justifiably angry and wanting to forcibly force the band to leave.
Elvis knew this would only end with the homeless being demonized again, the band being perceived as humble humanitarians, the mall owner being fined, and the band’s label selling more records.
“Nuh. Uh… nuh, man. I can’t let this happen, man. I gotta… I gotta do something.”
Elvis rounded up the loudest makeshift players in the shelter. “We’re… We’re gonna drown those rats out. We’re not the prettiest players here, but this is our world. Let’s rock it.”
No one was in tune with each other. Many of them had no idea what they were doing. The first couple of minutes sounded like a construction site falling in on itself. But then something fell together, and the filthy, dirty group found their groove.
Elvis smiled, wiggled his hips, and began to sing.
One by one, the homeless at the shelter stopped yelling at the intruding band and started listening to Elvis. One by one, they just walked away from the corporate “charity” and gathered in the core of the mall where Elvis was singing. They turned their backs to the camera, to the newscasters, to the police that was glaring coldly at them, and sang along, and danced, and snapped their fingers, and was reminded they defined themselves, not the corporate agenda.
The newscasters found themselves without targets to poke fun at. The police found themselves without targets to arrest. The label’s band found themselves without free publicity. The label found themselves financially exposed with no hope of return.
The newscasters, the police, the band, and the cameras left the mall. Leaving the shelter’s occupants alone in their joy.
Elvis looked over the people, and saw the people were full of joy and happiness. He pulled another singer from the surrounding crowd, and gave him the lead spot. Everyone played on, and for that night, a united folk kept warm in the cold winter.
Elvis left the building.
~~~
The Jaguar pulled the Raven’s tail.
“All’s fair in fun and play.
You want your turn? Catch up to me,
then you can have your way.”
The Raven turned and hopped a step.
The Jaguar danced aside.
“We won’t play here where light is bright.
We’ll play the dark inside.”
The Jaguar stepped to just within.
To where the shadows start.
The Raven came to just without.
“You think I lack the heart.”
“You have the heart, my Raven dear.
But what you lack is sight.
Too long you’ve flown the seeing world.
You’re blinded by the bright.”
“Come play with me, your shadow self,
I’ll lead you not to pain.
Come play the hidden, the depths, the dark,
and find yourself again.”
The Jaguar pulled the Raven’s wing,
just so to make her cry.
The Jaguar ran, the Raven followed,
the night passed by and by.
~~~
I placed the new bottle of strong dark rum on the table with a sturdy thunk and a look of determination. He looks at it with a raised eyebrow then looks up at me smiling.
He reaches for it while kicking the spare chair towards me. “I tried to talk to you earlier, girl.” He pours himself a shot but doesn’t pour one for me. I accept the snub, and sit anyway.
“That was serious bad timing. While I know how much you love keeping me on my toes, catching me on the toilet is a bit much.” I finally allowed myself to smile.
“I got your attention, though. Too bad I lost it after you finished that business.” He is very mirthful. He pours a second shot for himself. Sniffing it with relish, he chuckles before continuing. “The short answer, girl. Yes. I’m behind the push for it. Also, thank you for remembering [redacted] and his answer to you. The long answer will have to wait, though.”
The scenery around us suddenly changed. We’re sitting in the hall of my house.
“The branches are breaking and you need to be home.”
I heard a sound like a baseball bat shattering. I excused myself as I ran from the table, through the walls, to the front yard. A falling branch was headed for the window. I was able to deflect it into the bushes. I yelled for the Regulars and found them at various points on the windward side of the house.
As I settled in for debris watch, I heard his voice in my ear. “We’ll finish this discussion later. I’ll save you some rum.” I just nodded and accepted my place on the board.
This morning, I found the very branch I deflected in the dream, laying where I saw it fall.
Something angry was in the winds last night. We’ll see how the day unfolds.
~~~
“Your reflexes are returning.”
“…”
“As is your instinct.”
“…”
“I will understand if you are called away. Duty first, and such.”
“…”
“But if not… If you are still… here… when it begins… defend yourself if necessary, but do not interfere.”
“…”
“There is nothing forbidding you from speaking to me.”
“I know.”
“Yet, you ask me nothing.”
“I was placed here to watch. To observe. I’m watching. I’m observing.”
“Your gaze is fixed on me in error. Your subject is down there.”
“And you are connected to [it]. You said my instincts are returning. That includes the instinct of not trusting you.”
“Heh. I was told you could be taught. I was told wrong.”
“I’ve learned enough lies already. I’m learning to trust my instinct.”
“I see. … Do not interfere, Weaver. No matter what you see. This is my game to play. You are merely the observer. Even if I break my game pieces, this is my game to play.”
~~~
All Weaver wanted was a pastrami on rye. A simple question leads to more entangling “At The Bistro”.
We continue chatting about the different districts in the City, and where she should explore first being a brand spanking new Citizen. As we walk inside the bistro, I notice a couple sitting at one of the outside tables. Both nursing a black coffee, the teens were more interested in the Citizen’s car than each other. When I first saw them, they were dressed in nondescript jeans, shirts, and hoodies. Appearing very much the background, very easy to overlook.
2,127 words. Continue reading at Three Different Ways: At The Bistro.
~~~
Make of it, what you may.