Well

A well is a hole, a deep dark pit, it is a kind of hell. When she fell in the well it was a primal sin, a moment of separation, of death, of claiming the power all for one. A well is a bowl, a rabbits tunnel, a tomb, the birth canal through which we worm to find ourselves once again doing the jerk and tug marionette’s dance of organic experience. A well is the subconscious mind, the abyss confined temporarily. It is the deep, a sanctuary for cold sleeping water and all the things that are not.
It happened on a day that smelled of moist winter grass, that brittle yellow wild grass saturated with recent rain, a rain that had been consumed by the plowed up mounds of thirsty earth. The sky appeared to me to be blue, brilliant as a robin's wing, or a dyed Easter egg. The clouds had all blown away leaving the blue empty, undisturbed. The lake was swollen, empty coffee cans and pet food dishes were filled with clear cool water.
Six or seven, I must have been, walking in the field in my leather cowboy boots. There was an “X” on the heel of my left sole that had been scratched there by my father with a nail so I could tell which foot it went on. The dog took pains to keep stride with me, pressing her cold black nose into my palm or using it to sniff my ears before giving them a lick with her warm pink tongue.
I went to play in the grove of silver olive trees, leaving behind the fields, the enormous house with its red tile roof and chocolate trim and my mother smoking cigarettes on the veranda, the lake where egrets fished with long slim beaks for their breakfast, the mountains that were purple because that was the way my father painted them in his mural in the garage.
Lost in dreams and the startling newness of each twig and leaf which propelled me into richer imaginings I ventured deeper into the grove, past the tree whose trunk split to form a perfect “V”, beyond the mossy boulder that usually warned me that I had gone too far. It was too late to turn back when I found myself at the well, my little fingers tracing along the stones of its lip.
I tapped the wooden cover that covered its mouth like a round gray door, tapped it with an Olive branch, imagining that a white rabbit might answer, or a dwarf wearing a pointy red hat.
I knew I should not be there. I had been warned to stay away from the old well, and the knowledge that my presence here was forbidden lent every second an electric thrill. The sensation buzzed through me, expanding in my head until I was dizzy with it.
Overcome by that lightheadedness, but unwilling to relinquish it, I settled down with my back against the well’s cold stones. The dog finished doing her own rounds of sniffing and came to sit with me. She washed my cheeks and waited patiently for me to recover. Running one hand through the soft brown and white fur of her back while poking the moist earth with the stick in my other, I drifted into a dreamless sleep that settled over me like a leaden blanket.
When I awoke it was dark and the dog was gone. I had never been out in the fields or in the grove at night, and had never been out in the night alone. I called for the dog, and let a few hot tears spill down my cheek before I wiped them away with my shirtsleeve.
It was quiet and cool. The trees had taken on a new more terrible shape. I thought to run home but took no more than a few steps before becoming paralyzed by disorientation. Nothing looked familiar, I could not tell which direction led home. I began to wail gazing up at the white moon visible through the branches interlaced over my head.
“Don’t cry.”
I was shocked into silence by those words, by the child's voice that spoke them. I turned to face the little boy, who came to my side and placed his hand in mine. I felt an incredible jolt of recognition. My heart was warmed and I smiled. Like the baby toy that I had forgotten and then found in my mother's box of keepsakes, I remembered him suddenly, the brother that I had forgotten, my brother from long, long ago.
“I’m afraid.” I whimpered to him, but I was already feeling braver now that he was here. His hair was blond like mine and his eyes a pale blue.
“I’m here.” He said, confirming the foundation for my courage and squeezing my hand a little.
He looked into my eyes as if he were trying to peer into a shop window, leaning from side to side until we both giggled.
We started walking through the tangle of dark trees with him leading the way. I held tight to his warm hand looking all around me for the mossy boulder, for the tree with the “V”, but recognized nothing. At length I became interested in his clothes, in his red velvet shirt and pants and high white boots. I reached with my free hand over towards him and pinched the soft fabric of the shirt between my fingers.
“Why are you dressed like that?” I asked him.
He glanced down at his clothing then over at my own corduroys’ and cotton shirt.
“Because I’m a prince.” he answered in a matter of fact tone.
We broke free of the trees and I stared in wonder at the black outline of the mountains against the purple sky. My house with its red tile roof and chocolate trim was gone. The empty expanse of field bled into the shadow of the mountain. The lake, a shiny black mirror, remained reflecting the outline of a castle on its southern shore and the pair of torch lights that glimmered at its gate.
“I’ll take you to our father, the king.” my brother told me. I let go of his hand and took a step backward.
“I want to go home.” I said, my voice trembling.
“We will go home.” My brother told me. “Our father has finished his work here with the ambassadors. We were only waiting for you. We looked all day. Father thought that you were lost down the old well. He’ll be so glad that I’ve found you.”
I backed slowly away. My brother watched perplexed. He extended a hand and waited for me to come take it. I saw the sorrow stricken look break upon his face just before I turned and plunged back into the grove.
Running as fast as I could, heart pounding, lungs heaving, legs burning, I came to it, traced the outline of the cold stones with my little fingers. I climbed up onto its lip and looked down into its open mouth, into the yawning darkness.

A Well is a hole, a deep dark pit, it is a kind of hell. When she fell in the well it was a primal sin, a moment of separation, of death, of claiming the power all for one. A well is a bowl, a rabbits tunnel, a tomb, the birth canal through which we worm to find ourselves once again doing the jerk and tug marionette’s dance of organic experience. A well is the subconscious mind, the abyss confined temporarily. It is the deep, a sanctuary for cold sleeping water and all the things that are not.

The dog was barking hysterically. I opened my eyes and saw the late afternoon sun falling in patches through the canopy of leaves. I could hear them calling my name, my mother, my father, my grandmother. The dog was answering. Their voices drew nearer, guided by the dog's plaintive call.
I began to cry. Here my brother was not. I was an only child. The realization that by returning here I had lost him again broke my heart. Weeping, I climbed up onto the little wooden door that covered the mouth of the well. Screaming, I pounded it with my soft fists.
My father arrived first with my mother behind him. With big hands he swooped upon me, lifting me from the cover of the well. My mother was behind him, her voice high with hysteria. She cried my name.
“What are you doing?” Relief, rage, accusation, all were present in her wild voice. The dog was whining.
“My brother!” I screamed, “My brother is down the well!”
My grandmother had arrived and her eyes became owl like. My parents were shocked into silence by my shouting, but my grandmother stepped forward and placed a wrinkled hand on the cover of the well.
“She means Eban.” she whispered. “She means my brother Eban. My father put this cover on after he fell.”
“Ma…” my father started to speak but my grandmother raised her hand hushing him.
She took me out of his arms and stroked my cheeks pushing the hair from my eyes, wiping the tears from my red cheeks.
“You’ll make a new cover Daniel, this one is old, the wood is rotting.”
Saying this she carried me away, out of the grove, past the mossy rock and the tree whose trunk split to form a “V”. She carried me through the field of yellow wild grasses smelling of rain and damp earth, under the empty sky that appeared to me to be blue as a robin's wing. She carried me to the house with the red tile roof under the purple mountain and I gazed over her shoulder at the swollen lake reflecting the blue of the sky, at its southern shore where young trees were growing, where I had seen a castle and had left a young boy with a face stricken by sorrow.

Maternal Return

About a half a millennia ago I was not as I am now. About a half a second ago it fell apart again, just as it did before.
You want to know something about the origin of life. You want to speak for the earth mother, you want to create her with your tongue and words. The origin of life is in sin, in a fall, in a recoiling from something too terrible to stay with.
That’s your primal mother, howling from the abyss. You run from her into her arms again and give birth to yourself over and over. Guns fall out of your open mouth, fields of fire burn with tiny brown bodies for tinder.
You can’t believe that this experience is now. You can’t believe that there is no escape from death and pain. You don the paladin's gleaming armor and march away from the filth and the chaos. You make a God of the sky. He comes out of the blue. He is a fabrication wrought with tongue and words.
It feels like something radical needs to happen, a shape shifting to avoid total destruction. You do this so deftly that you are no longer aware of the transition when it happens.
You believe that you have always been as you are now. You forget your origin. But there is nowhere that you can go where I am not. There is nowhere that does not stem from the darkness.
Your globe of light, your swirling kaleidoscope of delight hangs tenuously from a stem fed from the abyss. Your lips move in an endless litany, endeavoring to invoke something higher, something other. Something you imagined to escape the suffocating stillness, the absolute cacophony of being, the muddled pit of all experience engendered simultaneously.
You crave the new world order. You demand to experience one probability at a time. Unity for you involves separate entities lined up in neat rows. Here in this world, at this juncture you have designated with terms of spatial and time based coordinates, you seek an escape from the chaos of the abyss.
Here, in this place that doesn’t exist. This place that blossomed from your agonized wriggling, your terrified hiding and running. Here in a paradise imposed over a wasteland, you dare not eat of the fruit of knowledge. To do so would open your eyes to your terrible nakedness. You would see that paradise is only a dream, that you have been sleeping to avoid the truth; that you never left my slimy womb.
I am the horror that waits in the darkness. As long as you fear me you will be trapped in an endless circle. To escape me, you will run into the arms of a mortal woman, seeking comfort. You will bury your suffering in her and be born again, running from her womb in terror.
It has happened so many times, this fall to escape the old world and create the new. This deepening psychosis that you call life is only a shadowy reflection of the thing that is life, and life is what you fear.
You are a King of shadows, a King of ghosts. You are Adam who dreamed up El so that you could forget who was the real maker of the world.
You want to know something about the origin of life. I have told you. You will want to recoil from what I have said. You will find a justification for rejecting it. You will embrace the litany of words that has been tumbling from your lips, the incantations that you have been muttering to create your world, the one that you call THE WORLD, so you can forget me. You may dream up blonde angels on white unicorns waiting for paladins. But this I promise you, inside of every angel a dragon waits coiled, a birth waits ripe with gore and hair and violence, an old witch bides her time in a dark corner with wrinkled skin and bald patches on her scalp.
I will show you the truth again and again. You will counter by spinning lies, lips moving, tongue wagging…
The origin of what you call life is to be found in a sin, in a fall, in a recoiling from something too painful to partake of. That is your primal mother. This is who I am. Now that you know, it will fall apart again, just as it did before.
About a half a millennia ago I was not as I am now. About a half a second ago it fell apart again, just as it did before, just as it will again.

In The Desert

Simon, with his black curls waving around his face in sleek ringlets and his sandals clacking loudly, pressed his hands against the glass doors so that they swung open ahead of him. Instead of stepping in himself, he held the door for a petite woman with bright blue eyes. She thanked him with a voice possessing a certain raspy warmth.
“Ah, well thank you! Who would have thought you could find a gentleman in a desert.”
Simon laughed softly because he didn’t know what to say. It was the sort of laugh that was more breath than voice and he followed it with a smile that crinkled his face before at last saying,
“Well they have us shipped in to help draw the tourists, like the bass in the manmade lake.”
“You're funny.” She said, punching his shoulder softly as she passed through the doorway, “You want to buy me a drink?”
“A drink?” Simon stammered.
“Yeah.” She said, “I don’t figure it’s called Shadow Mountain Resort AND Club for nothing. And it’s hot. And we’re both thirsty. And you’re a gentleman.” She smiled so that Simon could admire her straight white teeth. Her hair was dark and long except that the bangs were cropped just above her black brows.
“Of course,” Simon said shaking his head as if to wag off his awkwardness, “I’d love to buy you a drink.”
“Great.” She said as Simon followed her inside, “Let’s just stop by my Father’s room first so I can let him know I’m here. My name's Cleo.”

In the hallway Simon examined the purple and turquoise carpet beneath the soles of his white sneakers.
“This’ll just take a minute,” she told him, swiping the key card through the scanner. “He’ll want to be alone so he can get ready for the tournament tomorrow.”
“Your father’s playing in the tournament?” Simon asked suddenly alert, “Would he happen to know Socrates?”
Both of her eyebrows lifted simultaneously and her eyes widened to comical blue roundness as the door swung open. Simon had just a few split seconds to wonder what the expression on her face could mean, whether her father knew Socrates or didn’t, or whether she thought it was rude of him to ask.
“Come in.,” she said, already several steps ahead of him inside the room. He followed her and gasped when he caught sight of the man sitting criss cross applesauce on top of the brightly colored bead spread. He was imposingly tall, even seated as he was. His hair hung down his back in dark dreadlocks thick as cords of rope. His deep tan, piercing dark eyes and beak-like nose made his identity unmistakable.

“You’re father’s Jesus?” Simon whispered.
“No. That’s my father over there.” Cleo corrected him.
Simon looked beyond the bed and caught sight of a small pale wrinkled old man hanging by his ankles, his arms crossed over his chest. His white beard was draped over his face so that his voice was muffled as he spoke to Jesus.
“He’s upside down.” Simon said and instantly regretted stating the obvious.
She shrugged,
“Inversion therapy. It reduces nerve pressure.”
They edged their way into the room but neither man gave any sign of having noticed the arrival of Cleo and Simon.
“There is a big sun up in the sky.” Jesus was saying in a clear somber voice. “When you die, and if your load is light, you can try flying up to the sun. The rays of the sun, however, are merciless and powerful. They will burn you away in a burst of the most brilliant white light you’ve ever seen. If you face the sun, then you should merge with it. Otherwise, you will resist so much that you will begin to sink back into the darkness of the world, burnt like the crow. Trapped between the inability to merge, and the terror of sinking into darkness, you can try to fly like the eagle.”
The inverted man cleared his throat. His voice was cracked with age but his tone was bright,
“The beagle burns his sack to the sun.” he retorted from behind his beard. Cleo left Simon’s side and lifted the beard from her father's face, tucking it into the collar of his shirt for safe keeping. It was then that Simon recognized the old man's withered features as those of Socrates, the very man Simon had come to the desert to find.
Jesus had arched a single dark brow at the other man's proclamation.
“You might want to say that again Daddy.” Cleo said rejoining Simon in front of the entertainment armoire.
The old man cleared his throat again and repeated,
"The eagle turns his back to the sun. The sun then casts his cleansing rays upon the eagle. The eagle keeps on flying, encompassing the earth with his wings while melting away in the dullest white light he has ever seen."
Jesus turned his head slightly to look at the visitors. The rest of his body remained stone still.
“Cleo, who is that with you?”
Simon took a step forward and extended his hand.
“My name is Simon, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” When Jesus made no move to shake, Simon withdrew his hand and put it sheepishly into the pocket of his shorts.
“Show him out Cleo. He has no business being here.” Jesus said and turned his head back to its original position.
Cleo shrugged and Simon started to back away towards the door feeling his cheeks flush.
"Let him stay here." Socrates crowed. Jesus sighed as the other man came down from his inversion rack. Socrates smiled mischievously at Simon. Jesus frowned but otherwise remained unmoved.
Simon stammered to Cleo,
“I, I don’t know what to do. Whose wish to obey.”
Socrates grinned even wider,
“You should obey both.”
“We were just on our way to the bar.” Cleo told the old man.
“Excellent.” He said taking Simon by the arm, “Let’s go.”
“Our conversation isn’t finished.” Jesus objected.
“Cleo will stay here and talk to you.” Socrates told him as if it were the perfect solution. He was already leading Simon out the door.
“Don’t forget your key Daddy.” Cleo called after him.
“I have it, I have it.” Socrates chirped from the hall.
“Bye Simon. It was nice meeting you.” Cleo shot him a smile just before Socrates pulled the young man out of sight down the hall.
The door closed behind them of its own volition and the voice of Socrates speaking to Simon as they advanced towards the elevators grew gradually dimmer until it was inaudible.
Cleo shook her hair out over her shoulders and leaned against the entertainment center.
“Well,” she said to Jesus, whose smoldering eyes were now trained on her, “You want to go down to the pool with me? I’m not much for conversation.”
“I prefer not to get my hair wet.” He answered, “But if you like we could remain here and engage in some heart healthy exercise.”
“Why not?” Cleo smiled shoving off from the armoire. “They’ll be busy for a while.”

That One Moment

It was only a moment. A blip in the life of a mechanical clock turning around on itself every 24 hours, a cycle without end. It was only a moment, and yet it hung suspended in time, holding in its wide hands vast amounts of matter and lifetimes, its presence so large that I just let it wash over me like a wave of light, taking my sense of self as I sat still in the moment of eternity that was not the blip of a clock- it was the only now that had ever been, has ever been, will ever be.

The highway climbed up the hill ahead of me into the rising sun, a white hot burst of burning life flowing into yellow and then bleeding bright blue into the receding purple of pre-dawn. I had not seen a sunrise of such intensity for a long time, perhaps ever, for these were new eyes in a new time that didn’t end. The colors sang for me- they dropped their cloaks and stood naked in the day that was forming. I took off the goggles, the layers, the thoughts and gauze, I let it fall as time waited for the soft gaze of truth to emerge.

Light unraveled in a slow, sensuous dance. The world stopped.

Between the highway and the Rio de San Juan was the old governor’s ranch. I watched as it became a fixture in eternity. I held onto its curves with my eyes, feeling the dark blue veil and misty grayish green floating over its ancient stucco walls.

The highway led up to forever. My destiny sat there in the east at the top of the hill, invisible in the blinding white light, yet seen as it hit the middle of my brow; seen from the core of my abdomen; seen as it washed over my head and down my spine. Seen by the part of me that has no eyes, seen as sight melted into every other sense, flowing up and down through me, in and out with my breath.

I floated up into the washing, waving light and looked down at the frail body sitting in the old station wagon beside the motel on the highway. There was a streak of weak light from the stop sign several feet away, the pale yellow and brown crust of a lingering harvest moon.

Past prayers and vague hopes reached through me and shot out into a fearful future and a humbling promise of what was to come. Threads of events flowed around me and filaments of light spread and receded, winding and weaving together in a vision of an arduous journey and precipitous rise. Sounds vibrated melodious and rhythmic in an exhortation to go forward, to be without trappings, to build faithfully. My being melted away and flowed into the vastness of light and shadow, movement and silence.

For that moment, I was no more. I saw the haunting past and the harrowing future, two roads converging into the me that was no longer there. I understood the course a life must take to have what is asked for. The choice had been made, there was no other path. For that moment, I was the colored light, the dry hands that had built the motel, the men on the line assembling the station wagon, that body down there, the trees in the distance, all those that had coasted down the highway and those that never would.

Then there was a blip, a tick of the mechanical clock springing forward. I returned to the confines of the body, feeling my arms and hands once again as my own. Slowly and statically I turned into the motel parking lot. I worked and ate and moved in silence for the rest of the day. I was detached, my movements unreal and mechanical. Fear and doubt grasped at my body at each turn and my mind kept repeating, "take care of what you ask for and have no pride in receiving it.”

Soon I would take that highway out of town, away from the place of childhood and into a world of mystery and misery. Yet that which I received at that one moment as the clock stopped and held time in its hands, that moment in which I traveled out of body and out of time, that has never left me. It strikes again in moments of listlessness when the sun begins to change and the road leads to forever.

A Sunlit Doorway

The song of sunlight
whistles through the trees.

I am back in their world running naked through a golden forest. Little bits of liquid light drop from oversized petals laden with dew. They drop, splashing me, covering my breasts and arms in tiny beads of light, reminding me of marbles that contain worlds within their rounded spheres.

I find myself staring into worlds of green and yellow veins that transport light.

I drop my head back into the pool, into the one color that contains all in that huge seemingly singular canvas. The hue finds my eyes, covering me with its richness, showing me the long road, the cart, the feather.

Into the color of blue and bright sunlight, this is where I dive. Opening my arms, moving like an arrow into a setting sun. I find them waiting there, beside the rocks and stream. Next to the waterfall that overflows not with water, but simple letters that bounce back and forth along the rocky banks.

A simple tune comes through as I lay in the grass.
A pretty little mother’s lullaby. I close my eyes and drift, taking the colors and light into me, feeling as they move through thin strong veins and unbroken centuries, looking for my home somewhere where houses are unnecessary, where they don’t wear shoes and food always comes in tiny white boxes.

The song comes through, finding me in a dream.
It enters and continues on, finding other leaves to rustle. It enters and leaves, moving like water around my calcified habits.

My ears slowly awaken. Finding more than leaves, finding a symphony, searching for order and chaos in the noise. It is rustling. It is rhythm. There is melody. There are choral voices. A thousand leaves shuffling to a subtle song.

It comes from another place, or I have just come in from the old land with trees. I have stepped eagerly into the dream world, bringing the singing branches, the bowls, the shoes. I check my skin, looking for the map of the Other place.

There is a purity here that breaks all my resistance down, bending me and reshaping me
into a form I no longer recognize. I look around, searching for things to latch to.
Where are those houses and shoes? What can I name?

The silence has opened up to a clear blue sky, to a fluttering green and white that sparkles and reminds me of children playing by the sea. I think of a rainy day when I sat in my car talking on the phone, watching rain drops plop against the windshield and carry the colors of the neighborhood down its opaque canvas.
Drops on a far away windowpane.
Thoughts hitting my memory.
Songs stabbing my skin, reminding me of rustling leaves on their branches ready to fall.

I fill my empty eyes with memories, giving names to things without shape.

Electric messages spiral through my brain. They look for sentences to fill, thoughts to contort.
Beat tap tap.
Beat, tap, tap.
I let myself be pulled in.
Beat, tap, tap
Moving with the branches,
Beat, tap, tap.
Swirling with the sound.
Beat, tap, tap.
I mumble,
"I am here again..."

Trapped

The Void.
Hollow.
Deep.
Humid.
Black but for a few muted lights that shine like distant stars.

Sounds come and go. Bright bells that scatter as they get close, high pitched whines that swirl furiously in space then sputter. They come close and I reach out to touch them, but as my fingers reach and stretch hoping for contact, the sounds fly past, getting lost in the echo. Lost in the void. And again there is black and stillness, but for those few bits of white until another sound comes near. It comes from nowhere, moving past me like a flash, going towards nowhere. I am a disturbance in the wind. A dot of blood in this space of moist darkness.

Without sound, I feel the shaking.
Cold sweat coats me in its uncomfortable blanket. I reach for the edges, but they have burrowed themselves in my skin, securing themselves below my nails, holding tight. Like a parasite I cannot shake.

I search in the dampness, my naked skin touches slimy walls, rubs against hard corners. It is a void of nothing, but I feel everything. Tiny pebbles no bigger than sand. Gravel and feathers. It sticks to me like a rotting second skin and I pull at the adornments, feeling only pain.

My eyes begin to sting. The familiar wells that have long been dry. Another bucket emerges.
Loneliness, a familiar pain that sticks like a pin, always upon me. Was there ever anything else? I search within and find only fear, that jackal that hides in the corner, never far. Following me wherever I wander. The black roads, the damp caves, the dark void I have come to know, it is always here.

Look at me, here again, exactly where you left me. You dropped me like a doll in an old house, a tattered piece of plastic that no longer works or shines.

Look at my hands, full of blood. The knife at my side marks my destruction. Olive skin left red. Smoothness cut to pieces. The veins are like torn ribbons, searching for repair, but there will be none. Not while I breathe, not here in this house, in this darkness I have come to know.

Look at my chest. It’s open. A once bright heart spills its love into a hole of nothing. It is too late. A spilled cup of sweet wine without a tongue left to taste. A stain.

Look at me run. There must be a way out. I tear at the walls, searching for a pill, another knife, something to stop the pain. Bloodied footprints mark my trail. Back and forth.

The bedroom.
The studio.
The patio.
The bedroom.
The studio.
The patio.
The bedroom.

The night is dark and I am cold. My breasts point up to the night sky, asking for a little bit of calm.
Not now. It is cold. Dark clouds laugh. Why do they do it? I stare at them, defiant. This is my heart, my veins. The knife is mine, I will do what I want. Its grip is firm, the only thing I have. Solid, firm, the one thing I have lost. What I would gladly take back and then fill my open chest and mouth. But not now.
It is too late.

The wind swoops in. Furiously rattling every tree, hurting my wounds as it passes. Going towards nowhere. Passing me without thought. Going towards nothing. I am an obstruction and it passes without thought.

Look at me here, desperately asking for help. Have you heard my pleads? Blood is my message. The footprints my signature on the desperate letter. This bloody chest is the cry. Have you heard? Have you the ears to listen or the will to move? Up in the sky the night begins to anger. I see their faces, monsters preparing the storm. It is cold, colder than before. The wind carries its hurtful message. I see a body in the moon, outlined in silver and gray. A body, I think it’s mine. It slides like a corpse over the edge, falling, tumbling between bursts of dark clouds until it crumbles.

Mine.
I watch me fall.

I want to give you a face...a name.
I look within, searching memory, opening and closing drawers, slamming file cabinets.
You have no name.
No name.

You put me here, inside this. A void, an empty house, a dark field before a storm. Look how I have destroyed it.
A black cat jumps the wall of the garden, “mother, don’t leave,” I whisper.

In the bedroom. I pass by the mirror, avoiding my own eyes. I don't want to look at myself. I am scared of what waits in the reflection. A demoness. A melting figure with red eyes. I walk past.
"Coward!"
I go up the stairs. Still naked, feeling every bit of dust on the stairs.
Walk into the bathroom and confront my mask. One big mirror. It is time.
I recognize the face, but it is not my own. I can’t remember what I used to be. What I looked like, who I used to inhabit.
I'm only dreaming.
The hope of every naked woman alone in a plastic house, in a damp void that holds her by the throat. I am disguised as a woman. With pointy breasts that smile at the ceiling while the rest of her crumbles covered in feathers and gravel.

The blood keeps on running and I look back, seeing the red carpet I have left over the wooden stairs.

Pain.
Fear.
Loneliness.
Cold.

I crumple to the floor and it begins again. The damp void. A high pitched whine moving towards me, fast, FAST. Coming, I reach out to touch it and it glides right past, on its way to nowhere, coming from nothing.

Awakening

I awaken, opening my eyes to the bright light streaming through my window. I stay there, resting on my right side as my hands clutch an extra fluffy pillow. My eyes blink, adjusting to the world. I can’t remember any shapes, but I know there were dreams, thick and heavy with shapes I can no longer recall. I have awoken just seconds before the BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! of the alarm. The clock reads 7:59. Just seconds before it will call to me without emotion, like a drill sergeant unaffected by mood or chamber, blaring like a mechanism without compassion in a world of black and white.

But I lay, seconds before the heavy hand. I recognize the shapes- the old wooden chair by the wall, the tan carpet, but something is unfamiliar and I lay still, searching for something. I know this has happened before. I turn my head to the left, then slowly to the right, hoping to a get a sense of purpose…just what am I supposed to do next? On the left side of the bed is a varnished wood table. On its pale, shiny square surface is a vase of dried flowers, crowded with crinkly leaves and old red roses whose heads have drooped as though in shame. Beside the glass vase are two used white candles, their borders a wall of smooth melted white. Close beside is an empty picture frame, a circular silver incense holder surrounded by ash and a brass bell with an engraved handle. Closest to my bed is a soft cover book, its front red and worn. It is the American Book of the Dead.

I turn my body to the right. The bed is pressed beside a white stucco wall, its texture revealing faces and shapes amid its shadows. At eye level are two soul portraits. I look at the paintings, made of simple black lines and framed with a natural wooden border. Staring into the shapes of the soul, I become aware of the complete and utter silence of the room. No creaks, no dull roar of traffic. Absolutely nothing, not even the shrill buzz of silence. Darkness begins to fold in around me, soaking the chamber like spilled ink.

I open my eyes and try to crawl out of bed, though I find I don’t have the strength. My limbs feel like skin without bone, unresponsive to the will of my mind. I look down, the white gown I remember is soaked in bright red blood. It is fresh, still warm. I search within for pain, dig through the folds for fear, but it is missing.

An icy river begins to move though me. I feel it first in my navel, but it spreads like a gentle brook, moving towards my arms and legs at the same time. Ice cold pin pricks find my fingertips, then wrap around my chest, moving like a counterclockwise spiral. My body shakes violently. I hear the percussion of my teeth beating like a dance song.

Out of the darkness, close to the place I remember a window once stood, is a warm inviting white light tinged with yellow. As my eyes begin to focus fully on its waves, I see the shadowed faces of my companions. Dark eyes greet me with smiles.

We are sitting in a circle in a small room. I feel the warmth of the thick white candle in the center of our ring, it washes us in life, in the dance of heat. We close our eyes in unison, and as we do, a voice emerges. It is a single thread, made from our combined pitch and effort, a voice that clearly states in the tone of finality: "I am now dead."