You wake up with a shock, sitting straight up before you know it. Cold sweat is running down your back and your knuckles are tight with adrenaline; half the sheet has been pulled loose and lies crumbled underneath you, revealing the bare mattress, slightly tacky against your skin. There's a high-pitched squeaking coming from somewhere, like a cabinet door swinging on its hinges. The faint light from the street lamp outside veils the room in shadows, making it look strange and unfamiliar.
No one is in here with you, you know that. The feeling will go away as long as you don't think about it too hard.
[[Go back to sleep]] or go [[look for the cabinet]]You straighten out the sheet, turn over the duvet to get the dry side, and lie down and close your eyes. You don't feel tired.
[[You count down from 50]][[49]]The water washes over you, filling out the void, caressing your limp body with the softness of sea weed.
You're running along the beach with your sister, you're around 11, looking for crabs and learning that they aren't really red from the start but softly sand coloured, that they like to grab soft children's toes that get too close, and run sideways like circus performers.
Laughter like crystal-clear soap bubbles. "What a perfect day", she says as she hands you your peanutbutter sandwich and looks at you with eyes full of adult knowledge you'll soon start wanting for yourself. Not yet though.
Your hands are heavy and a woman is softly singing to you. The salt stings the cuts on your fingers and toes, and you realize that if you don't find the path to the treasure soon, all this could end.
You taste [[salt]] and it feels overwhelmingly acute. You're supposed to be doing something. Something which can't wait, which tastes like [[salt]]. You feel tears running down your cheeks and your sister is no more. On the other side of the sandy overgrown cliffs, the little houses people use to change, have started to move away. [[Run towards them]].
You've forgotten that you're dreaming.Only a few moments ago, you struggled to feel sleepy at all, but now your body is so heavy, it won't move. Your conscious thoughts are alight with sparks, but the main part of your brain has decided it is time to go to sleep and told your limbs, following a few last electric stirrings in your legs, to shut down the system.
You fight it, still aware of feeling watched - in moments like these, you remember, you always feel watched - and bit by bit you will your flesh back into action. It doesn't happen in a sliding motion but in jerky movements with desperate invisible struggle, but with a heavy, inelegant kick, you manage to escape the coverlet and roll halfway out of bed. Gravity, your hero, does the rest and lets you get up and shake it off.
You have a sense that you've forgotten something. Maybe if you walk around the house, it will come back to you.
Go [[to the kitchen]] or follow the hallway [[to the library]]."I can't believe you!" Her eyes are glazed with angry tears, her voice gaining intensity by each new tearing sentence. "I loved you. I trusted you!" No more.
Your ears are warm and your ribcage feels too small, no doubt closing in to crush your heart and lungs. Not worth it, shouldn't have. You're pacing, trying not to look at her, but her face is pale and moonlike and you can't tell if it is beautiful or just unnatural. She's too quiet in her fury. Shouldn't have told her at least.
You know you're expected to speak but you've got nothing else to say. She's not going to understand. She finally sees you for what you are, like you always knew she would and now it's happened and she'll leave and the best thing you can do is let her.
You can't bear to look at her. You can't bear never to look at her again.
Back in the lock-box, throw away the key. [[turn over]]You are five years old, looking up at the reflective glow in the dark stars on your ceiling, the radio is chanting news through the wall, your mother is on the other side, you can smell the coffee. She is solving the newspaper crossword puzzle. You feel safe.
There's a toy train on the ground - wooden, not electrical, but when you don't look at it, you can still sense it [[driving slowly around the room]], fulfilling its route between stations.
If you were a pirate, you'd hide the next clue in moist green ground on a deserted island. A model train hill with a white picket fence gets close enough.
You get distracted by the sound of [[bees]] or you [[lie back in your pillows to plan]].You haven't held it for a long time. It's probably in the library, small but full of all the books that have mattered to you most and a lot of others, it would be pointless to try to describe. But sometimes you get confused. It could also be in other places. like the dining room table.
[[Go to the library]] or head to the [[dining room]]You're just floating around, observing this time. The bees are everywhere, they're crawling around on my chest, hovering over the glasses of pop, talking to each other in their secret language.
When bees lose their queen, they make a new one by walling in a female worker larvae and feeding her a substance known as //royal jelly//, secreted from their heads. When she has been fattened up sufficiently with nutrients, they close the last opening in her chamber and leave her alone to transform. Once she is able to lay eggs, she never has to do a single thing for herself ever again.
Freedom can be constrictive, you know. Clear guidelines support creativity where otherwise the weight of endless possibilities would crush us.
You should probably look for a good hiding spot as you continue. You might not be alone in here.
I want to go [[home]].
[[I want to into the woods]]
[[I want to rest without dreams]]Why is it so far away? You haven't gotten your shots. They'll just reject your visa application, and you'll get stuck in the waiting room again, looking through magazines and waiting for the airline personnel to call your name.
Something's off.
[[get up to close the cupboard]]As quickly as it came, it is gone.
Digging into the ground. A flock of cows are grassing nearby, only one bothers to look up. Your shovel is too short for you but sharp, and you make quick progress. Clang it hits a silver thermos of the kind you use for your school lunches. Unscrewing it , an intense smell of jasmine green tea with chamomile and a hint of honey hits your nose. you could almost swear a tinge of steam moistens your upperlip as well. You slide your finger over it, absent mindedly. There's a dry piece of parchment inside. It just says:
ultro gamma radio MIV
It makes you think of something Roman.
your mother calls, there's [[dinner]]You follow a winding path through the gnarly old trees. Big cold snowflakes are falling between black branches. Crunchy leaves in brown and orange are getting covered by white. You find yourself freezing. Some way away looms a shadowy mansion. It looks deserted, like no one has lived there for years. But it would still offer shelter, maybe blankets to wrap your aching body in. You can go [[towards the lonely mansion]] or [[keep walking for a while.]]Why?
Who can sleep, when it's time for [[the black ops mission]]Your cat is on the kitchen table, its tail lazily moving back and forth like a pendulum. He's not allowed up here, but you're not sure you're up for the conflict this time of night. You fill his water bowl and look around. The cupboards look demure and un-offending. The kitchen window is slightly cracked, as always. The sound must've been coming from somewhere outside. Maybe the swing set is getting rusty. [[We're all headed that way,]] you muse.
It's still too early for the birds to sing, but it'll only be a few hours.
If you leave the lights on, the shadows won't be able to get to you. But you also won't be able to sleep. [[Make a cup of tea]] or [[pull the switch]]Humans need little rituals to make the darkness of the cave feel safe, no matter how well we've secured it with barricades and traps. Chamomile is just another magic potion, a contract with the spirits to buy a bit of peace.
You look at Mr. Meowlowe and wonder if [[he also misses her]].
Shaking off the thought, you hear the sound again. [[A door has opened somewhere]].The team is regrouping on top of one of the grey, non-descript factory buildings where the enemy forces produce components for their death machines. Here we are temporarily out of sight, but we can observe how their shiny black ships are lining up along the parking docks, their number far higher than we expected when we left from home. Their technology is unquestionably superior to ours, and if we can't find a way to hack into their systems, we're as good as dead, our people with us. We've got intel that the weapon that can take them out is somewhere on this base, and even though the odds are against us, we're all sternly aware that this is a now or never situation. There can't be any hesitation.
You look around. You're exhausted and the legs of your suit, made of thin layers of fused leather and genetically modified rubber, clings to your skin in a way that makes you want to pull the whole thing off and jump into the sea. But there is no blue lagoon here, no laughter as you fly through waterfalls; just the low droning sound of hundreds upon hundres of intelligent air cars, bullet proof, heat-resistant, probably already programmed to kill. Your own inferier models, that you came here in, have been destroyed along with most of your soldiers, lying in bloody heaps of limbs and autoparts spread out through the enemy barracks.
You won't bother telling your team how this is a suicide mission; there is no need for the glory speech. Sometimes, when the end is very near, everything becoems clear. There is no fear, no panic, just you and the split seconds you have left as the ground is coming up to meet you, the enemy vessel is launching its missiles, your bike is falling over, a knife is slipping from a wet hand and falling to the floor. If you're lusky and made of the right kind of stuff at that very moment, you might act just right, your body rolling and cathing the fall just like it was designed to do. Or, if you're like most people are most of the time, maybe all you'll get out is a quiet "fuck" before it hits. This is like that. There's no time for anything but acceptance and reaction.
For a few more seconds the team silently patch up the bleeding wounds, which would reveal and slow them down, then they're ready to move on.
[[Rappel down the building]] or go back [[through the rooftop exit]]. This life'll get you killed.
"They chopped the heads off my children!" The woman is crying big bloody tears, shaking and moaning in her seat. The colourfull paper ribbons have red raindrops on them, but still look mockingly cheerful. It was the birthday cake that everybody ate, they were inside of it. Maybe it was even an accident. but the boys've already good as killed him, carved him all up. He should've done as told. You don't mess with family. My breast milk is fatty, so fatty that I consider squeezing some out for the frail little lamb stumbling before me. If I were caught, I suppose they'd burn me for a witch. The others sit around me in the evenings, only yesterday I started feeling like a newcomer in my body, it's why I've been saying such unwise things; the new me doesn't now any better. Bett cursed our priest. She'll be punished but I'm thankful to her. I don't know what he'd have done. No, I don't know what I'd have done to him if she hadn't stopped him.
There's an old body jumper visiting the colony. She's stirring up a mess and although it seems at first, she's on the side of the girls, probably she's only on her own.
Se can ripen fruit and make sweet cream flow. She loosens the will and makes natural anger appear at unnatural times. Moral and polite behaviour becomes harder to remember. She makes some people feel lust, or at least makes them forget to hide it.
I'm afraid for the lambs.
[[smash the mirror]]Trapped in the time labyrinth trying to solve the riddle of how to get out. It's slipping away. The elf one was probably to blame, but they have lost their memory completely. We're trying to find the items they first fled here with. A paper bag is a memory link, it was under the saddle when the noble elves fled (tried to flee?). Was he their butcher? My friend and I think we're from another time but that is also how this place tricks you. We just had drinks in a tiny bar but now we are trapped with a mad powerful and frightened elf demon. If you enter the wrong room in the wrong order, it all slips away, this place steals your memories both old and recent and everything you are. If we send him in the wrong direction, he won't even remember to return to us or that we were here, no matter how many times he may pass the door. I'm looking at a chair in the middle of a dark cave. Maybe we've even done all this before?Seven floors of debauched hell. Temptations everywhere. A party. Everywhere people are drinking kissing screaming laughing. Movie stars and hiding in broom closets. With broken glass, you carve an opening and the witch climbs out. Reborn, younger. Likely somewhat crueller. Her perfect tits exit the wound first and the rest of her body slides after, bent like a bue.
We only perform this ritual when necessary, when a girl is wounded anyway. It's always dangerous of course, she might not open, might just die.
this is a private school. I am the new girl. They treat you badly, with suspicion. The world as we know it is mad. We must save the undead baby. People's fear and kindness is astonishing. We've seen our escape in a dream. I'm the end, we don't try the 19th floor rapelle baby has been getting warm and we both want to stay and love with her. Inuit girl, the victim type, others are so advantage, specially chosen to regrow the earth on our island. A sacrfice with power, sacrificed to destiny. A murder, I have to hide from the guy I like, he suspects something and his friends are gone. The goddess is in me. I hate my siblings. We're all witches but did we have to kill. On boats sailing with M and his old crew. No one must know. They just think it's drugs. it's old magic. Young boy is a child neighbourhood designer. Reality is created through a dreamlike process. Hills. One area full of pink .. flamingos?
I'm in Venice with my fiance husband who has no time for me or is angry. I meet a man, we make love five six times, his cock is enourmous. He is hired to work for us and so is the other one.. the one who doesn't want me but here he did. They all try to get me mad with desire I assume, but I lock myself in my room and work on alibis for murder which might not have happened yet to find the suspect. Three relics to be saved from evil. Turn the heroes dark one by one. The nightmares are coming. You can't seem to orient yourself. You can't move. When you open your eyes, a thin gaunt man stands staring at you, when you close them, you are lost. You've been trying to stay sane and keep it together. You've been doing pretty well, you think. But the nightmares won't leave you alone. Why do you have to be all alone in this [[home]]?
You can reach out again and try to [[fumble for the switch]], but fat moths are filling the air with great haste. If you close your eyes, it might all [[go away.]]
You're lying close together in a pool of sunlight. The June morning is violently throwing itself at the two of you through the open window and the cat is over the blankets between your feet. You're not sure if she's sleeping or just lying very still. You've been pretending to be fast asleep yourself for the last half hour.
You [[never want to leave]].
But before long, she'll have to rise, she'll kiss your forhead, and the next five years will rush through you in a blur of daily errands and a series of unfortunate, terrible problems
, which will always seem insurmountable, demanding every bit of your attention to get through, but will, with time, only be remembered as distractions. She'll stop kissing you in the mornings. You'll stop wanting her to. Time and silence will move in next to the cat, pushing you further apart, until you wake up alone in the [[cold.]]
[[48]]47
A car alarm beeps repetitively somewhere far away.
[[46]]You can feel your heart pounding in your chest, but you slowly feel heavier and heavier anyway. Your thoughts are becoming distant like disintegrating clouds. You're almost fully under the waves, when you become aware of a light but expansive buzzing, as from hundreds of bees.
[[sink]] or [[get out of bed]]Pass through
I was sent to Hell because I was tricked by one of the others doing the test. We were a whole group questing together, trying to solve the mysteries of equals and seperates. If you did it wrong, you died. But as happens - often, he tells me - one forgets the details once below. I remember a garden and hollyhocks, and I remember kissing someone. I asked the god of Death, when I arrived, whether I could wait for someone I knew. He told me I would have to travel through first. Now I no longer remember who I wanted to wait for. I think there were several people in my life who were special in that way. But the air was pleasant that day in the garden, and the one who tricked me had felt like a friend. A woman, I think she was.
First it was complete darkness. Then things appeared. Different rooms I had once inhabited in one way or other which I will now walk through. How ever long that takes.
There was a baby. We sit together in the bathtub and the baby is laughing. He is so fat and happy. Then he is below the water and there is a tear in the world. We sit by the window. Baby is happy, and we are cuddling him. Then he drops him, just like that. I guess I'm supposed to figure out why. Or to accept it before the rooms will start being about other things.
I feel pain down here when I touch the smoldering iron doors that sometimes appear. It doesn't hurt me though I try to avoid it. It's just something to pass through. rød sportsvogn, kan ikke køre bil. På førersædet sidder lige nu en hysterisk kvinde som har lagt et halvt blodigt hoved på vores dørtrin fordi hun tror vi er mordere. Det er vi selvfølgelig også. fem kvinder på flugt fra de ældgamle jægere. Jeg så sjælesugeren ud i hans blå øjne og sang og bad om vores gaver, som vi fik, så vi kunne undslippe. Det var vores fejl at køre langs Miami Beach som om vi var på ferie og holde ind i dette alligatorbefæstede sommerhus, hvor vi efterlod beboerne som blodige lig på stuegulvet mens vi solbadede.
Jagtede af de umenneskelige, de urørlige skygger, men vi vinder tid fordi de ikke er vant til at være i live eller vant til verden og de bliver distraherede og ... ... som tiden går. Det er derfor vi havde en chance selvom de var nået ind og helt tæt på - og så pga turisterne. En af os måtte stå og stege kød og tale om, forsøge at distrahere fra lugten af menneske og fra lårbensknoglerne i bøfferne. Det gik fint indtil hende her mistede fatningen og inviterede militæret. Helt fint. Det er også min skyld fordi jeg lod mig genkende. Jeg er for selvoptaget. Each city decided on their own how they would deal with the flood. When we came to this area, it looked too good to be true. We could even hear children laughing. It turns out, they made a deal. They gave up half of everything they had to save the rest. When you look around you just right, you can see the movements in the surface of the yellow water covering rugs and livingrooms. You can see their spouses and neighbours still lying there, rotting just under the surface.Solen brænder dødeligt om dagen. Ingen går udenfor i klart vejr. Gammelt, slidt hus, høje lofter, mor og søn. Han rebel, hun melankoliker, sidder fast i gamle dage, krammer hans pude mens han er væk. Du går i koma og brænder stille, hvis du bliver fanget udenfor. Tynde stråler af lys trænger ind gennem de høje ruder og signalerer om det er farligt, at bevæge sig. Strålingen er kun effektiv nogle gange.
Man samles om historier fra gamle dage. Støvet ligger tykt. Rige mænd kan hjælpe. Det handler om at komme ind i byen, hvor der er sikkert. Udenfor lever alle på lånt tid. Det startede pludselig en dag. Nogle er immune?We are living the past in a cottage full of things. Strange paraphernalia. Pictures from Hollywood and forgotten silent movie stars, cabaret singers, dolls. We are living in the middle of the woods, we don't know for how long. We affect the world around us, when we make mistakes, but the we suspect, the real world has no effect on us. Apart from when the two collide. Just now a car crashed, down, down the hill it rolled, like the driver was aiming for the two women. I pulled them away just in time. Between the trees four startled, incomprehensing hikers stare at us.We have to save the sleeping world before it is too late. We have different skills. There is a great meeting. One is speaking, we dislike him a little, but the kind one takes his hand, she looks into his eyes and strokes his fingers gently to see his fear. She doesn’t need to ask him to tell him with her words, it is enough to care for him, and the images appear from below. Memories of his childhood, and with them surface a desire, he is telling them what they should do just a minute ago, but now he tells them where the high tower is, and how far a person has to climb before he can fall again.
They need to build a wall.
Outside it is raining heavily. The one who’s face is half burned away but who is somehow still more beautiful than most meets him there. He doesn’t even hear her approach, but see her as the very last thing as he turns around. She is almost smiling.
Their last fortress stands next to the roaring see. Darkness and waves as high as ships is out there. But these are not things they fear. It is something different, something new that can impress them deeply enough to call for such a meeting as this. It is usual for them to quarrel but on this day, this day that could have been any in the thousands of years they’ve been here, it cannot be tolerated. In death is always comfort anyway, we will do it as suggested.
The builder was the one who caused their suspicion. He is not one of them. What can he do? She has been known to bring home all sorts of pets. The council cannot trust that any man she has taken a liking to, can carry the weight of their lives. Greater than most and more important. But now, it appears, she and her sister of, not blood, but bone, have taken away the choice. He will build them a wall and they will strengthen it with the blood and will that runs through their bodies, they will bind it with the last of their abilities and breathe sweet life into it till it becomes a thing of flesh as well as stone.
The feeling. When she reaches into a man or a woman to hold their heart and crush their will – or rather, to remind them how much they long to be held, to be without those heavy burdens that they bear. It truly is great love. She can make a man feel he is the world, only because where she looks, her whole being is drawn. It becomes so true, if only for a moment, but such things are everlasting in the weave. It is an opening, a comfort. It never feels like breaking, and that is what makes her. She gives them only what they truly want. Only if there isn’t hope at all. She is not as such a bringer of death, but she knows character well, and an existence without love, if even from afar, is not worth it at all. Those who are incapable are that way because they have not felt it themselves, or they have completely forgotten what it feels like. She can remind them, so sweetly, that they can be everything. After that, what other choice? The world is getting darker.You're sitting next to one another on a park bench, eating ice cream and listening to the highway traffic.
"Mm.. It sounds just like the sea, if you don't think too hard about it." She doesn't look at you directly, but her lips curl slightly in an almost smile.
A row of porcupines are [[walking past you]]. Their quills shake lightly with their movements. The clouds are gathering. She laughs. You smile. Pecan-butterscotch-and-cream.
You notice that the irise of her dark blue eyes look like they are [[full of little lakes]].
In the late Middle Ages, a number of extraordinary cases of insanity revealed themselves among members of European nobility. The disorder had no logical explanation and was categorized by the sufferer being convinced he was made of glass and could shatter at the smallest provocation. King Charles VI of France wouldn't let anyone touch him and would sit still for hours, wrapped in layers and layers of wool.
You have been cold for so long, you can feel yourself turn to ice. As you wonder how you didn't think to fight it sooner, why you didn't do more to resist, your fingers become stiff and stuck in place, your skin turns translucent, and your heart stops to beat.
The Dream Prison has taken you for good.
Thoughtlessly getting up to follow them, Tracing the wall with your hand, partly to steady yourself, partly to make sure it's still there, you move from your room. You stumble through the small sitting room, where the clocks have [[no batteries in them]], and go towards the kitchen, glancing around you for anything disturbing or strange. Do you notice a [[light movement in the hallway?]]
Getting into the kitchen, you pull the lightswitch, and the old incandescent light bulb flicks on with a buzzing sound. You notice that the lamp seems to be eating all the light in the room. That doesn't make any sense. But the rest of the room is still veiled in darkness, while the dirty ceiling lamp has a halo of golden light. You feel like a wrung-out moth, having pulled yourself from a watery grave only to be captured by fake fairy fire.
Try to [[withdraw]] or [[go into the flame]].Big bookshelves line the room in what used to be your office. Looking at mothbitten armchair in the corner, you decide to read for a bit instead of going back to bed. Your mind is too upset, and a visit to another world might help you sleep more easily.
Drawing the curtains firmly, you let your fingers run over the leathery spines, smelling paper and dust and comfort, before picking a book for the night.
[[//Treasure Island//]] or [[//Moby Dick//]]. This is another end to life as we know it. In panorama from above, you see the city's many skyscrapers still lit up by people working hard, but there are fewer of them now. Those who are left are the lucky ones, the ones with connections, who've managed to make a profit off of the deaths of their neighbours. Most of the offices are empty and dark with their windows smashed in by wind or broken from inside by attempts to escape. The great catastrophy has come and gone. We can't argue with it now.
The cult of angels is led by your father, who has now become a holy man. You don't even remember what he used to do before. Lawn service? Not that it matters. With his forces, he can save twice as many people from above as any effort on the ground. The downside to the wings is a strong desire for human meat, but this isn't publically known of course, and he denies himself and his followers out of purity. The sense of good is strong in him. He doesn't know, you're sure he doesn't know, that his generals share the bounty of living bodies, their victims-recently-saved, with all of his crew after nightfall. He doesn't see.
[[All the animals are gone]]. They went wild with fury and ate each other regardless of former diets. Horses feasting on dogs felt to us like a manifested sign of hell on earth in those first days. Now the world belongs truly to humanity in this final battle for the survival of the fittest. Darwinism taken to its logical conclusion. The earth has turned against us. Massive landmasses move across the globe without warning. Lavastreams form and chase their running prey mindlessly. Storms pull out trees, that are hundres of years strong, by their roots.
Yet. You and I are still here. And the angels.
[[You feel a gust of wind.]]Hidden away in the midst of everlasting nuclear winter, there is a valley of ghosts. It's one of the few places, where there's still a memory of heat. You see a young man looking for a woman here. She was one of the maidens who fought, who took axes and arrows to iron. They were imprisoned in this place and told to wait for their punishment. The waiting time was torture and it would have no end, because while the world grew cold, the oppressors simply left. The women threw themselves into flames rather than see anymore. Maybe that was it? Now he sees only the empty overgrown jungle, busy with the screaming silent dead.
He got her out, you understand, somehow managed to scrape together enough of what was left of her to take her to the train. They are happy there. As happy as can be under the circumstances. Cruelty rules their world. Sweet clear laughter sounds at his desire. Something [[isn't right]]. How beautiful he is, his naked body, his love. But it is not enough.
She returns to the valley. She is only dust and he must find a way to free her before it is too late and they miss their connection. There is no real death on the train.The whales won't let us live unless we do it right this time.
Their song is deep and strong and who knew that they could swim between the stars and that their voices carried over galaxies of distance?
Do they swim [[alone?]] They've gone up into the mountains and built a city that stretches into the clouds. Any stranger who begins the climb to reach them will be shot before they get very far and for a long time, no one tries. But then we get news that their leader has been killed. We don't know how, but it's very cold this time of year; they must be starving. We can imagine their old people and the little red-cheeked children huddled up in blankets up there. So we invade.
We bring the future. The future is for the women and those who do good. So most of them we kill, when we find them - men of the past and crones old so weathered by hardships they've forgotten how to be soft. Only those who can argue well that they have a place in the kingdoms of tomorrow are left alive and allowed to leave over the ocean. We judge them worthy by their arguments, and let the Northern Wind live, as he declares himself shaped by Modernity, a figure of speech as much as an old force of nature. That will turn out to be a mistake, of course. Our people are escaping a dying world, packing up the things we think we'll need, telling our children the tales that built our culture here. This land has been beautiful for long, held us and nourished us lovingly and never more harshly than we could overcome. But now we are hunted by creatures from before the dawn of creation, and cracks in reality have been showing in the midst of blooming nature to tell us that they'll be here soon.
We are meeting with the other clans at the monastery ruins, at the place of Kings to prepare the ships that will take us from the stormy seas to the great universal depths.
Before we can leave, the priestess calls you into [[her tent]]."Lie back. Close your eyes and listen to my voice," she says with monotonous tonality. You smell incense on the air, and under the skins, it is cool and dark. You feel shaded and comfortable.
"See that you're back in your childhood landscape," she continues. "See the green fields and the huts of your home. Taste the smell of your mother's cooking. Listen to sound of my drum." A sound like a flat stone jumping over water follows her voice.
"Feel how your breathing slows down, feel how your body gets heavy, feel the rough furs of the homestead sleeping hut. You feel heavy,"
The stone makes jumps over water.
"Look around till you meet the gaze of your spirit guide. Let it see you as well. Follow the path that it leads,
The stone makes jumps over water.
Follow your spirit guide [[into the trees]]. Follow the spirit guide [[down to the sea]]. Follow your spirit guide [[home]].they used to make //her// nervous.
The cat, it wants to be let out.
[[A door has opened somewhere]]A lot of us are only pretending to be male. The truth is, once society became this patriarchal, there wasn't room for most men in it any longer. The infection, which wiped out millions, had the unfortunate side-effect of severely boosting testosterone in most surviving xy-subjects, leading in the short term to the war, which flooded the world, and the breakdown of democracy. At this point, the military ranks in the Pan-American forces have been ridistributed and renamed a number of times, as each new change in leadership, brings new preferences with it. Currently, the fourth link in the chain of command on any given ship in the Navy is "Future Hero". Don't ask me why. The higher ups are constantly seeking to rid themselves of their rivals; thinking that, in theory, only the most powerful opponents are worth considering a threat, but quickly realizing, that as soon as they've emptied a seat of authority, somebody else is already shuffling in to fill it. That way, there's no end to the violence.
So, this island nation of ours has become a society of the old, the weak, and of women dressed as men in constant fear of awakening the jealous wrath of our superiors, but in greater fear of the farms we would otherwise have to live out our lives on. We train every day, led towards the final night of the nations by strong leaders, physically incapable of thinking of anything but their own glory in any given moment.
The waters are waiting darkly, and I grab your hand, smiling warmly as we hide together in plain sight, hoping to wait out even this.Hiding in the old castle, finding the singing and longing ghosts in the winter night. Rubbing the wood cutting and longing to be loved, to have a home, to belong. He wakes but before he can see me, she comes. And she is light and blond and pale and sweet. She is naive and enchanted by it all and they meet, htey dance, he loves her, he proposes, the mansion wakes, the servant scome fully to life, and I easily give up my dreams and live in their shadows unnoticed because clearly it is true love and they are both so happy.
But then she dies, suddenly or from some unkown wasting sickness, and he is alone and her soul is gone, and I start to long for his love again and to show him that it was me who first did all the little magical things, that I sat with the carving and talked to the silece before she found and carressed it. That I was the one who longed so deeply that it woke him. That my kiss is the magical true love's kiss. But it seems impossible that I will ever succeed, so great is his mourning and they do let me live as a servant but what fate is that. I love and love and love and long for his touch to be the one he carries to his bed over the bridal threshold, wooden carvings, but in his arms is only her ghost.
I am not dark I did not hurt her except maybe by my wish, but why does no one see me for what I am?You have been walking for too long. There is no real sense of time in this place, but the things that you were chasing are slipping away from you, your purpose is dissolving, it is white above and white below, and there is no singing as of birds or women anywhere.
Lie down and give in to the [[cold.]]
Pinch yourself and [[think of heat.]]It's just an attempt to make you jealous. Sometimes when you look at her, you [[hate her.]] You don't know how it happened, but you've taken out your tongue. It won't go back in,, and that all your words come out as muffled thmph-sounds, and you are standing there with half a tongue, ripped apart in such a way that you can see the broken taste buds as little white circles, and for some reason, is that part of a touth? You can't say anything at all. You didn't think it was that serious. You just needed it for something else for a moment and now there isn't any way back.
You open your bloody mouth to [[scream]].You're eight years old and your grandparents have given you a doll house. It's not like the ones in the catalogues, it's just a wooden box with five different rooms: four small ones and one bigger one, you've decided is the attick. But they've made it themselves. Your grandfather has built the box, and your grandmother has made wallpaper of old wrapping paper and curtains out of bits and pieces from the sewing box. It fills your heart with joy.
In your memories, you don't think the dollhouse had any furniture yet when you got it. But now it's complete with tiny couches and wardrobes. A little chestnut-you sits in the [[kitchen]] and strokes a soft white piece of wool, which you know to be your cat.
The blankets on your matchbox bed are thrown aside. The curtains in your [[bedroom]] quiver as you brush against them.
A single lamp is lit in the [[library]], casting long shadows onto the pile of boxes that you never want to think about.
[[The sitting room]] is empty apart from the rugs on the floor, made out of knotted yarn from socks which have had too many holes to be darned.
The [[attick]] is full of shapes, you assume must be furniture, covered with white paper napkins.
The scream runs through you like electric shock but it does the trick, you [[wake up]].
↶↷You wake up with a shock, sitting straight up before you know it. Cold sweat is running down your back and your knuckles are tight with adrenaline; half the sheet has been pulled loose and lies crumbled underneath you, revealing the bare mattress, slightly tacky against your skin. There's a high-pitched squeaking coming from somewhere, like a cabinet door swinging on its hinges. The faint light from the street lamp outside veils the room in shadows, making it look strange and unfamiliar.
No one is in here with you, you know that. The feeling will go away as long as you don't think about it too hard.
Go back to sleep or go look for the cabinet