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This is a dream I had a few nights ago and just can't seem to get rid of... ------------------------------------------------------------ I'm in Purgatory, which is an enormous lounge room with couches, TV, books, a cafe, etc. It's populated with a few other people besides myself and it seems very intimate and comfortable. Like everyone there is friends with each other. There is a Mistress of Purgatory, but she doesn't seem to have any particular role besides counselor and mediator. Now I'm back in the real world, only it's much darker than before without being nighttime, sorta like a rural Gotham. This is my hometown. I'm walking back up to my birth home and when I open the door it's the apartment I live in right now, but in this dream I share it with a friend from highschool named Suzanne. Suzanne has gone insane and the house is just a magnificent clutter. There's no light except |
maybe a busted lamp fitzing in and out because there is -some- kind of weird blue low-light flickering from somewhere deep in the apartment. No one is home, so I stay close to the entrance door and pick up her stuffed animal to comfort myself with. The phone is off the hook on top of the refrigerator and when I pick it up my ex-boyfriend (now bestfriend) Ryan is on the line waiting for me, talking to his mother about how worried he is that I've been gone so long. When I try to tell him that I think I'm dead and that I'm afraid it comes out in this garble that frustrates and scares me. I don't think he even knows I'm there because he just keeps talking to his mother, so I give up trying to raise my voice and talk plainly and lay the phone back down. Suddenly(?) --I have vague memories of leaving the house, but not how I got here-- I'm riding down St.Rt. 5 away from my house/apartment in a rusted out Studebaker with no doors and some kind of wooden and wire cage in the back. Driving is one of the Purgatory Mistress' bounty-hunters. (I can't remember much about him now, but think decaying zombie with a hillbilly disposition.) This guy tells me that I'm not going to be punished for leaving because I didn't manage to make contact with anyone. He also says that I'm lucky he found me before one of the SOUL EATERS did. The words are spoken with such gravity that I actually cringe and ask him what he means. Now I'm quite worried that there are no doors on the truck. What if something reaches in? The hunter tells me about them, (I can't recall the full description) and that they'll destroy a soul forever if they catch one. There's one up around the next bend in the road and we have to drive straight through it to get back to Purgatory. The hunter tells me just to believe in myself and have confidence in him and we can get through. We actually do get through the screaming purple/black vortex with eyes and teeth back to Purgatory. The Mistress is happy to see me, a little scolding, she asks me why I left? My answer then is that I don't want to be dead. I mention to her a little later that I'm worried about which way I'm going to go b/c I don't have any true faith in the concepts of Heaven or Hell. She informs me that this is the reason I'm with her. There's some talk between me and the other souls about what it was like in the real world and we share the stuffed animal between us along with ideas about what we would like to be in the next life if there is one. Now I'm an elephant with no memory of my former self or Purgatory. I'm a massive, imposing male with grand, curving tusks and a beautiful mate. We're in Africa, as the enormous map we're standing on shows me. My mate and I are bathing when Suzanne's stuffed animal falls from the sky. Curious, I get out of the water to see what it is. I pick it up in my trunk to examine it closer to my eyes and WHAM! I'm -me- again inside this elephant body and I know which one of my purgatory friends dropped it there for me. It's a sign that she's in a human body. Somehow I know exactly where she and I panic. I'm running across the map to find her because I know she's in danger for sending the message. My mate follows. We barely make it out of Africa before hunters/poachers descend on us from all points, trapping us in a circle of machine gun fire. A lucky shot kills me instantly but the hunters keep shooting into my still-standing corpse. I'm in Purgatory again watching this on the television. My mate wasn't lucky enough to die. She's suffering, struggling toward my elephant corpse because she thinks I'm still alive. How she screams. I'm crying, on my knees pawing at the television screen. We loved each other so much and I remember it in the pit of my stomach, in my brain, my heart, even in my -face- where my trunk was attached only moments ago. (The emotion was so strong that I'm crying now as I relate this.) This is torture and after several agonizing minutes she finally succumbs, having gone into shock, folding to the ground without reaching her mate. The hunters stand over her and -on- her clubbing and hacking at her head with machetes, firing there rifles directly down into her beautiful eyes... Then the "camera" moves back to my elephant corpse. The hunters have realized that I'm dead, but a few of them are still shooting for fun. I watch numbly as the friend who dropped the stuffed animal now joins me, her human body having been murdered while my elephant one was being taken down. We kneel on the floor of Purgatory holding each other. She saw the harrowing bit with the female elephant, but only now does she come to me with her apologies and we watch as a small blonde woman steps up and puts her head against my still-twitching trunk. Such love in her eyes for the dead animal, you can see it even in black-and-white. The woman is spattered with my elephant blood and chunks of my hide. Stroking me, she demands my eyes from the man with the surgical gloves who is carefully slicing off patches of my thick skin. He instructs her to lay in the blood mud and she does so eagerly. The television has been muted this whole time, so I can't tell what she says next because there are no more hand gestures. The "surgeon" places my eyes over hers like contact lenses and she looks dead now because the eyes have already clouded over and she's so still for this. For some reason she is so beautiful to me that I can now stop crying. My friend wipes my tears. We watch in horror as the man puts hot elephant flesh on the woman. Is he measuring her for a dress? We seem to think so. This macabre act doesn't seem to stir her at all. In fact, after the removes the contacts and the flesh, she gets up and thanks the man before walking back off of the screen's view. The Purgatory Mistress finally turns off the TV and informs us that watching all of that was our punishment. Death was also our punishment for breaking the rules of not making contact. The other souls that have been lined up behind us watching disperse and go back to their idle tasks more worried about their fates than they were previously. Now I'm me again, present day, walking down the street to meet my fiance, Andrew, outside a little bar called the Fish Tank that's close to our house. I'm so relieved and overjoyed to see him because I remember everything this time. I hug him so tight, kiss him so much, and he's laughing, loving me, happy to see me. To Andrew, we only saw each other last a few hours ago. To me it seems like this is the first day of a new life, though I remember the life with him that came before I died. Afraid to tell him about it all, afraid to worry him, afraid to be crazy, I drag him down the street to my now-estranged friend Jo's house. Jo will understand. Jo can help me. Jo will tell me if I'm crazy, or if not, he might know why I was put back into my own life instead of into another one. Jo answers the door a little surprised to see us, but invites us into this big, sunny, open house with hardwood floors and high ceilings. It's an old plantation-style house, but sturdy. Even the walls have character seeping through their studs. Up the stairs we go to sit on his bed. Jo shows me some of his new musical equipment while Andrew wanders over into another room (still in sight) to play with Jo's guinea pigs and hamsters. There is a pyramid of perhaps 9 fishtanks holding these little animals. Surrounding Jo's room, with their doors open, are girl's rooms. One of them is doing homework, one of them is on the phone, and one of them is Jo's new girlfriend and she comes to sit on the bed with us and talk because Jo and I are sort of awkwardly trying to get reacquainted -and- we're relieved to be talking again. At some point the girlfriend goes off to rescue the hamsters from one of the other girls' kitten because Andrew left off the notebook-paper lid of one of the tanks and the kitten got too curious and Andrew hasn't noticed yet. This is when I tell Jo what happened and he -does- understand and we hug, talking about the whole thing. Then we're all downstairs in the basement with all of Jo's male and female housemates at a big party. It's all dark and the music is pumping and I'm still telling Jo about the whole Purgatory and elephant thing. When I mention the Mistress, I say something about how she didn't seem to have any real power over any of us - and there she is! Standing right in front of me all goth'd out, looking just like anyone else at the party, and grinning. With a purse of her lips, she blows sparkles off her palm onto me and my previously red dress is now purple! Chuckling softly at my shock, she disappears back into the crowd, I turn to Jo with wide eyes and the dream is over. |