 
When Jupiter Sighs

by Bethalynne Bajema

When Jupiter Sighs is copyright ©2000 Bethalynne Bajema. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: legal@versacrumbooks.com

Foreword

I was a very dreamy young woman, immersed in comic books and strange fiction, and all I wanted to do was be among those people who wrote those stories and illustrated them. These ideas were my first fully realized stories in that regard. They deal with my air fairy imagination, my sprawling dream-space, and my over active imagination. These stories are the product of being told I needed to come down out of the clouds and move among the regular world. I put up a small fight.

I've written quite a bit in my day, but these are my very first short stories that I saw through to the end and I really adore the nostalgia they have for me. More than a decade ago I pulled them together into this collection. Since then they've had a bit of editing and other short stories added to create this finalized version of the collection. When you read them keep in mind I was a girl born in the seventies who spent her young years lovingly shackled to the eighties and then found a whole different world when the nineties came around. Comics that weren't just about superheros were finally a thing. The internet was just being born to the general public. It was a wonderful time for me.

A few of these stories are born of dreams, while others are just strange ideas that came to me when I was here or there. They're purely fantasy based. They don't ask too much of the reader except to sit back and hopefully enjoy them. And I hope you do exactly that! -- Bethalynne

Table of Contents

* * *

When Jupiter Sighs

Apples & Muses

Water

Snippets of Babble

Delirium's Nocturne

The Dreaming

Feathers, Flowers & Death

Baptista

*

When Jupiter Sighs

The woman looked dark and feral; like a long lost creature who acted as a guardian to a dead history that any one of us should have tried to remember, or at the very least made up.

She wore flowers and skulls within her headdress and her eyes were a pale shade of nothingness. All of her emotion was kept tight in the movement of her lips. Because of this, it was hard to place a proper understanding on what and who she was.

No one here would stand against her. All that was 'we' stepped to the side and allowed her to walk in. There was a very stark silence as she moved among us. I personally, could think of no words.

Her blanched eyes looked towards us before moving skywards. Her lips began to move as she whispered what we could only consider a curse in a language long since forgotten from our world. She spoke to a celestial body so far away many of us couldn't even claim to understand its influence.

"When your false worlds find themselves at a pause, at a sigh, my planet Yuggoth is there to whisper to us all that the universe has forgotten. After all those dark whisperings I hear my own celestial being making suggestions while I sleep. They come to one place and I understand my being and where I am in this life. A world of porous creatures you could never understand..."

I felt so small, so insignificant as I moved towards her. I fell down to my knees and felt an overwhelming sense of emotions overcoming me. I just wanted one creature to understand, whether it actually understood or not. I reached towards her and gave into my fears.

"I waited so long to say this... to admit this... I understand. I have for so long listened to the night sky and only Jupiter's voice found me. So aggressive was his language that it has exhausted me. I waited for that one moment where I could lift my eyes from the sky... to look away. It took a moment when Jupiter sighed to break free of his language I cannot understand. It brings me to this point with you. Where I am happy to let go and maybe... just maybe... go back to as normal a life as I can hope for."

My words stopped there. I dared not look up in my fear. Had I saw what was taking place I would have seen a sympathetic set of eyes, ears, and an understanding.

I felt the presence of someone near me as I cowered. A hand that so lovingly touched me and felt my issues as they plagued me. This hand touched my hair and stroked my cheek. It spoke to me directly, silently, and gave me the response I needed.

"So listen to a few of the small tales I have to tell and we will let you go. When the great giant truly sighs, you will be free of this..."

Apples & Muses

The sun is whispering. This is a soft sound like the rumbling of a hungry stomach; low and deep. This an authority not to be messed with. I can take a hint, I see the threats very well. Unlike so many others, I'll never be a sun worshiper, at least not in the normal sense. If I were to offer praise it would be quiet and respectful, politely offered from within the protective walls of my home. I'll give him a nod and a thanks for all the wonderful things he helps grow and sustenance, but I won't lose my mind in him.

You see, it's his vanity that gets the better of him. The other men—Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and even Saturn— wear their beauty like a polished badge. But in the cover of darkness and sight too weak to truly see, those of us here on the good Mother Earth do not notice. It is he, Ra, Roshone, the Sun who is the most demanding celestial body in our heavens. And for this he will allow our adoring glances to no other. What of our appreciation, our praise? What reward do we get for our devotions? Skin that falls to tan leather or cancer that creeps under our covers. He rewards us with pain, as it is in his sadistic nature to do.

And still he whispers.

I cannot see her, but I know his lover is there, washed out in the others harsh light. She sits quietly alone, the woman hidden behind the man's throne and she listens. She listens to his apologies, his promises of better things to come. These are false tales he's practiced since god smashed his hands together and brought them into creation. She knows they are empty words, but they are pleasing to the ear. Making the brash man seem more humble, more like the warm creature she loves.

She might still his whispers by telling him she is faithful, for there are no words that she can utter that he would not believe. In all her long, so very long, time in the heavens, never had she truly forsaken him for another. She had humored the flirts and enjoyed the endless gathering of celestial men who had come to swoon and coo over her. Yet in the end, when her time in the night sky came to a close and that bright lover of hers loomed on the horizon, it was always him she thought of. It was always him she wanted to be near. How could she not? The sun's borrowed light was what made her glow.

I could only sit and laugh softly to myself. The lady night was my teacher, my tutor, a great creature who taught me—through her actions—how to ruffle the feathers of a man. And now she offered one more lesson on the nature of a pleading lover: Give him time to wallow in his needs, give him time to remember that lonely period before he met you. Only then, after the whispers have turned to pleading, did you give him one petal of your flower to fuss over. One frail piece of hope and forgiveness that might be forthcoming.

The whispering stopped and the moon said something softly to him.

Then silence, as the two were content with one another again.

A smile plays at my lips, the silence like a soft melody. Sometimes there is no greater sound than simple silence. Simple nothingness. But soon the silence gives way to the clinking of the keyboard. I'm supposed to be working.

A face stared back at me, mockingly, tempting me to do her justice. With a subtle movement of my hand I offer my middle finger to the figure on the screen. She seems to smile all the harder. Then I feel foolish, looking around the empty room as if the house ghosts would really care if I cursed my own drawing or not. I look back and for a moment Na'chen looks as though she might be sympathetic. But as quickly as it comes is as quickly as it goes and again she is nothing more than a smirking diva on the screen wearing too little clothing and too much mascara.

"What to do, what to do..." I mumble to myself.

Jezebella perks her ears up, wondering if the senseless babble from me is meant as an invitation for her. In the end, though she'd adore the attention, she decides to stay where she's at. The will to move is beyond her. She lays her head down and falls back into her catnap. If her mistress needs something fuzzy and warm to cuddle, she knows where to find her.

Now the sunbeams were getting in through the slight slits in the blinds. Hazy little beams showing me just how many invisible bits were in my breathing air. One beam is poking through the curtains and pressing against my back. I feel like the cat that can't quite make it through the sunlit spot on the floor without falling asleep. My lids are growing heavy, my limbs a bit too watery, and my eyes feel like they haven't closed in days.

To my right on the wall is the odd shadowbox sculpture of Kilby, my poor silent ejiyn girl. I painted her in metallics and placed her among a dry flower bed, putting a halo of fire behind her head and a pair of peacock feathers for wings behind her shoulder blades. My beautiful surreal butterfly. She closes one black eye to wink at me. She leans forward and points a delicate porcelain hand towards my computer screen. I shake my head, I'm growing much too tired to try and decipher her sign language, but her sharp jabs toward the monitor were becoming more urgent. All the while my eyelids drooped and the engine light in my brain dimmed. She'd just have to forgive me for not understanding the secret languages of inanimate objects that choose to animate themselves.

Kilby gave up on her signals and instead took hold of the frame she sat in. She braced herself for whatever event was about to occur. I should have taken the hint or at least recognized her clues. Falling to the dream at night was calm and sweet. The daydream was another beast all together. Swift and fast, tugging you under by some massive undertow that wouldn't let up till your body hit the daydream water's floor.

The room tipped.

Quick and sudden the room shifted its reality and in this reality I was not sitting on the right floor. The room moved forward and my chair rolled. It only came to a stop as it hit my computer desk and became wedged there. I was not quite so still though, and kept moving as the chair stopped. All that loomed before me was the computer screen and it seemed to be getting larger by the moment.

My eyes fell closed. Not that I didn't want to see where I was going, but the sheer heaviness of my eyelids wouldn't allow them to remain open any longer. I feel the slight bump as my body hits the monitor screen and then the even stranger sensation as my body passed through it.

I didn't open my eyes as I fell through the wires. The nastiness of technology and electricity pressing itself against me; it was enough to make me nauseous. Thankfully it didn't linger for very long. The wires and miscellaneous contraptions I had no names for gave way to air and a fine mist. Through the mist I fell till the ground reached up to greet me.

With a thud. "Ouuww!" was my reaction.

"Nasty trip isn't it? That's what you get for sleeping during the day."

A nymph? One of my celestial men, or perhaps the Queen herself? But no... it was only my muse come to call.

"Hello you. We do have to stop meeting like this."

He smiles and offers me a hand, which I take. Using the support I haul myself to my feet and dust my clothes off like some indignant cat who's fallen off a ledge. Upon standing and looking around I can see the landscape is not so appealing. The images seem too bright and lacking in many details; like a bunch of pastels on the TV screen where someone has turned the brightness up. It was wearing on my eyes.

I rub my eyes, blink and do my best to shake off the glare that's threatening to place itself over my irises like some hazy contact. Then I look towards my friend.

He stood there, swaddled in his blacks, arms behind his back, rocking slightly forward to back as he waited for me to get my bearings. I straightened the logo on my jersey so it lay square across my chest, gave a tug to the bottom of my shorts to still the creeping hems in the rear, and called myself good. I pushed away my afternoon-untidy hair and grinned—absolutely lacking any mystique.

"So what are we up to today?" I ask.

He grins, something in part natural, in another part mischievous. "I've been creating music. Well, I will be creating shortly. I've been inventing a new machine that makes music. Music that is so strange it will make the eerie moans of my beloved Theremin seem natural. "

"Can I have a look and listen?"

"Of course."

He motioned towards a doorway off in the distance. The door sat there neatly in the middle of reality and would lead into unreality. Perhaps if I wasn't moving among the daydream this would seem rather odd. It was all quite natural though. In this place doors could be found anywhere—even in the middle of one endless expanse to move you to a completely different one.

A strange thing was taking place in this reality we stood in though. A cold wind was blowing and with it came the smell of cinnamon and gasoline. It nipped at my nose to the point of pain. And the brightness was falling away to a type of living blackness. Curiously a moving blackness that was lashing out across the sky like some great artist's dark paints had toppled over. The liquid color was wiping away the pastels and brilliance. When the thunder rocked the ground beneath my feet, and the lighting cut through the sky, I had the sickening feeling my daydream was falling rapidly to something more sinister.

My companion was undaunted and smiled away as if the dream sun was still glowing brightly. He put his hand to the small of my back to get me to moving. He lead me towards the door. "Come now, shouldn't keep my little contraption waiting, should we?" but a small note of nervousness was betraying his calm.

"What the hells going on?" but he doesn't hear me. The wind was blowing so furiously that it ripped the words from my lips the moment they rolled off my tongue. Beyond that the thunder still raged. "But I just got here..." I whisper. It was too soon to have such distractions.

My muse has no time for the growing darkness and quickly ushers me through the door from that moment of dream reality to that place of dream unreality beyond the doorway. What awaits me on the other side of the door is something I find hard to put into words.

My muse tells me he's created a machine that creates music, but this is no simple musical instrument. This massive thing is a beast of distorted proportions. It is hard for me to get a sense of what I'm looking at and what pieces of the machinery are meant to power its workings and what pieces are the things that make music. It also seems to be moving in a slight and subtle fashion that played tricks on the mind. I wasn't sure if I was mesmerized or terrified by the thing.

"What in the unholy world have you created my muse?" I whispered.

My muse beams over my reaction and moves towards his creation. There is a strange moment as he moves towards this thing when the nature of predictable movement and perspective are turned over. The illusion is so very brief I can't be sure I saw it or if I imagined it. In that moment the muse was suddenly bigger than his machine. He towered over it like it was little more than a music box at his feet. Then roles were reversed and he was so tiny as to look as though he were standing next to a monolith.

"What the?" I manage to say before an extreme sensation of vertigo hits me square between the eyes. I wobble this way and that and find myself at the edge of the door, falling to the ground. My fall triggered an avalanche. I couldn't see the weighty green things as they fell down around me until the rampage stopped. I opened my eyes to see myself buried in green apples, in a volume I'd never seen before—not even at the fruit market.

"Good Lord! I feel like I'm in the damn Yellow Submarine movie! Please tell me I'm not about to turn to stone!"

My muse hurried back to me, trying very hard not to laugh at the pile of artist and apples. I moved my hands with a violent thrust back and forth sending produce flying everywhere.

"Is this suppose to be a statement?"

He chuckled. "Just a little one. No one ever listens anyway."

He nervously stepped around me and peered through the open doorway. The world on the other side was black and violent sounding as the storm got up a full head of steam. Very gingerly he pushed the open door closed, effectively silencing the storm on the other side. "Actually it's more of an alarm system for me." He turned the knob on the door handle to lock it. "There are a few people roaming around these unreal parts that I don't wish to share my music with. Now, let me introduce you to my wonderful creation."

My muse offers me his hand and helps me to my feet, then he's off. His very long legs are taking steps that I can't keep up with. I'm still not sure that I want to get close to this inorganic beast of a thing. Perhaps the machine sensed this. It was changing from what I had originally seen to something more elaborate but attractive. It was looking more like a museum of classical instruments and pipe organs had been swept up into a tornado and spit back onto the ground. It was less beast and more musical sculpture.

Nervously I followed the path my muse had set off on in front of me. I came around the side of the massive thing and found my muse standing at a grand keyboard. It appeared to be the place to control and play this thing. He gave it a quick look over before moving to a platform that nearby. I joined him there.

At the heart of the platform was a large table with several rolled up scrolls and a ton of wispy pieces of tracing paper carelessly spread out. On each piece of paper there was a small diagram of technical notes. I'm not sure I could have made much sense out of them if they had been set down in proper order. They were most intimidating in this chaotic pattern.

Among the scrolls on the table there was one that had instructions for building me written on the end. Curiosity had me and my muse was busy picking up pieces of tracing paper and setting them here and there. It was like he was trying to put together a puzzle that only he knew what it was meant to look like. I used his distraction to take the old scroll in hand so that I might spy a look.

Carefully I rolled the sides of the scroll outward and watched as a breathtaking series of directions and illustrations were presented. What I saw drawn out there might have been the beast before me, but only in its skeletal form. This baby had had some major alterations from the original piece. I reached out and tugged at my muse's sleeve to get his attention. "Did you read this?"

He looked up from his puzzle solving, absently glancing at the unrolled scroll. He shrugged his shoulders.

"No, not really." he confessed. "I did like most people do when following instructions and ignored much of the text and followed the diagrams. Besides, I wasn't quite sure what the language was."

He might have said what language it wasn't, for surely there were ten tongues set to print on this one scroll. Here there was the words fait accompli, and there afer ventus. Another word was in Hebrew and then a paragraph that looked like the Gaelic language. It was like so many different hands from all over stopped for but a moment to offer a bit of direction to the original author.

I looked over at my muse. "So you have no name for your invention?" I asked.

He shook his head, his attention still absorbed by his pieces of paper. "No, I haven't."

"Do you have any idea who made this design? I mean, aren't you curious what the original author's intent for this thing was? Perhaps they had a name for it. Naming it might make it a little less... intimidating."

This actually drew his attention away from his paper moving. He set his hands to the table top and resting against his outstretched fingers. His eyes slowly moved over the machine before him before coming to rest on the massive keyboard at its heart.

"I'm not sure I have time to be worried about the original inventor's intent. His naming of this thing would be irrelevant too. Whatever he intended to create it is not sitting here before us now. This is my invention and credit for it is solely given to me."

"So then, do you have a name for it?" It seemed silly to keep at this one question, but I really felt I needed to know the name of this thing. In all of my dreaming worlds names held great power. Without a proper name it was as though this mysterious invention had the potential of being threatening with no means to protect against it.

Slowly my muse shook his head. "Hadn't stopped to think of one." Rather nervously he cast a look back over his shoulder at the locked door. "I was rather more worried about getting it done before being interrupted."

"I would be tempted to say you should name it for yourself, but to tell you the truth..." my words faltered for a moment. There were a few glaring realities about my muse's invention. "I don't think this thing will ever utter a series of notes anyone would want to dance to. Maybe one of your sibling's names might be very fitting though."

"And which one would that be?"

I had to smile when I said it. "Polyhymnia. She sang hymns to the gods." It just seemed like something very fitting given the nature of the beast. This would be the instrument to offer up a melodic sound to the gods. Not the angels or cherubs, demigods or shamans, but the very gods themselves, whose ears could hear infinity.

He laughed softly and nodded "Yes, yes, that might be fitting, but it doesn't really role off the tongue does it?"

I shrugged. "Neither does bastardized child of a bad one night stand between a megalith and an organ. I think you should take whatever could be considered slightly fitting, or slightly pretty at least when written out."

He wasn't listening again and neither did I blame him. I was not so musically inclined, except for the fact I enjoyed to listen to it beyond any other pleasure in the world. I could see his growing fascination and pleasure in this contraption set before him. And because of my love of music I could at least—in part—relate to what he was feeling. Take my sex from me, my faith, hope and religion, but leave me with my ears for hearing the sounds of melody, harmony and rhythm. Even the maddening sample of a bee's hive set to the drone of Reznor's pleading.

So, not to allow myself the chance to become more intimidated by this thing, I looked back towards the open scroll sitting on this alter. It really did feel like an alter too. The longer I was in that place the more I felt like I was at the center of a religious spectacle.

I ran my hands over the wrinkled parchment, taking in the water spots and the soft erosion of time in places. There was something simple and beautiful about a sheet of well made paper, especially when it was allowed to age and gain character. It was such a wonderful thing to feel underneath my fingertips.

As I mulled over this idea, my hands worked themselves over the paper till a small gap in a spot by chance opened up to me. In all the areas the paper was written upon in text, someone had painfully separated the very thin top paper layer from the equally thin bottom layer. Small windows were worked into the parchment and upon carefully opening them up I found faint writing. A clear hand writing in old English, with the lightest touch of ink to the paper so it wouldn't be dark enough to show through. It felt like I'd found the scroll's heart (or hearts) and that heart gave up its secret.

As I made my discovery my muse had wandered off to the keyboard of the beast. He was looking over the various knobs and buttons. His hands moved over the individual keys but never dipped low enough to touch them. I think perhaps he was just trying to figure out if his new toy was turned on or if there was something more he had to do before he could sit down to it. Then he happened to remember and take notice of a series of keys that were in strange locks over a side panel next to the keyboard. He moved to start turning keys.

I read and he tinkered away. For a short while the only thing to be heard was the sound of keys clicking and paper rattling. I barely noticed as a slight hum began to come off of the musical monolith. I'm too engrossed in putting the message written in the hidden scroll windows together. When enlightenment came to me it struck my muse with as equal a force. An answer and an answer, only they should have canceled one another out. Somewhere beyond the locked closed door the roar of thunder could be heard.

"I don't think you should play that thing...." I say in a very small voice, but even if I had been yelling it was already too late.

The composer found his own muse and instinct carried him the rest of the way. He hit a final knob and pushed and pulled a strange brass device that sent soft vibrations of the machine into a far more massive vibration of sound and movement. When he put his fingers to the keys something beyond notes came out.

I stumbled backwards, away from it, trying to regain my balance enough to reach for the scroll and take hold of it. The rumbling of the musical engine knocked the table right off its feet. It toppled over and sent the pieces of tracing paper into the air. All around me it was snowing little diagrams and doodles. I couldn't see through this paper shower to where the scroll had fallen to.

The scroll had been carried away by the vibrations rattling the ground. The apples too were moving. The apples looked like a little green army of round, featureless soldiers storming towards me. The scroll slipped beneath them as they marched on and I lost sight of it. I had to rush into the mist of bouncing sea of green and fling apples in every direction to make enough of a clear path to get the scroll. As quickly as I removed an apple another one bounced into its place, this caused my actions to become more frenzied.

The movement of the ground was increasing in violence: Like the vibrations of the beast was sending its poison into the very earth below, infecting it like a virus. I fell to my knees and crawled, getting bruised by the produce that bounced off me everywhere. I'm not sure what was written on the scroll would be able to help turn things around, it just seemed like a good idea to not lose it. Finally I felt it beneath the apples and was able to rescue it from the green hoard.

As I looked over my shoulder I was struck with the horrific realization that all of this fuss had come from just a few keys pressed to make one chord. The look on my muse's face was near maniacal now and I knew he was about to get to the act of playing in earnest. He stretched out his arms and brought his hands together to crack his knuckles. Then his fingers moved to the keys and the real concert began.

Dust flew from the beast's pipes and sockets as a silvery smoke jumped from the tight chords as the organ keys fell against them. It took a little rumbling to get all the construction dust off of the musical monolith, but once all the dust and clutter was shaken off that thing truly came alive.

I lay back on the ground, clutching the scroll to my chest and simply tried to ride out the composer's developing song. It was like being on one of those hotel beds, where I'd offered it a quarter and now it was buzzing and bumping around for me. Yet this was no soft humming bed and the ride it was giving was doing nothing short of scaring the living hell out of me. Were this not a place in the unreality, the reality of what was going on in that place would have shaken me to death or at the very least caused me to wet my pants.

And that idea allowed me a moment to laugh. With my laugh came consequences.

The machine snatched the sound from my lips and pulled it into itself. It turned it over, pounded it, caressed it, spinning it till it was twisted into a note. That note shot out through one of the shorter pipes and sank back towards the ground to fall over me. With it I became the laugh; light and happy. It felt good. I relaxed and opened my ears.

This strange invention of my muse's was so much more than a monstrosity meant to make noise. Perhaps the twist was in thinking the original design was meant to be anything actually musical in nature. What had those hidden words said?

They read: As I realize in design my revelation I know it not meant a thing for the experience of man. Even as I cannot destroy that which I have drawn out, I can't bear the idea of it being truly crafted. When temptation saw me setting aside my apprehension to move to build, the Eumenides came within the storm and warned me away. Now I can only hide away this warning within my designs. Do not build this. Do not let it see the world .

Hefty words. What would those original designs for this machine have built? And how had that original design been warped into an unsettling second type of life by my muse's changes? What effect would this dreamscape have on it? And what would it do to the dreaming? Would what was born here slowly find its way beyond my muse's secret little place of unreality?

I don't know if I would be given a chance to answer those questions. A deeper revelation was being offered to anyone listening. It was twisted up in the unearthly song the beast was now singing through its mechanical works.

I came to find soon after that this monster was more than a music maker. I was right on only one account —there would be no dancing to it because the person listening would not be able to dance. The sheer thrill of it would crumple them into a tiny ball; falling into the fetal position like falling back into the womb. It might be the soft hum of a mother's voice speaking to the unborn babe, it might have been the lullaby of a ghost singing to the grandchild it never met. It might have been the sound of sex a person had always fantasized about but never felt. It might actually suck the soul out of a person through their ears, manipulate it the way it did my laugh and thrust it back into the body to become a living piece of music.

And then I realized...

Too much, it was way too much to stand.

It was at all moments all things... the most beautiful of classical compositions and yet the angriest of screams set to chords. The thunder high above carrying the beat of a small child's voice as she sang a nursery rhythm. All intertwining to create something that made the body's emotions react. Only they were trying to express all emotions, all at once, and it threatened to overload my delicate and oh so fragile human nerves.

What a way to fall to ruin though. Maybe upon my demise it would suck me in and push me back out into the world as something that could be heard rather than seen. I liked the very idea of it. So I didn't fight it, but let my system relax and enjoy of it what I could before all sensory response in my dream body shut-down.

I looked back at the muse and his invention, seeing them both through a haze. There was something not quite solid growing between us. It seemed to me I was looking at a moving picture, as if it was composing a scene to accompany the sound. This scene looked like a child adorned in gauze and silks, sitting in a blanket of feathers and pearls. She was playing with a small glass doll, whose painted face was somewhat cruel though painted elegantly. She was humming a melancholy tune that I heard over top of the machine's roar. I could see beyond her, through her, to the creator at his canvas. His arms moving wildly as he strived to keep up with his own sprawling musical creation. For a moment it reminded me of a scene from my beloved Phantom of the Opera. The lovelorn Phantom sat at his organ madly creating his compositions the sweet Christine would later sing to.

This got me to softly laughing again. Thinking of the real muse down in his basement studio, like the Phantom in his netherworld home beneath the opera house. I'll have to remember to mail him a phantom mask when I wake up I say aloud and this got me to laughing even harder, till I thought I would curl up in pain. The machine sucked up my laughter and my words and spit them back at me. They moved through the hazy scene. I watched the opaque girl with her doll as her eyes followed my breath to the great beast. She changed her tune somewhat to mimic my unintentional addition to the music.

Then the ground really rocked. For a moment I thought my words had wreaked more havoc than this poor world could stomach. But it wasn't my actions causing the stir but the pulling of the sky above. Like it had suddenly became liquid and some giant hand had been thrust into it, swirling the waters (and reality) with a slight motion. Even worse, bits of the sky above were being picked at, pulled back, torn like the unwrapping of a gift. There was something on the other side and right at this moment it was trying to pry its way in.

This gave me a good slap of clarity, a moment of clear thought to tune out the music and get to my feet. It was rough going but I haphazardly crossed the shaking ground between me and the composer's bench. I stopped only once, as the hazy scene of the girl comes up to greet me. There is a brief hesitation before I pushed myself through it. It might have been my imagination, but I could swear that precious thing let out a small complaint as I pushed through her transparent world within this world. It bites at her for a moment before she goes back to her humming, this time a little more somber for the intimate intrusion.

The apples are still rolling everywhere underfoot. I think to myself that I will never again in my life touch a Granny Smith.

The patch of earth below the machine itself seemed to be ten times more unstable than anywhere else. I bounced this way and that way as I tried to maintain my balance and continue forward. Finally I get a hold of the back of my muse's bench, hauling myself up to sit next to him; afraid I might topple over otherwise.

"You have to stop playing!" I shout, but he's hopelessly deeper into the melody than I had become. It must have been countless times more potent to sit at this throne and be the deliverer of such blessed noise, but he needed to know the ultimate outcome of that noise.

I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him around to face me. There is one moment, as my eyes lock with his, that I have a flash of sudden fear, or maybe—to be perfectly honest—jealousy. His eyes were washed over in a swirling pattern of colors and emotions I am not equipped to describe. Like he was filled head to toe with the very things I felt there on the ground. It was all passing through him to be sucked in and pushed out, tediously and precisely. This thing was leaving its notes, meter and words imprinted on his very tendons and muscles. It was frightening and at the same time an alluring thought.

My unwelcome intrusion pulled him from his daze. The colors pass and in their place his green eyes once again are looking back at me. He blinked for a moment, disoriented.

"What do you want? Don't you like it?" he asked.

"Oh yes!" I shout over the din "I like it. I like it too much! My body's gonna rattle apart out of liking it. You need to stop though! I found out what these plans are for!"

I set the plans down on the small shelf meant to hold sheet music. For one scary moment he looks as those he's going to look upon the scroll like a sheet of music and attempt to play what is written there. It was easy to presume that would only double the trouble.

"Look at these translations beneath the others..." I flip back the small paper windows and point to the soft writing "The Eumenides were right! This is wrong! We shouldn't be using this. It shouldn't exist. It's going to tear everything apart! You're killing the dreamscape! It can't keep up with this thing."

He shook his head violently. "How can you say that?! This is beautiful. It's not something that's wrong. Listen to it."

"I'd love to listen to it but..." and that but is the last thing I could get out as the sky is ripped from above us and the world below disappears into nothingness. At that moment I feel like nothing more important than a hamster in a box and a small child has come to play with me.

Then the instrument is fading from beneath us. Being taken away to a place we cannot go or at least a place our bodies can't live in so long as their is breath in our lungs and energy going through our sleeping brains. The bench below becomes smoke and ash and there we're left to stand as everything continues to fade into something that's not white, or light, but a brilliant void ten times more vast than any words can express.

Exhilaration falls to fear, and the memory of what just happened—the music, the thunder, the girl and her doll—become vapor. Not even solid enough to be retained as a memory. And worse.... there's somebody, or somebody's in the vastness. I'd care not to say aloud who, or what, they were.

I couldn't force myself to take a breath or move in any way. And though the butterflies often found my tummy in many situations, their former incarnations had woken up inside this time. A host of caterpillars moved up and down my spine. Little feet scurrying and furry bodies rubbing against my sensitive spinal nerves. The goose flesh came to my arms as a chill crept up my back. I watched in horror as the sky before me split open and spit forth something even more black than the black sky around it. This was not blackness, but nothingness, ten times denser than the void we stood in.

Three bodies were pressing forward in this dense nothingness. Around them was a flurry of pulled feathers and blood red sand. This was not a nightmare. This was the type of vision and sensation that one woke to a fractured soul from. It was terrifying and just a little bit absurd at the same time. This was only meant to be a little dream about a music box.

I whisper "I don't mean to be too familiar, but can I hold you hand?"

And my muse replies even softer "I was just going to ask you the same."

A moment later the blood circulation is cut off in our fingers as our grips are nothing short of holding on for dear life. Holding onto the last thing in this netherworld that truly is real and solid.

Finally our new guests begin their introductions and I can feel the blood coming from my ears as the sound of their voices is too great to bear...

The jarring sound of my phone brings me back. It was still sitting next to my keyboard. Still somewhat in my haze I answer it and immediately warm to the low female voice on the other end. The Fabulous Miss Blase calling to keep me up to date on her latest conquest. I am grateful for that familiar voice, but still I politely beg her to let me call her back when I'm less dazed.

My computer wallpaper has given up its view so the screen-saver can take over. On my screen a softly humming organic machine like train of art moves up and down. This is a not so pleasant image courtesy of H.G. Giger. I tip my mouse to make it go away. I close my media player as well. I didn't need music right now. More than anything I wanted good and simple silence.

My eyes scan the computer screen. A number of cyber souls had crept up to say hello. A man interested in my art... a relative trying to draw a little green backed blood from me... a timer telling me I had been still on-line forty sum minutes, did I wish to remain on-line? I had less than ten minutes to respond.

No, I really did think it was about a good time to sign off, drop out, throw some ice on my head and curse my vivid imagination. But at the last moment another small window pops up and a familiar muse says "I see you." To which I laugh.

I hammer the keys. "Do you have a moment? I've got a story for you."

For Terpsichore... my muse.

Water

The sound is like cool metal sliding down a length of ice. A delicate noise of such succulent smoothness that it draws you closer, makes you feel sheer and cold. It places you flat against the flawless floor as a river of water slides over you body. It chills the skin and relaxes the soul. It is winter and heaven. These were the words my grandmother would say to me when she tucked me into bed.

My mother and father would both be busy at their forms, scribbling numbers and perfecting figures in their heads out of reflex. I would sit in the living room watching the colorful figures dance and swirl on the television screen. The program's content was lost on my young mind. My attention was on the old grandfather clock anyway. Sitting there so silently, waiting for the clock to drag its slow hands to the number nine.

So there I sat, holding my breath as the minute hand slowly clicked along its path. As the hand passed the top number of twelve something within that massive thing would click and grind, coming to life with a moan and finding the small bells that would ring to mark the hour. Under my breath I counted along with the clock till we both fell silent on the ninth chime. My head turned towards my grandmother, the old woman sitting wrapped in her hand-knitted cover. There was always a brief moment of worry that she would have succumbed to sleep and I would be left to my parents for my goodnight ritual.

Grandmother never let me down though. She would be hefting her heavy body out of the chair, telling me it was about my bedtime. I would go to her and we would both looked towards the dining room; towards the table that was cluttered with papers.

My parents, both accountants by profession, sat in their equation induced daze. The rhythmic sound of fingers punching away at small calculators was the only communication I often heard from them.

Our fear was that this night (this night being every night grandmother and I did this) they would wake from that daze and decide to play the mother and father role. They would push grandmother away and lead me off to bed themselves. We got lucky that night. We got lucky almost every night.

The two of us moved down the hall as quickly as the old woman's legs could carry her. We would be through the bed room door, closing that door quietly behind us and making sure to lock it. I would jump into bed and pull the covers up to my shoulders. Grandmother gently placed her weight on the edge of my bed. She tucked me in by pulling the covers up to my chin. There was always a brief moment as she settled herself down. Her gaze looking longingly towards the window, as if her heart's desire was only beyond the panes of glass.

This was our ritual. It was what we did together nearly every night. I couldn't know that this particular night the ritual would be slightly different. I couldn't know how things would become more than a story told, but in fact a story lived through the eyes of another. This night...

I am tucked into bed and I'm watching my grandmother with that familiar dreamy look she gives the world beyond the windows. Minutes pass before her attention turns back towards me again. With a deep breath she finds her memories and begins.

"It is the sound of cool metal sliding down a length of ice..." were her first words. Her voice was crystal clear, so unlike the gruff speaking voice the rest of the world heard from her. Only I have the privilege of hearing this voice. The voice came with the memories and with the memories came that gaze that she turned on me.

Such a gaze she had! Her eyes were so bright and clear peering out from that aged face. I could only imagine the things those eyes had seen. Better yet, I wondered what those eyes had seen that other eyes could not see. My grandmother was special because of that gaze. She was a woman who had seen something beautiful and secret.

A few minutes passed and grandmother was now lost to her memories. It was almost as though she had gone into a trance. The words she spoke were always the same as were the images. I needed to hear this story as much as my grandmother needed to tell it and for that reason her and I were linked in an intimate way that the young and old were not suppose to know.

The story she told was of a memory from her youth. Back in this time grandmother was known only as Marilyn. Five years would pass before she was to be known as mother; twenty-three years before she would first be called grandmother.

Marilyn was a young woman around the age of eighteen. A beautiful young thing who often hid behind her long mane of auburn hair. Her features were small and attractive, features that would one day be mirrored in her daughter and granddaughter.

Marilyn had been at her own grandmother's home visiting for a month in autumn. Her grandmother was a cruel woman and there was no love lost between her and her granddaughter. Each fall the old woman had to suffer the company of the product of her son's marriage. She did very little to make a secret of her dislike for the young woman. To her Marilyn was nothing but a beacon to the demons that belonged in a past the grandmother would rather not remember. To a set of memories that she could not seem to distance herself from. What those demons or memories might be Marilyn did not know. Though now, as grandmother retold her tale in her twilight age, she thought she knew what they might be, because my grandmother suffered the same demons.

The grandparents and their visiting granddaughter had just finished with cleaning up that evening's dinner. As she washed dishes she noticed the full moon outside. On the third floor of her grandparent's house was a balcony, well at least they called it a balcony. It was actually a finished section of roof over top of a lower floor porch. The balcony was just a flat, open landing with no guard rails to protect anyone from a fall off the edge. But it was situated in just the right spot that the view it offered was breathtaking. Marilyn put her dishes away and made her way to the balcony so she could go whisper at the moon.

The autumn was a beautiful time out in the place Marilyn's grandparent's lived. The area around the house was heavily wooded and secluded it from the modern world beyond. The trees had all begun their seasonal change from green to various shades of crimson, gold and every color of orange under the sun. The autumn air carried with it the earthy smells of that season: A hint of burning leaves, the scents of a changing nature, and beneath that smell the underlying nip of cold in the breeze.

Marilyn opened the door and stepped out onto the landing. Perched low in the sky was the full moon. So close was it she thought she could just reach out and touch it. She moved to the edge of the balcony and let her toes dangle over the edge of the landing.

The wind picked up and there was an odd noise carried on the edge of it. Marilyn stopped breathing and tried to listen harder. At first the noise reminded her of dogs howling in unison, but it was somewhat more shrill. Maybe like a whistle blowing in the distance being somewhat distorted as it was carried along on the wind. She thought she could just make out words in that sound when she was pulled backwards with a jerk.

"What'r ya doin' girl?! Dontcha hear that noise? Git inside now girl. Git!" Marilyn's grandmother yelled in her sloppy broken English.

Marilyn pulled her arm from the grandmother's grip. She pushed the old woman away from her and stepped back towards the ledge. "What are you talking about eh?" Marilyn asked "I can hear that sound just fine. It sounds like singing in the wind. There are words in it. I'm sure of it. If I could just hear it a little better."

The grandmother took a step towards Marilyn, the old woman's face a mask of anger and outrage. She stabbed her finger into the wind and spit her words out through clenched teeth. "That ain't nuthin worth hearin'. It ain't nuthin but the sound of hell that the fool headed girls like yerself hear. Bunch of banshees beyond the river singin' ta git you down there so they can drown you! Steal your memories!"

Marilyn laughed softly, shaking her head. "Banshees? Well now I have proof that you're nothing but a crazy old woman. Can't speak right. Can't find it in your heart to love your own kin. And you can't even open your ears to hear something so beautiful as the song on the tip of the night wind." Marilyn took another step back and her heel stepped into thin air.

There was a brief moment when she thought she would fall backwards. A small voice deep within said that isn't all that bad, is it? To fly that short flight before death carries you on over to an eternal flight. Marilyn felt dreamy as she listened to this thought. Her mind was growing a little hazy and she had to admit she liked the idea of flying forever.

The grandmother grabbed her granddaughter and pulled her forward with a jerk. She took Marilyn by both arms and the look of anger was removed from her face. In fact, Marilyn saw nothing but the look of utter concern and compassion that suddenly overcame the old woman's features. But the look of sudden fear was more worth noting. She tried to draw Marilyn closer to her as though she might wrap her arms around the young woman and squeeze her tightly. Her voice trembled when she spoke.

"I knows what I'ma talkin' bout Mari. I knows so well it hurts my heart. I ain't no old fool. I heard that singin too many times to count and sometimes I wish I would just go deaf. Call'um what you want, banshee, devil, dark angels, it's still the same. Death is down past that river and the singin will lead you the way. An I don't hate you enough to see you go like that." she said.

Marilyn eyed the old woman coldly. She was lying and the lies angered her. She gave the old woman such a hard push her withered old body almost fell down to the balcony wood.

"Lying old witch! You hate me as much as any being can possibly hate. And with that hate comes jealousy. The jealousy that they should come singing to me and not you! They don't sing to you anymore old woman. But I hear them clearly now." and she did. As her grandmother tried to reason with her, the voices in the wind became real and very clear in her ear.

This was always the point in my grandmother's storytelling when my young mind started to get sleepy. I would stay with her until the end of the tale, but the things she said would slowly become harder for her to describe. I would understand them in a place where my mind was half asleep and the dream world was threatening. This was probably the only way I was able to understand the things she experienced.

I didn't become sleepy this night though. No, something very strange happened to me. Something that is hard to put into words, but very real all the same. You see, I became one with my grandmother and it was not a memory I was looking at, it was the event itself.

As my grandmother described pulling her hand back to slap her own grandmother, my own world seemed to fade to white. Like closing your eyes to sleep except that the darkness is a brilliant white that blinds me. The feeling of the blanket pressing against me fads and in its place the feeling of a cool wind blowing against my skin. I can feel my arm swinging around, coming into contact with the paper dry skin of the old woman who would be my great, great grandmother. When I open my eyes I am there, hiding behind my grandmothers own eyes.

There is for me a startling realization of hearing the crickets chirp and smelling the musky odor of Marilyn's grandmother's perfume. Not far away a river flowed and I could hear that too. I was there in that moment as it happened and how I came to be there I will never truly know.

The old woman regained her composure and looked at Marilyn. There was no trace of the compassion or concern left in her face. Now there was nothing but a desperation to keep the other woman from finding a fate she had missed out on. The old woman grabbed her granddaughter again set on pulling her into the house.

Marilyn let her grab her but pulled hard against the grip at the same time. Such was the motion that if the grandmother let go Marilyn and I, as one being, would go tumbling backwards over the edge. The drop, though not very far, would still mean death. On the ground below the landing a collection of the grandfather's tools lay scattered about. To fall there would insure that at least one tool would be landed on, most likely finding a delicate organ within Marilyn's body to shred and kill.

The old woman's fingers bit into the skin of Marilyn's upper arms. Little droplets of blood pooled around the old woman's yellowed nails. I wanted to yell at the old woman, to tell her to stop hurting my grandmother, to stop hurting me who felt the young woman's pain just as vividly as if it were happening to my own body. At the same time I didn't want the grandmother to let go or Marilyn's pulling would cause us to go flying over the edge.

Somewhere in the distance, either my own grandmother, safe in my bedroom back home, or possibly in Marilyn's mind as she spoke to herself, a voice said don't be afraid.

Marilyn laughed at the old woman "It didn't want you."

The statement was meaningless to me. To live in the moment was to hear fine details that were not always in my grandmother's storytelling. However, it stung the old woman deeply.

The grandmother frowned. "So go to them." She said and let her grip slip from Marilyn's arms. Together, Marilyn and I, sharing that young body, flew backwards over the edge of the porch and into empty space.

There was a brief moment to look on in shock as the grandmother allowed for an action to occur that could prove fatal to her granddaughter. There was no time to focus on that shock though. The fall was very real.

How do you explain the sensation of free falling in a place that exists twenty-some years before you will even take shape in your mother's womb? Marilyn and I fell towards the ground and her mind was moving the whole way down. In her mind she thought of something she wished she had said before letting go. To tell that hateful old woman that she had messed up. You missed them once but you could have found a place with me if only you had not allowed the hate to fester. Now they shut you out, give you the coldness without the comfort of their embrace. I pity you. These were Marilyn's thoughts.

The fall should have not been so long. It should have lasted a moment before the earth raised up to hit us allowing one of the old man's tools to find its way into our back. But the fall was happening in slow motion and the ground was a far way off.

Somewhere beyond the trees a loud whirling wind was forming. An invisible mass of motion and voices, each whispering to one another. It pushed through the forest and caught sight of its target falling over the edge of a roof.

I wanted to feel the earth quickly, to have the fall done, but there came no impact for the wind broke from the forest and swept us up like a feather caught in a breeze. From falling to flying through the forest faster than Marilyn's legs could have ever run. The wind wrapped itself around Marilyn's body like a blanket and snuggled itself close to her skin.

Marilyn cried out in joy not fear. She called out answers to the voices that whispered to her from inside the wind itself. She caught herself sighing as the wind glided over her so slowly, almost seductively. It pressed against her roughly then seemed to slide down over her spine with a lover's touch till it came to rest in the small of her back. As if that wasn't enough, the invisible hands sought out more intimate spots to touch and stroke. It passed over her breasts and lapped at her naval.

Marilyn laughed even harder, enjoying the intrusive touch. I could only experience it with a sense of wonder since I had never felt or known such sensations were possible of the body. Even though my mind was quickly growing up with the telling of this tale, my young body was still not equal of the task. All I could do was marvel over this living wind.

The wind pulled us through the forest and pushed us into a clearing. I could hear the night life making its noises all around. It seemed louder here. I could also hear the faint sound of water running over rocks. Then, a moment later, the river was there before us.

The wind's whispers disappeared as we approached the water and with the loss of the whispering we lost the wind as well. It left us floating some twenty feet above the narrow body of the river. As each moment ticked away, Marilyn's body dipped a little lower, a little closer to the water's surface. With the whispers gone, Marilyn began to think more clearly. She heard her own grandmother's words in her head, the talk of death at the river. She felt a sudden sense of panic.

I wanted so badly to calm her. To tell her that even now, as she lived this here, somewhere in another time a much older version of herself sat next to me in my bed, telling me this story. But I could not; my voice was silent here.

Marilyn's body came to float about five feet above the surface of the water. I could feel the coolness coming off of it, smell the freshness of the stream. Time seemed to slow down as everything died around us. The present kept on moving but we were stuck in this spot. The noises became more and more distant as all the noisemakers traveled on with the world.

We were caught in the spent moment. A place of time used up and left discarded to rot.

We were in a groove and could not move, but at the same time this used niche in space wanted very badly to spit us out. It was like this place of decay could not function properly so long as this living flesh was stuck. There was pure unseen energy building up behind us that gave off heat and an odor that smelled like burned metal. The energy pushed into Marilyn's legs as it beat at her belly and chest. Marilyn was beginning to cry. Her tears were being pulled away by the energy as soon as they overflowed her eyelids. We were slowly suffocating under the weight of this strange force.

The wind was returning though. It could be heard in the distance again. A dull collection of whispers steadily coming forward and getting behind the energy. The first time the whispers had come and grabbed us. This time they threatened to plow over us, tearing Marilyn's body apart with their deafening roar.

The wind pushed against the energy and the energy kept building behind us. It felt like being the cork in a bottle of soda water that needed to be opened. Marilyn cried out in pain and I was sure the forces pushing at her would eventually crush her. But as it heightened to a peak it all exploded and Marilyn and I were propelled forward like a bullet being shot from a gun.

Marilyn, moments before locked in the past, now pushed through the fabric of the present and soared into the future. Her body once again moved over the water, the speed of her motion increasing till the air pressing against her seemed to burn. She let her arms move out as though she were letting her wings out to catch the breeze and take flight.

All the while Marilyn screamed with laughter. It was the flight that most people only knew in their dreams. I'm not dreaming this, she cried over and over in her mind. The idea that maybe somewhere, back there on that porch or maybe on the ground below, her body lay dying didn't seem all that bad. If this was death then dying was under rated. It made life seem more like a punishment and less like a gift. None of that mattered any longer, none of it. She couldn't feel the ability to worry or feel upset by the things in her life that had stuck out like sore little wounds. Nothing mattered any longer and there was a great measure of pleasure in such an idea.

The wind guided Marilyn's body around the bends and turns of the river, leading her towards the place at the river's end that let out into a larger body of water. At that opening the night sky seemed to grow brighter. Not like the sun was somewhere peeking out to lighten it, but more like the curtain of night was no longer as dark as she once viewed it. I could feel Marilyn's curiosity, wondering what thing could take away the dark shading of the night sky.

The trees disappeared as did the land that ran along side of the river. Our speed was still increasing as a calm overcame Marilyn's whole body. With the calm came the feeling of the body giving way. The skin that imprisoned her was tossed off. The rope like veins that encircled her limbs was pulled away like so much thread from her muscle mass. Then the muscles themselves were pulled away like meat from a carcass. A layer of solid, brilliant yellow glowed around her inner body; the protective energy that covered the soul. The glowing wrap held on for a moment before bursting into a million points of light that fell away into the water below. All that was left was the purest form of energy that was the real Marilyn and that form soared closer to the water as a spirit.

I continued to travel inside of this woman, hidden somewhere in that energy. I wondered if I would wake up from this experience at some point. Was it just a dream? I found the idea of having to eventually wake and return to my own body a very cruel thought. In this form I could imagine why some ghosts stayed close to the earth.

The water below us began to hum and the night time sky lightened even more. We were almost there, wherever there was. It was just a feeling.

Up ahead it seemed as if the water went on forever, though if you looked real closely there was a drop not too far away. Possibly a water fall that took the water down to a lower level.

I held my breath knowing where we were, what we were about to see. This was the thing my grandmother was first describing when she began her story. It was this thing that was made of cool liquid and running glass. Something so smooth and sleek you could cut yourself on its curves. It had three separate bodies as well as three separate minds, yet it thought as one being. Grandmother always had a hard time putting this thing into words. I couldn't believe I was about to actually see it.

In the distance I could just make out three figures. I began to relax just as the spirit of Marilyn began to tense. She was at first upset because of their presence. She wanted this to be her place and her place alone. She wanted to order the wind with a simple command to touch her in all the ways she'd never been able to make a man touch her. Most of all, she wanted this experience to be her's alone. Like a spoiled child she didn't want to share.

It was at that moment of her anger that she heard the collective voice of the three figures. The jealous thoughts kept crossing her mind and the voice told her this was natural for her to feel, but she should push such thoughts away. It would only weigh her down till she fell into the waters below. Below the waters a spirit would simply sink forever and ever.

The idea of being lost below the water startled the woman. Marilyn did her best to still her thoughts. She tried to concern herself more with seeing what was in front of her. What this thing looked like.

At the edge of the water, were it gave way to a water fall, three female forms hovered above the surface. They appeared to stand on an invisible platform some ten feet above the water's surface. The tops of their forms were quite defined but as you moved down their bodies slowly began to fall apart into a gas-like form. The legs merged into one limb that stretched casually down to the waters below. Each form was slightly shrouded by a brilliant thing of light, whose colors swirled in and over the women changing constantly. They looked like the visions people described as angels. Angels that floated slightly apart from one another in the shape of a triangle.

Marilyn looked very hard to see past the glowing shrouds to the faces hidden within. The act of focusing seemed to encourage the trio to be better seen.

The woman at the middle, who stood before the others, had no defining traits of a woman in her body. She had no hair upon her head or nipples upon her slightly slopping breast. Her skin was as white as ivory and her features were very feminine and beautiful. This woman smiled at Marilyn as the two met one another's eyes. Then the colored shroud seemed to burst with light and erase the vision of the woman behind it.

The woman to the right did not want to be seen and she kept her shroud bursting so that Marilyn could never quite see the figure behind the colored swirls of light. Ever so often she could just catch sight of the woman briefly. Her skin was the color of lilacs and her hair long strands of silver, almost metallic like. Her hair was long and wrapped around her body, slowly losing its solid form as it came to the legs that stretched into the water. Her face was severe though, too cruel to be very beautiful.

The last woman to the left only hid behind a faint glowing bit of the colored shroud. Her skin was a lighter shade of ebony, smooth and polished looking. Her hair was course and pulled into cords that wrapped about her head. Her face was painfully beautiful and wise; the vision of a long dead Egyptian queen.

The wind pulled at Marilyn and began their probing a new. It tried to whisper in her ear but she would not take her gaze away from the three visions before her. The wind pressed more urgently.

The air hummed as the creatures spoke again. "They are jealous of you. They would have your attention instead of me." the collective voice said to Marilyn.

I thought that I could just make out the individual voices of each woman. But just as I thought I could pick them out they meshed into one voice again.

Marilyn willed herself to stop, her free flight coming to an end. She let her body stand so that she was facing the vision instead of floating on her belly. She looked at each individual.

I could feel a sadness inside of Marilyn, something that made her feel bitter. Moments later she was crying as she addressed the figures.

"You're the banshees that crazy old woman told me about. Each of you are so lonely, I can feel it. It's choking me... this loneliness causes you to act as one so you can fool yourselves."

In front of Marilyn the colored shroud glowed brighter and it seemed to pulsate. I believe it was either shocked or saddened by the young woman's words. Yet I think Marilyn was speaking with a bit of knowledge. The women, lost out here in this water filled nothingness, seemed hopelessly lonely.

The colors swirled and the four spirits (and one mental hitchhiker) that occupied this space stood in silence. Marilyn continued to cry and the ladies continued to gaze past the shroud at her. Finally there was a collective sigh as the women spoke again in that eerie singular voice.

"It surprises me that you should come to that conclusion so quickly. Most of the guests who visit me do not utter such thoughts until much later. But I ask you this: Would you not be lonely if your place was just beyond the present? Do you see anyone other then me in this place? And do not mention the wind for that is only the gathering of lost souls who found their way here. They are nothing of value. There is only me, myself and I in this place. There was a time when each of those words referred to a different person, a different identity, but that was long ago."

Marilyn let the tears glide over her phantom cheeks but the sobs had stopped. She was trying to understand what this being was trying to say to her and in part she did understand. "And were you always here or are you trapped? Did the three people you once were come as one or did you find your ways here alone?"

The vision sighed and seemed to smile. It was as though it were pleased with the questions.

"In the time that I was three identities we found our way here alone. First there was I..." and at this the black female glowed a little brighter to show it was her being spoken about. "I found this place to be so peaceful that I could not leave. Then the loneliness began to overshadow the bliss. And then I found my way here through magic and mistake..." The middle woman bowed her head to show this was her tale. "And I found myself here lonely so I befriended myself and there was bliss once again. It only lasted a short time even though there is no time measured here."

I held my breath because I wanted to hear the cruel looking woman speak about herself. How had she found her way here and why had she stayed? She did glow brighter but a moment as though she wanted not to draw attention to herself as she told her story.

"And then when even the bliss of myself and I was not enough to keep me content I heard the sound of something approaching. And then there I was coming quickly across the waters and I was able to know bliss again. It lasted much longer. Alas it is the same now as it was before. There is no joy in my condition and my only hope is that I can find myself once again, to find the joy of being more than one. To feel my bliss."

Marilyn found herself drifting away from them somewhat. She took a comfortable distance away from the vision, keeping in mind that she could turn and leave if need be. She laughed to herself as she tried to find the right words to express her thoughts.

"I think that I understand. There was you but you became lonely and wanted a companion. When a companion finally arrived you enjoyed the company of one another here. But the isolation here caused you to eventually devour one another till it seemed there was only one being. And when the third spirit found its way here it caused you to remember that you weren't always one being. It saw you to be two individuals and again you briefly enjoyed this place before devouring that third being. You made this place a hell. And yet I wonder if others have come here. What happened to them if they did?" her voice fell silent.

The wind was picking up and caressing her. A smile spread across her face as she indulged the wind and its intimate touches. In fact to my fascination she seemed to taunt the three entities with the attention she got from the wind. She allowed her body to be spun in slow circles as the wind became excited by her attention. Slowly the wind glowed with a million pin points of pale light. Maybe a small sign of just how many souls had lost themselves to this place.

Marilyn turned her attention back to the being before her and offered it her widest smile. I could not enter Marilyn's mind. I couldn't see the thoughts forming in her head. I could only act as the passenger who saw through her eyes and felt the things her nerves felt. But even in that position I could feel something within my grandmother's young body that suggested she had figured out this puzzle.

She approached the three entities once more. "I know what happened here." she began. The glowing shroud dulled and thickened so that the woman were totally hidden behind it. A grand poker face that wouldn't allow their visitor to see its individual reactions.

Marilyn lifted the glowing figure of her head, motioning for the wind to engulf it like a trained pet.

"I think you learned something of your nature as the third woman was lost to your collective self. I think you wanted the brief bit of bliss each new soul brought you. It wasn't even bliss, at least not the initial heaven that you originally found here. What you felt was yourself, the person you once were. You saw memories that you knew to be yours but could have been from one of the others minds. You wanted to feel yourself, something you had forgotten. But with each person you devoured into yourself you enlarged that memory, that collective being. I think that you have had more then just the three of you here. I think once you were a much larger beast to have this utter sadness. Maybe little bits of that greater beast have died over time. I think maybe, in a manner of speaking, you are the banshees that are spoken of..."

Marilyn paused for a moment as she tried to pull the rest of her thoughts together. Her gaze drifted back to the vision "Maybe you finally wised up a bit. Looked to the beings that found their way here as a thing to revive you. You didn't want to let them into the fold though. You would steal their energies and leave what remained to the winds."

The wind roared in agreement, swirling quickly all of a sudden which, caused Marilyn's body to dissipate and reform as it blew through it.

Marilyn laughed softly. "Oh yes, you steal, you take, all in order to remember what you once were. And even now the three of you are all that you have. You probably can't even appreciate all of the memories you hold because you have no idea if they are your own or would later be found to belong to those parts of you that have already died off. It's a fine hell you've created for yourself."

The shroud thinned and once again the glowing bodies of the three ladies stood there. None of them seemed upset by her words but then Marilyn did not speak them as an accusation. They were said matter-of-factually. I'm not sure how she came to this conclusion. I couldn't begin to comprehend the thing I was looking at through her astral eyes. It felt like being lost to a fairy-tale that had been tucked neatly away into a dream. There had to be logic and reasoning to be found, but both things were lost on me.

"And you think this is hell? Then you would be right. I sit here looking at the approaching present that you live in, waiting for it to catch up to me and yet I always stay just far enough ahead to never touch it. It is a hell and this is a relief. Don't pity the wind. It was the force that brought you here. It had needs too."

Marilyn shook her head slowly. "I don't pity you or the wind. I simply do not understand your situation. Why do you do this to yourself?" She fell silent.

The entity was puzzled by this statement. "And what would you do if you were me?"

Marilyn came closer to the being, much too close for safety. She no longer cared about her safety. She was mesmerized by this thing... this place. How even though this seemed her first trip there, she'd been making this first trip and discovery over her entire lifetime. Every time she sat down to tell this tale. I had to wonder if this was not my first time too. It made no sense.

My grandmother moved a little closer, smiling. "If I were you? If I were you I would take another being into myself. I would let it give me that moment to find myself again and then..."

The entity held its collective breath "Yes?"

Marilyn let her astral arms fly out to her sides and she lifted her head high to the night sky.

"Then I would forget about the present behind me and fly into the future before me. I would just fly, just like I flew to get here. It was heaven in that moment and I never wanted it to stop. Maybe eventually we would fly so far into the future we find the past. And maybe then we could fly fast enough to finally catch the present. And as we flew we could talk to one another and enjoy each other as companions and always know that I was me. That we are us. Not a collective being. My memories, my life, everything that is me would be mine. I would never get greedy like you. Somewhere in that collective mind of yours I'm sure you can see what memories are yours, even now."

The women wanted to hear this. Maybe they knew one day someone would find them and help them from their despair. Maybe they had seen this moment over and over waiting for the young woman to understand those things they could not explain to her. And now? All they needed was someone to offer. Marilyn was making this offer.

"Then this is what you want? To have a place among us so that you might always remind us of who we are?" The entity paused for a moment."You would do this knowing that you too could fall prey to the fate we have here?"

Marilyn nodded. "Yes. I mean, for the first time since I started coming here, you referred to yourself as 'we'. I have spent a lifetime waiting for that. What more do you need?"

The entity again sighed, its release so close at hand. The shroud seemed to pulse even more as it anticipated the embrace of Marilyn within its body of three. Marilyn moved closer and a sweeping sensation passed over her. Her chest became tight and for the first time she felt as though she needed to catch her breath. When she inhaled it felt liquid and heavy, weighing her down and filling her lungs. She looked up at the three women in panic, she thought they were betraying her.

The front woman leaned forward, placing her arms around Marilyn's materializing body. Her embrace was warm and comforting. "Try not to worry my dear one... it is only the feeling of your body being lost in the waters that drown it. It is something we all have had to go through." She leaned closer, for the first time speaking for herself "I can remember my fear, my fear alone! Imagine that I can feel it for myself and the other two cannot."

Something was wrong though. Marilyn was becoming heavy in the woman's astral arms. She was feeling a heaviness about her limbs as though wet burlap had been flung over her. She looked at her arms and the glow of her phantom self was being replaced with the solid mass of skin that imprisoned her airy body. She cried out as did the three women. The other two women came forward to grab at the falling body of Marilyn. But she was falling into the waters and there was no way to stop her.

"Not again." one of the three whispered in her despair.

The collective grip and desire of six astral hands could not keep the young woman from falling into the waters below. My grandmother looked up through the surface to see the three faces looking down at her, all the misery returning to their features. One woman was crying, the others trying with all their might to bring her back. The waters continued closing over her head.

Marilyn's mind lost its ability to think as a thick coating of red splashed across it. This was something I felt in a strange secondary way. I imagined that blood was seeping over her brain to cause such a sight. Her lungs were filled with water and yet they burned with an intensity too vivid to stand. The wounds on Marilyn's arm once again began to ache as she clawed at the water over head. The women were no longer there. Just murky water that was filled with its own brand of wildlife.

Two hairy arms broke through the surface of the water and grabbed Marilyn, first roughly by the hair and then by the shoulders. As she came near to the surface again my ride was suddenly over. My eyes withdrew from her eyes and continued to move away as I watched the old body of Marilyn's grandfather pulling her body from the river.

Then I was back in my room. Once again I was nothing more than a small child looking up at my ancient grandmother's face. As I looked at her I could still see some of the beauty she had in her youth. When she again spoke all I heard was the voice of an old woman. An old woman who had lived sixty years after she had wanted to become something very different.

I knew my grandmother had tried to forget that night. She tried to live a life and forget the beautiful women in the waters and the possibilities that could have come by joining them. She forever tried to forget her grandfather who had saved her from drowning in the river near his home. Those thoughts were placed in an area of her mind that would forever suggest the event had been a dream. But there was the hope to one day prove that she had not been dreaming. It couldn't have been a dream. She simply didn't know what she needed to do to find it again. In the waking world dream reality had no place in how simple humans carried on in life.

"Such comfort in the coolness of the waters. I have never forgotten that. I have never felt how free the feeling flying. Oh my sweet dear, some beings were never meant to wear these skin suits and live in such a mundane fashion. I once understood a magic that would draw me away from it. I no longer know how."

My grandmother looked down at me with such a sadness in her face. There were mysteries she had known and she couldn't find her way back to them. She had waited too long to try. This was something I realized and I still don't quite understand why.

"Alas my child, that is something you will have to learn for yourself. Perhaps like me, you'll one day hear their call. Maybe you won't grow old like me and come to realize it was all just a dream. A very cruel dream." grandmother said to me.

She kissed me goodnight and gave the covers one more tug so that I was tightly tucked away for the night. Then she was up and moving out of my room, leaving me alone for another night. I felt the exhaustion of a child who'd spent an entire night running around when she should have been sleeping. I fell asleep.

Hours later I woke up with a start. I had been having a dream that was explaining something to me but I didn't quite understand. As I woke I lost all that had been the dream but the understanding became very clear to me. I climbed out of bed and left my room.

The house was calm, everyone had gone to bed hours ago. Quietly I made my way down the hallway to the very small room that belonged to my grandmother. The doorknob turned under my small hand, it squeaked loudly as it moved. Or it could have been that everything I looked at seemed so much more vivid to me in this moment. I crept into the darkened room.

The window curtain was pulled open and the moonlight was shining in through the uncovered glass. It offered little light to see my grandmother by. She lay in bed asleep, her breathing even and slow. I moved up next to her and climbed up onto the bed. Gently I gave her a push, trying to nudge her from her dreaming. Her eyes rolled underneath the lids, fluttering before finally opening. She gazed up at the ceiling for a moment before life seemed to slowly seep into her. Then she looked over at me.

I smiled at her and put my little finger to her lips so that she did not ask me why I was there. I felt as though I would forget what I had to say if I had to search for answers to her questions.

"I understand grandma." I said to her. My voice seemed so small and frail to my ears. "You weren't dreaming grandma. I know because I was there with you each time you revisited that place. I usually would forget after falling asleep. But the ladies finally called to me and I did not forget this time. The ladies remember you, they're still waiting for you to come back to them. They want you to come back because you kept your promise to them."

Grandmother's face pulled into a question and even I didn't quite understand what I was telling her. "What are you talking about Ashley? How did I keep my promise to them?" grandmother asked.

I smiled at her as I saw the images of the three women speaking to me in my dreams. "Each night that you shared that story with me they were able to remember who they were. They had thought they'd lost you when your grandpa pulled you out of the water but they didn't. A bit of you stayed there and is there right now. Every time you told that story you went back to them, to that moment. They said I helped you remember. They asked me if I was ready to take you there. I can come too. I can fly into the future with you."

Grandmother leaned back slowly, a smile crossing her face. When she smiled I could see the young Marilyn the most. "They are ready to fly then?" she asked me.

I shook my head yes and told her "Nepurteety is anxious but Sloan and the Magpie can wait a little longer. They believe now that if they can fly fast enough into the future they can catch up to the present. Just like you told them. And when we do that there is no more time. Every moment is one moment and they can be experienced however we please."

She shook her head in wonder "And those are their names? I often wondered, even after all these years, what their names were. Well then, let us not keep them waiting any longer. Come child, take my hand."

I took my grandmother's hand and together her and I made our way out of the house. We walked side by side through the city, making our way to a spot just beyond the end of our street. This was a place my parent's used to take me. A small river, a pleasant body of water were the future, the past, and every moment in-between would be waiting for us.

Snippets of Babble

Come find me here.

Waiting and wondering, mulling over all those things which have been said. To act upon the impulse to tell you how it really feels. How it feels to have this thing beating twice as hard in my chest at the mere thought of your face. To marvel over it, to wonder over it, to ask myself how it ever got this way? How long had my mind decided it had its own thoughts where you were concerned? Still, I can't figure out the answer nor the means to express it to you, the world, or anyone else willing to listen. So it goes.

And when the rain comes, I can smell it on the air. Somewhere in there is something of you tangled up in the moisture. Locked within the individual droplets. To lick at my nostrils, laughing as I pull away. Shut the window to the wind, to the idea of you. Yet it crawls in through the small cracks in the plaster; squeaks in through the wall boards till I can't even hide in the one place I thought to be my own. When I wake to my lover, he smells of your rain.

Would you have truly known me, would you want it to be like this? Would it cause you the same unease or would it simply be more of the same? The same as everything that reaches out to touch you in this world. Can you feel it? When I catch you sobbing in my dreams over mistakes you've made and cannot call back. That same spot I saw you hugging her as a friend, yet I was jealous, even though I was your lover. Then the disappearance of you both, because she needed your help, needed you by her side and here I was left to yell at those who'd made the mistakes over your account. I can't help but wonder if it's your finger that directs these ideas in my head. I can't help but think you actually know me well.

Did it reach you? The mistake of a friend to open something up to the world. Something that he was very proud of, and me so very shy of even though I knew it to be good. And did it find it's way to the right spot, to open and show the world that someone like me was there, just waiting? Take what he offered, bring it close to your lips as the kiss is aching. Would you understand the way I do these things? Would you understand me should I ask you? Would you at least call me, let me know the same can be said of you? That the same thing rolls around in your head. Or do you see the cat creeping just below and get a whiff of the irrationality which plagues my every intention?

If they told you I was eccentric you'd be good to believe them. To believe that all the thoughts and misguiding voices in my head cause me to be just slightly south of normal. Cause me to seem somewhat charming when really I am just plain sick and demented in the subtlest of ways. Demented for you, around you, to be inside you.

I am for you.

Delirium's Nocturne

Here I stand again, at the edge of the water that will draw me under, into that world beyond my control. Sometimes I think I can avoid it, simply turn the other cheek and walk away. But the waters move around in such a pleasant spinning motion, the colors feeding upon each other. The effect is quite hypnotic and it draws me closer till my footing slips and I fall over the edge; my arms grabbing at invisible branches that might save me from the fall. My grace now something I can only claim to have as I move so awkwardly.

Why I should fight it I don't know. Maybe it is so I can convince myself that I truly can fight it should I want to. Maybe it's merely something I must prove to my own pride. So far Pride is not convinced by my claims, which is just as well and good I guess, one should not be held by their words but should be made to prove it by their actions. Countless times I've said that to a lover, whose words were the sweetest poetry and yet they treated me like a worn rag doll. Something to love and cherish for it has always been there, but soon they forget it when it is not in sight. One day I will prove it though.

The waters spin and move, flowing with their own current that is not like the coming and going of the tide. It is a steady motion that never changes, not even a fraction of an inch. The steadiness of its waves are a comfort, a safe spot to hide away in. Many times I've found it to be the bed I favor to sleep in.

It whispers in my ear a litany of words that make no sense but seem to express the secret of life. A string of quotes from poems and novels I can recall having read at one time or another. Each sentence strung together to form a new story, more potent for its touch of delirium.

And as I think it, there she is. With the books in her hand, taking from them the things that make sense and transferring them to her page; one page in the big book of nonsense. I can hear the rustle of the butterfly wings fluttering about, still I can not see them. They hide among the twirling color's of the water, blending into it like the most perfect of camouflage. Her pets. I would speak to her but my heart is not in it just yet. I need to feel the comfort around me like a soft quilt made by my mother's own hands. Feel it warm me, allow me to see the bed my body still sleeps in somewhere. Only then, in the safety of that patchwork net, can I tempt myself with her words.

I once thought the things she said were the most purest of truths. Things that only the first tribes knew. Like the color of Eve's hair, the hue of her eyes. How tall Adam stood and what the garden smelled like. She would know the true name of God and how it felt to be alone on the Earth before the cars and cities corrupted its surface skin. She would tell me all these things in the form of a lullaby that made me feel like a cloud in the sky above. Floating aimlessly yet having purpose in my direction up there. She once offered me this.

It took time to realize that there is no reason in the stories that fall from Delirium's lips. It is only in the learning mind that tries to find something to grasp in the nonsense: The need to find secrets, greater truths masquerading behind the babble. And God sent man away and made a babble of his tongue so that no one man knew the language of everyone. From then on man would be separated by the inability to understand one another. and there she was to help the task along. Still I love to listen to her speak in her hushed childlike tones. Still I love to hear her soft whisper singing that lullaby.

Would she have me I would never leave her side. I would reside in the haze of her world forever and a day. Because there is a comfort in feeling you know all... that your dream worlds could be real and the reality of life could not affect you. You could be the butterfly on her shoulder or you could be the crushed flower beneath her foot. All in all, everything and anything so long as your mind could see it. Lock away the nightmares in that closet hidden behind childhood memories and swallow the key like a wiggling goldfish down the pallet. Wouldn't it be so sweet, to be purple, to be the color over the surface of a tulip? Wouldn't it be bliss to be the juice at the center of the orange, hidden within the glowing orange meat of the fruit.? To live in Technicolor.

Before I know it I am flying high above the water. I look down at her as she looks up at me. She waves up and offers her words that find my ears. It makes no sense but I can still see something hidden within. To take a word here and place it with another word there and it all becomes clear to me. In the end we all become sky, just as a character of Barker's wished it. To become sky...

Would she have me? Would she let me touch her just once so I could feel her? The peach fuzz of skin on her arm, the stumble on one side of her head. Would she have it? Offer me a dragonfly for desert as my stomach grumbles for attention. A cloud passes to my right and she is there. She is always there, sweetly singing delirium's nocturne.

The Dreaming.... An Artist Down the Well

How is this, that the Moon should have to temper the rage of the Sun? The goddess of the night, like a full halo that hangs above the heated Earth... she doesn't get the compliments deserving of her beauty. But then the scholars, the ones that think they know, know the truth, would place this brilliant body in the heavens as nothing more then a chunk of rock. The moon is made of cheese I think with a laugh. I would tell the ones that know, know that truth, that they should look beyond the obvious. Straight towards the moon, step to the side and peer past the glow. There you'll see the beauty wrapped in a velvet gown spun from the night's sky. And the stars? They are the milk that split from the Night's breast and dotted the heavens, at least that is what my grandmother always said. I like the idea of it though. I can always think of that poor lady Midnight as my mother, my true mother.

The Sun is holding a grudge. He thinks when he sets over the horizon, when his back is turned, that his lady steps to the advances of another celestial body. Maybe the massive man of Jupiter asks her for a dance... maybe Saturn slips a ring upon her finger before placing his lips to her palm. I can hear her soft giggle, like a winter sigh, as she enjoys the attention. After all, she only has the company of her mate, truly his attention, when the night touches the day at dusk and at dawn. The time when morning's colors of rose and yellow come bleeding through onto the deep blue velvet curtain of night. Maybe this is why that time is so odd, so foreboding. Maybe we can all feel the tension between the ancient lovers in the sky. I would tell him to step back, step away, no Sun could match the love Jupiter could offer. He would be my prince if it were my choice.

So I sit, trying to ignore the two quarreling just outside of my shades. You don't want to hear them but how can they be ignored? So I slip my fingers over the polished keys of the music box; rummaging through the little slim box covers till once temps my fancy. A pleasant face looks back at me, a red cloud about her head and no make-up shading her features. A simple beauty belonging to a voice and the words that have always caused me to think. Think very deeply upon the dreams that swirl through my mind. I put on Tori.

It is easy to reflect upon the things that she has to say. Why do we hurt ourselves when it is just a waste? Why do we impose upon ourselves the ideas and demands of others? Not that I do... not that I care to worry about those who do not impact my life. Such things only cause the crows feet that would make me look old, worried, haggard. I would rather have those lines map something more important in my life like the worries that come to a mother's brow. My angels: Eva Catherine, Catherine the name of many saints - Roan Brendan, Brendan the Gaelic word for little raven or brave and bold. Those furrows around my eyes... this line was when my beautiful baby girl Eva slipped off the step and this new worry mark is where my precious boy Roan got hit with a puck in practice. Those things would mean something, those marks would remind the aged mother in me that I had love for the children I ushered into this world. Those phantom faces, those angels, are only wishes right now and I would not have some stranger's comments worry me into those lines meant for my future angels. But this is mere ramble.

The melody helps me hide from the music. I need to find something. My head turns to look at the fountain of dried flowers that sits upon my tiled floor. With a nudge and a grunt I try to draw the little man's attention. He doesn't want to hear me.

"Get to it will you. Or else I shall have to paint you some vivid and horrid color that clashes with your tranquility." I bully and threaten.

The little fellow returns a grunt but he gets up. I can hear moving behind the dried flower bush. Two small jade colored hands part through the tangled web of flowers, pushing them back so I can see his large belly peeking through. The plaster made Buddha steps through and looks up at me. "Get to it fella." I say to him, a smirk playing at the corners of my mouth "Let me be away before the Night's husband as full reign."

The Buddha steps out, taking but a moment to stretch his tiny body. He looks about my floor till his eyes fall upon the thing he is looking for. A black shirt, made of a fine fabric named peach skin, lies there carelessly thrown down. Slowly he steps towards it, his eyes looking towards the two cats that lay sleeping in there patchwork quilt. The sleek black one, with the silver mane, opens one honey colored eye. Her name is Jezebella and she is the world's best mouser. Though she had never had a taste for small Buddha statues. The other furry babe, just a mere kitten though his body had already grown, was Kit Cat. A white feline, dotted with patches of gold, buff and black, his eyes soft green. Hard to believe the mistress Jezebella was his mother. He took no notice, his purrs kept him wrapped in sleep. With the felines resting, the small jade hand grabs the black shirt and pulls it to the middle of the floor.

Below his feet he places the shirt, smoothing it out with his toes till it is a misshapen circle on the floor. Simple as it is, his work was done. He slips away, moving back behind the dried flowers were he enjoyed hiding. He kneels back down, regaining his peaceful pose that so many worship far and wide.

I slip from my bed allowing my feet and hands to touch the floor. Such a primal feeling to crawl over the cool surface that is mostly only known to my feet. Slipping around, I come to sit on my rear. I let a toe slip into the black hole in my floor to swirl the water around; the dream seems a bit heated tonight. Maybe a lover's touch awaits me, the kiss of a phantom, the taunting of a ghost? Maybe an evil awaited me down there. The face of the haggard wench that once lived in my Aunt's closet. She would have her scissors in one hand and her green and white striped socks pulled up and over her knees. Or maybe, to my disappointment, simple meaninglessness waited me down there like so many random dreams offered.

With one flowing movement I let myself slip into the hole of sleep's waters and wade into the dream.

In a girlish fashion I plug my nose as those warped waters close over my head. Beneath me the strong undertow nips at my toes trying to get a purchase on my foot. When it finally did secure its hold it quickly tugged me one way before whipping me the other. Spinning me and shoving me as it had a destination in mind. Off to my left a ribbon of light cuts through the murk. The riff of brilliant colors swirls upon itself like some dizzy acrobat. Undertow or not, I force myself towards the riff.

Beyond the colorful tear in the waters is a landscape not so odd for the dream. A green field that seemed endless, dropping off in the far horizon. Every now and then a weeping willow broke up the endless green. A voice was huffing and fussing behind me. Looking over my shoulder I see the well dressed rabbit standing there, eyeing his watch, worrying over the time. "I am late!" he says through worried pants. The scene is not intriguing though, so I look away. From behind the rabbit continues to plead his case. "But I am late!" Once more I glance over my shoulder to give him the advice he seems to want from me. "Late is late. Why bother going at all?" And I turn away.

There is nothing here but there had to be something here. My foot went out before me expecting to find the green field below, instead there was nothing but the open space above the well. My balance slips and I fall down the hole, like Alice moving through her looking glass. With a thump the ground below quickly stops the fall. The world below here is still enjoying the night with the moon high above. This wasn't my lady though, the one I knew in my world. I didn't trust this celestial body so I looked away.

"Now where did you come from my lady?"

I knew that voice even though I did not know that person. I saw him every evening as I watched my entertainment. I can look at him but I cannot find it in myself to utter his name. Like the idea of god in his heavens... Did you know the myth says God created three woman in all for Adam? The first woman Adam fell sick at the sight for he saw the matter below the skin forming as God raised her from dust and rib. Eve was the third and one we all call mother and temptress. Lilith was the second woman God created in the garden to be kept for a mate to the man. Born equal and separate of him. She spoke aloud the name of her creator and she disappeared from the garden but not from history. Eventually she would find herself as the demon of night for one old religion. What of this man? No god, to be sure, but quite heavenly in my mind. What might happen to Bethalynne in the garden if she spoke his name? Best to still the tongue.

I turn to look at him. He smiles that smile that is a touch of humor and a bit of a smirk. A man's face is meant to be described as handsome, but the only word that comes to mind is beautiful. This man was so much more beautiful than I would ever be.

"Something troubles you?" he asks.

My response is to shake my head slowly and sigh "I never have the time to tell you the things I want to say. The words I would say to impress you, the things I would point out to show you how much alike we are."

The moonlight catches his eyes making them twinkle. Such is my reaction that I know, were I to write this down, my words would turn into romance novel drivel. Ah hell... those authors are the millionaires.

"If you had the time you needed, what would you say?" he asks.

Ah! The right question for an absurd answer. "If I had the time then my mouth would fail me. My tongue would become twisted or my mind would go blank. You can't know, because you are a figment of my mind that begins at this spot each night that I sleep, but this dream runs the same course. It's the irony of my situation. The one place where anything my mind wants to happen can. A shame I cannot control what my mind will have me see."

This man steps forward placing his palm to my cheek and whispers.

"You have all the time in the world, so say it." So I do say it. "I need you... if only there were something between us." At the same time, as always, there is the noise of a group of chattering people coming towards us. A massive table is there though I hadn't noticed it before. A crimson colored cloth covers it and the table top is covered with the pieces of our tea party. The pastel colored cakes, the bowl of dates, the tea cups and small plates. The man's attention is briefly stolen by all the commotion, he doesn't hear me. I cannot bring myself to say it again. There seemed to be something shameful about needing someone you didn't know. Before he can speak to me I just step away, looking towards the crowd.

"My sister, my sister!" A deep female voice calls out. It is Lianessa looking towards me. The character I gave life to but the person Brittany breathed a spirit into. Lianessa was the essence of that woman I knew in the waking world. A truer version of that woman than herself. Her Lianessa had no hang ups of the body or the family tugging on her heart strings. Lianessa was a vamp with evil in her heart but enough compassion within her to keep her from being cruel. Chaotic good. I loved Lianessa as much as her counter part in life.

Lianessa stepped out from her crowd of admirers. Her torso was bound by a tight vinyl corset, the front of it giving no outlet for her breasts. Her anatomy was forced to conform to the tight fit. The affect was her breasts pressed so closely to her chest that they formed two perfect circles peeking out of the corset top. Acres of plum velvet spilled down from her equally tight cinched waist. Her hand reached up to push away the blonde ringlets that fell across her eyes. I knew the man at my side never saw those blue eyes of hers for his own eyes could not rise above the corset top. I had to laugh softly to myself. It seemed even in dreams some males could be so predictable or susceptible to the predictions I make for them. But I would not blame him. Some beauties were dangerous, that was my Lianessa. How could he not stare?

She turned her cool blue eyes on me, that familiar smirk on her lips. "Am I interrupting something?" she questioned, her eyes crawling over the man at my side. "Or is there room for another?" A low laugh rolled out and over her tongue.

"You're not interrupting a thing sister. Maybe we should start this tea party." Came my answer.

The small gathering of people dispensed, moving around the table to find their seats. There was a small quarrel over who might find themselves next to the lady Lianessa. To calm the tempers Lia simply grabbed the man most to her liking and sat him down before taking her seat upon his lap.

To my right my own gentleman took his seat, making sure to move his chair an inch so that our elbows bumped when we sat down. We fell into idol chit chat, conversations of no importance except to keep the party moving on. To my surprise, as I lent my opinion to the state of refereeing in my sport - to a dream man who had never heard of sports, I felt the touch of something warm. A hand, so much larger then the knee it came to rest on, finding my leg under the table. The last word caught in my throat causing me to sound like a parrot screeching out a misshapen word. The smile was still there on the man's lips as if he didn't know what caused me to stutter.

I could feel the blush heating my cheeks. The blush that started underneath the man's hand and worked its way up my leg, over my spine before spreading across my face. Could I ever be the woman who had the most perfect poker face? Could I ever hide the things that swirled around in my head? The crimson color of my face suggested no. To worsen things another degree the butterflies were now awakened from their long slumber. They beat their wings against the insides of my belly like little dragon beasts below. So violent and anxious they were to get out that I feared a painted moth might dart out should I open my mouth.

"Don't you know it's rude to start a party without your host? But than what can I expect of Americans anyway? Such a low class bunch of souls." A deeply French accented voice said to the table. There stood the tall form of the man who was the same here as he was in life, Monsieur Dominique. His eyes moved from person to person, briefly pausing on me to offer a smile, then moving on to find the Lady Lianessa.

The madam smiled her wicked smile. "We Americans are about as much a transplanted mutt race as you Canadians are I would think. Look at me, with the Scottish in me and countless other races running through my blood. And look to our mutual friend over there, with her Dutch and Native American. It is such an arrogant thing to suggest any of us are of lower class than anyone else. After all, we've all stolen the land from the people who once owned it... of course they were a much better race to know you could not own the land that belonged to nature."

The monsieur scowled and waved a hand at Lianessa as if to cast her off. "Don't you have some little man you should be beating Lianessa?" In much the same manner Lia waved back and snapped "Don't you have some Queen's ass you should be kissing, my fraudulent Frenchman?!" And so the mating dance of the sadistic couple began.

The exchange was just another example that each breed had its own mating ritual. To the beautiful and evil, this ritual was almost cruel but the attraction was there. My only criticism was that we all had to be witness to it. It was all very distracting. Especially when my butterflies had done good to morph into small dragonflies that now blew their little flames in my tummy. All the while I was trying to find the catchy thing to say that might keep the attention of my suitor on me. My moments with him, truly with him, like this, where few and far between. Somewhere he most likely had some lady to adore him. A fine female creature who had long ago moved beyond being a woman child, unlike me. I could never quite let go of the girlish thing in me that caused great difficulty in referring to myself as a woman. Always feeling I needed to be just a bit older to truly understand the world around me.

As the insults flew between the madam and the monsieur, my gentleman lost his interest. His gaze moved back to look at me, to offer another smile. He leaned close to my ear as his hand pressed closer to my inner thigh. He whispered, and I could feel his breath on my ear. He spoke soft and low, "Come walk with me." At that moment I coughed up a butterfly wing in my excitement.

I stood up so fast that the chair beneath my legs fell backwards with a clatter, but no one noticed. The quarreling couple were inches from one another, firing back and forth like their words were some demented tennis ball. Neither of them wanted to lose the match. The crowd around the table was caught up in the spectacle. The two of us walked away without so much as an eye finding us gone.

"Why do you think I wouldn't need you?" he asks.

I look at him sharply and feel the blush returning. The daisies below my feet taunt me, telling me in their little whispers that such a rose color was quite stunning on my cheeks. The butterflies still themselves for a moment, they've got to hear what I'm going to say. I don't want to disappoint them but truthfully I hadn't thought he had heard me. And now that he put the question to me I felt rather foolish. In fact, I wished that I could be a simple creature... the kind of sleeping mind that simply dreamed of being naked in public. But no, I had to be more creative and now I suffered the effects as I tried to put into words the things I wanted him to know.

"Well... it's hard to explain. You see I can understand it because it is one of the thoughts that swirls around my own head. But to put into words is a different thing..."

He smiled, a small smile, to show he thought my situation quite humorous. But of course, he was the phantom. I took his hand.

"You see, it is not so much that I need you, but someone much like you. The humor that is in your voice, the attraction I have to your appearance, what girl wouldn't want her ideal? I have had two lovers in my short life, both men I thought I loved very much. Neither of them was exactly what I wanted in a man. Neither offered me the equal of the attentions I gave them. It seemed unfair to me then and yet I felt as though I was somehow deserving of this. The man is a different creature to the woman and rarely are our actions reminiscent of one another. I thought this was how they loved. I was young and I lacked the typical type of life that allowed me to know how lovers treated one another. I mean my own parents have such hate for one another. How am I to know? Till one day I awoke to either of these men and realized I was lonelier with them then I have ever been alone. So I left them, but five years was spent between them and I learned."

I paused, looking up at him and wondered how so much light could come out of such black eyes. They almost reminded me of my mother's eyes, as black as bits of mica. I sighed, realizing I was letting myself fall into the rhythm of a dreary, love spent woman. I did not want him to think this of me because that was not true. I was only confused and I needed to explain this confusion to someone, even it was only to myself in a dream.

"I learned what I wanted, learned you should never settle where love is concerned. But when I see you in this place I realize, with your humor and your man like actions that these are the things that I need because it's been lacking in my life. How much time do I spend alone? Making my dinner alone, to dine alone, to eventually hide away at my drawing table to dream something into creation? I can't claim that I am lonely because I am not. I do enjoy my time alone, I would still want this time whether a man shared my bed or not. But that is not my problem, not really. I have enjoyed the advances of men but they confuse me so. Their eyes fall on what they see here..." I open my arms and shrug my shoulders. "They usually like what they see, though they can be so critical. Woman are chastised for their vanity and yet many a men judge that same woman by her outward effects. All I've ever wanted was for someone to look into these green eyes of mine and see what swirls around beyond them. Someone who wouldn't call me silly or consider my ideas trivial. Someone who didn't think me foolish for loving my God, talking to my plants or weeping when my team is knocked from the play-offs. What man would want someone like me, like that? What man could suffer my dry humor or my warped sense of what is funny? What man would want to attach himself to a woman who is so... eccentric, though she lacks the age or money that is usually the cause to use that word for a nut, or for me an artist? Who would need the long haired girl with the whispery little voice? Could any of you understand the idea of having a cloud on your tongue or eating ginger daisies till you were sick? Why would someone like you ever need me? This is what I think of most people... maybe because so seldom have I ever needed anyone or has anyone ever needed me. It's confusing when I try to sort it out in my brain. This would all be so much easier if you were simply the object of a wet dream. But unfortunately.... there's not enough symbolizing in it for me. And it's not like this is so important, or so unique to me. The world over suffers the same as I do. I just have the luxury of expressing it somewhat more poetically than them."

The blush subsided. Embarrassment can only last so long. Though I had to wonder why I could never be so open in the waking world. Why none of my friends ever heard such sentiments from me. If they only knew how deep some shallow waters could run.

The man gave my hand a light tug and I looked up. He smiled and I smiled and for a moment I didn't feel so foolish for being so childish at times. My butterflies were starting to rise themselves once more.

His smile increased and he leaned very close to me. "Maybe those things, the things that you mentioned, are the very things that make me need you quite badly. After all, how many men can say they love an eccentric woman... a nut like you?"

The butterflies, having heard enough, decided the stomach would not suit their purpose. So they flew farther south to tickle my pelvic bone and cause me great discomfort. But the man was drawing closer, to place his hand behind my head, to draw me near....

"My name is pronounced Dom-ee-nick!" the monsieur cried from behind me. Lianessa answered him just as loudly "Alright Dom-ee-neek! Maybe your mother should have blessed you with a man's name if you wish me to call you by a man's name. But then you do remind me of a little girl... always pouting!" Then the crash of the madam being lifted and thrown upon the table. The tea cups and plates flew in every direction. The guests rushed away, each disappointed that they had not won the attentions of the lady. The lady's back fell flat against the wood table top, her nails finding the man's neck. The monsieur's response was to tear away the acres of plum velvet so that he might find the long pale legs hidden below. At that point, I knew enough to look away, but not before seeing the small smile playing at the corner of the lady's lips.

I turned my attentions back to the man who was but inches from my face. But... he was not there.

"Damn!" I cried in my rage. "Always! Always you disappear before the good stuff can happen! Why can't I just have a normal beginning and ending for once, just once!" and then, with a sudden movement, I ducked. At the same moment the Queen's staff flew over my head. I had almost forgotten were I was. I looked over to the side to see little Alice holding her pink flamingo, taking a swipe at the small painted ball. I should have known it was the Queen of Hearts who'd come to jump on mine a few times.

The Queen swiveled round in a circle as she missed her target. She regained her composure, straightening her golden crown and standing up straight. She pointed a red painted nail at me and screamed "Off with her head!" In response I only shook my head and laughed "Go ahead, lob it off! Lot of good it has done me so far. Maybe at least the butterflies will be able to be free. I can't see them enjoying their home in my tummy anyway!"

The Queen smiled and motioned with her ax. My interest had left me though. I was about done with this dream. I turned my back to her and began walking away. The Queen hissed and cursed behind me to which I replied in kind. Soon, the whole scene had faded altogether.

I found my resting place, found my dead friend. He smiled at me. "Another tough night for you my dear? Ah, but listen to that, I am getting the hang of this modern English!"

"Yes you are my friend, yes you are."

Drifting and dreaming, my body growing weary, as I was slipping too deeply into dream's depths. The sounds of the dream slowly disappeared, lost to the dull sound of waves. My friend was here to keep me from my isolation. As I let myself lay upon the feather soft floor, I looked towards my only companion. "Please, take my mind off of these things that trouble me. I find myself speaking in rhythm with some unwritten melody, some song that keeps playing itself over and over in my head. I just want to find some peaceful waters." I say as my voice slips into a whisper.

My companion nods and opens a book, to a page, to a verse that I had always enjoyed. "Even as a flattering dream or worthless fancy..." he began "then take him up and manage well the jest..." such thoughts, such thoughts. Please go on. "Carry him gently to my fairest chamber..."

As my mind slips away, falling back to waking in much the same manner it falls into sleeping, the sound of his accented voice fades away. I often wonder, as I sit on the edge of consciousness, if the shrew was ever tamed...

And then I am awake.

The sun is shining brightly through my window, effectively turning the backs of my eyelids into white sheets of light. Perhaps this is the Sun's punishment for siding with his lover.

Something warm and fuzzy stretches across my chest. It occurs to me, as I have to struggle to breath, that it might be wise to put Jezebella, the world's best mouser, on a diet.

And so begins the day...

And that...

Is another story.

* * *

I see through it all. I see through the wounded to the shrouded thing beneath. I feel through the trappings of the conventional that it would offer up to the world instead of honest emotions. I see... you, through the mask and the props. I see... you, through the infliction of others and the harsh dents time has put upon you. I live with all the painful pieces of what have been chiseled into your character and none of these faults bothers me. All those things that should grate upon the nerves and pull us farther apart, they don't touch me. Through it all I feel nothing but you and this thing that is you has never made me feel as profoundly as it does. It scares me but I would not be taken from it even upon the pain of death. There are no words or poetry to describe what comes over me when I am near you. I see through it all. I see you. I see through it all to you.

Feathers, Flowers & Death

Who are you?" she asked.

"Who am I?" the other girl answered back.

Stella eyed the girl in the same way she inspected an article of clothing. She checked her stitching and hems to see how well she was made. She looked over the girl's materials and design to see what level of quality was used in her creation. Once she was satisfied with her observations, she folded her arms against her chest; her stare intently upon the stranger. "Yes. Who are you?" she said again.

The girl smiled, slowly scratched her head and laughed softly "I'm not so sure you'd like to know that just yet. But you can think of me as a friend if that will help."

The girl's smile was very disarming, Stella relaxed.

Though disarming, her cheerfulness was a curious contrast to her appearance. The young woman looked like a dark thunder cloud had come down and bled itself all over her. She was all black clothes and dark details, pale skin and black eyes. These things were nothing Stella cared to dwell on; appearances were usually deceiving anyway. She knew this well. To the world Stella figured she appeared to be nothing short of an all-American young woman, fresh and healthy... full of life. Such things were just not true.

"Well..." Stella began. "Are you alone?"

The dark young woman's smile brightened "No, I'm not alone. You're standing right in front of me aren't you?"

Stella laughed, giving into defeat. "All right smart ass. I won't like knowing who you are, but you're a friend, and you're not alone because you're standing with me. As far as I'm concerned you're a complete stranger though. A stranger who happens to be on my grandfather's property. I can over look that. I mean it doesn't really matter. So while you're trespassing, why don't you give me a hand. Grab that bag." Stella pointed towards an old army bag near her feet.

The dark young woman said nothing but reached down and grabbed the bag. Stella turned and started up a hill, the other woman followed, moving to walk next to the amber haired woman.

"So what are we up to today Stella?"

Stella looked over at the dark cloud at her side choosing to ignore that she'd never given her her name. How many ways were there to find out who a person was these days? For all she knew this gothic queen could have been some freak from an online chat room, an obsessive dyke who'd gotten a crush on her and decided to seek her out. If that were the case she'd be disappointed.

"Well, today I'm going to go tend to my garden. I may not get a chance to again."

The other woman tugged at the bag she carried. "And this is what you use to tend it? It's heavy but it doesn't feel like tools."

Stella allowed herself a small, private smile. "There are ways to tend a garden that are much more fitting than gorging at it with a bunch of blunt tools. I prefer a more creative method."

The other woman shrugged her shoulders as if to say "whatever" and they continued up the hill in silence.

Though the woman was a stranger, her company was surprisingly comforting. For the first time in awhile Stella felt as though she were hanging out with a friend. Friends were a luxury that belonged to her at some time in her life. A time that seemed very ancient and almost surreal these days. Her friends hadn't left her though, or been cruel and turned from her when her problems surfaced. No, it was nothing so after-school-specialish. She had shut them all out till none were left. She'd done very much the same thing to her family. Better to let go of them so she would not fear missing them when she left.

The other woman's perky voice cut into her thinking. "So where are you going?"

Stella looked up, confused for a moment "What? What do you mean?"

The other woman's smile deepened. "You said you wouldn't be able to tend to your garden. I was wondering where you're going? If you don't mind me asking?"

Stella shrugged. "Just going away. I'm not sure where. I'm not sure anyone knows where exactly till they get there. I mean, I don't have any guides to help me out and the people who are already there aren't telling anyone what it's like. They're kind of selfish that way." she paused, then pointed. "My garden is just past that weeping willow tree there."

The last part of the hill was quite steep. It had both young women tugging at the long weeds growing out of the ground to help pull their way to the top. With bit of effort on both their parts, they got to there. What lie beyond was like another world.

Stella's garden was a small square of land circled by a string of weeping willow trees. The long drooping branches of the trees seemed to guard it and hide it from the world beyond. It gave it a sense of being quite private. The garden itself was what caught the eye: A spiraling array of flowers, in every color and breed under the sun. They were not planted with any regard to that color or their breed of flower. They grew wild even though many of these flowers were far from wild anymore.

Stella beamed. "Quite a sight eh? I get a five finger discount at the local plant shop. No one says anything about it. I mean who's going to chase a girl stealing seeds when you've got some guy selling crack in front of your store? The only problem is I can't really pick and choose what I get." She looked around at the riotous array of colors. "I used to try and plant things with some sort of organization but finally I just gave up."

Stella reached into a bag she had been carrying, withdrawing a slim paper package. She used her teeth to tear the top of the package open and then flung the contents over the flowers and grass of the garden.

"Let nature do with them what it wants right? That's how it was meant to work."

The other woman laughed softly. It sounded more like a sigh, sweet and slow passing through her lips.

"You remind me of someone I know, though your feet are better planted on the ground." she said. "Still, I almost expect to see a butterfly on your shoulder." she paused, looking sad for but a moment.

The look of sadness made Stella feel all the more somber. "What is it?" Stella asked.

The other woman knelt down, gently pulling a blush colored bloom to her nose. She was careful not to pick the flower. "How long have you been dying Stella?"

Stella did not answer. Instead she quietly moved to take the old army bag from the other woman's hands. She pulled the zipper down and rummaged around inside it for a moment. Finally she withdrew a plum colored velvet coat, which she pulled over her torso. She also withdrew a hat that looked like a top hat but was somewhat shorter. On one side two scarlet colored silk roses were sewn. On the other side a massive black feather sat. She sat the hat atop of her head and gave the top a tap. Lastly she withdrew a book.

"What do you think friend? Do you like Shakespeare? How about a Midsummer Night's Dream? Something comical... if we can get such humor today."

The other woman sat down, folding her legs Indian style. She nodded her head "Sure. I've always been quite fond of Shakespeare. Is this how you tend your garden then?"

Stella nodded. "Yes. I think my voice has more effect on them than any of the chemical based flower foods. And as a colorful blooming plant I feel my style helps me blend in among them. You know? I am but a tall moving flower among the short and still ones."

Stella began to read from he book. Loudly at first, but slowly her voice started to soften till she was simply silent. She looked looked over at the other woman with eyes very serious and sad.

"I found out I had cancer two years ago. They said all treatments would help but most likely not cure. Half of the treatments seemed worse than the disease. At first I was willing to do anything, I mean I wanted to live. But after awhile I realized I wasn't living, not truly living when I threw up after they pumped all those chemicals into my body or living when I sat in my bathroom crying because my hair was falling out in clumps..." absently she ran her hand through the shortcut crop of amber hair on her head. "So I decided to stop treatment... it's my life or lack of one, I had that right. My parents argued against it but the doctors had made it clear that nothing was going to save me in the end. They were just attempting to prolong the inevitable. My doctor said I'd have maybe half of a year, at the most a full year. And it was an alright year... until I started hurting. It's like I can feel the cancer in me. It's like corruption..." her voice trailed off.

Stella moved through the flowers and sat down next to the other woman. The stranger took her hand, offering a smile that held no sympathy, just understanding. Stella tried to continue.

"I decided I just couldn't live with it anymore. I've been thinking of ways to take my life, but I know I won't. I was raised to believe that suicide would send your soul to hell with no reprieve. It's not even that really. Life is sacred and I should appreciate every moment. I feel like I'd be thumbing my nose at the graces that gave me this life; as little of it though I've had. So I just spend my time praying that death will find me before I get so sick that I end up in the hospital. If that happens I could end up on machines. I can't bare the idea of that. I'd rather take a rest among my flowers here and never wake up. I'd be happy becoming apart of my secret garden."

The other woman's pale hand let go of Stella and moved to touch the young woman's cheek. Her cheeks were hot and flushed, being fueled by all the things that were scaring her. She wasn't afraid of dying, she was terrified of having to live this way. So sad that there were things that could do this to a beautiful creature, but that was nature. As Stella had said, nature, do as it will.

The stranger's hand moved to the back of Stella's neck, gently pulling the girl's head towards lap. Stella adjusted herself so that she laid against the ground, her head cradled against the black velvet clad lap of this odd woman. Stella relaxed, comforted.

"When I was little I was terrified of death, mostly because I thought death would be painful. If death should come to me in my sleep then it might not be so bad. That comforted me for a little while. But then one of my cousins once told me that if I died in my sleep the sandman would get my soul. That terrified me even more. I mean, the idea of the sandman, a creature that pours sand into your eyes to make you sleep! Who thinks things like that are cute fairy tales for children?"

Stella couldn't see it, but this question made the other woman smile.

"Anyway, I got over all that, lost my fear of dying. The only thing that really mattered was that I get to live my life some what before death found me. I'd like to have lived more... I'd like to have a lot of things different, but I've got no time for regrets... not now. And honestly? I don't regret one single moment. They're my moments and even when they were bad I'm glad they were mine."

Stella looked up at the stranger who was looking intently at the flowers around her as she held the other woman in her lap. There was something so sweet about her, something that made Stella quite happy to relax there, with her head on her knee as she tried to ignore the pain that was slowly coming back to her.

Stella's hand moved to touch her stomach. It had gotten to feeling sour all of a sudden. She sighed and tried to keep relaxed, but the more she tried, the tighter the knot in her stomach became. On top of that she felt very sleepy, like a nap was going to catch her before she could stop it. Her lids began to droop, and there was a buzzing in her ears. Beyond the buzzing was that soft laugh that sounded more like a sigh. It was the other woman's voice cutting through the buzzing sounds.

"Let yourself sleep Stella. I promise the sandman will leave you alone."

There was only a moment of panic as Stella tried to decide if what she felt was her agitated body finally giving into sleep. One moment she was all tensed muscles and an ever growing buzz in her ears, the next moment there was silence and her body felt light. There was no more pain. There was no more worry. Her eyes came open and she looked into a body engulfing brightness all around her. It felt more peaceful than falling comfortably asleep in her own bed.

"Now that didn't hurt so much did it? You snoozed through most of it."

Stella looked towards the voice. The strange woman made of thunderclouds and sweet smiles was looking down at her. She was the only thing keeping her company in that comforting brightness. She then realized her strange companion made the concept of death more of a noun and not a verb.

"I'm dead?" she whispered. She sat up and looked at the stranger. "You finally answered my prayers..."

The strange woman shrugged her shoulders. "Yes, you're dead, but I didn't answer your prayers. You've been close all day. I just came to find you, that's what I do. I decided that I wanted to get a chance to visit your garden first. I don't do that with everyone."

Stella smiled, even found it in her to laugh a little. The stranger extended her hand towards the amber haired girl, all smiled. "Stella, take my hand."

* * *

Tell me the content of your heart. Say it in short phrases, in rhyme or in reason, sing it to me as a melody. Offer to me all those things hidden away from private consumption. Give to me the color of your character, the secret name of your demons, what you think of when it rains. Give yourself over to me. Offer me a place to rest my head against your chest, let me feel your arms around me. Take me. Take me over completely.

Baptista

The day is a Sunday. The placement of the day where things are slowly slipping into night mode. When the sky appears to bleed a little bit like a woman in cycle. You should know I compare most things to a woman, it's just my way. I could say it's because of the way my mother spoke as she raised me, though I think it's just one of my many habits. And I am a woman of many habits. Like smoking, like finding myself getting vulgar when I talk around men, like the way I sometimes forget myself to a situation while I never forget my manners. I know I'm influenced greatly by my Russian birth and heritage, but I can't discount my life of travel from place to place, even as a child. As for introductions, Baptista is the name given to myself, not the name given to me. It is the only name you will ever really need know me by. This is a random start to a random moment in my life.

It's evening now, in some hotel where the snow outside is keeping us in, and keeping those already inside from going out. As a result, my room is still being cleaned from the previous occupant who only ten minutes ago finally decided to brave the weather. As I wait, one of my prized possessions sits next to me, breathing heavy enough I might accuse her of snoring. My frostrós doesn't snore though.

Her name is Yukiko, though I'm not sure if the name was properly used in a traditional fashion by her parents. However, she's always been my Minka. We are all about names her and I, and there are a dozen names between us. A woman should have a special name for each person special to her and she them. Just as I am my lover Sill's Devotchka, and I am my father's Greta, to Minka I will always be Dimitra, the name my mother gave me but which I never let her call me. Only Minka whispers this name, only when we're alone and close to one another.

I met Minka when I first came to the West from Canada. I was trying to adjust to the warmth of the weather after having been in the cold of a deep frost. I was pale, paler still because I had dyed my naturally red hair the very whitest of blondes. My goal had been to look as though I bathed in bleach. I wore glosses instead of true colors, and dabbed glitter at the corners of my pale eyebrows. The only true color I wore was a berry shade which looked like a wine stain on my eyelids and the middle of my bottom lip. Minka thought I looked like a snow imp, but it took a long detailed conversation from her to come to this one little statement. A history of dead Nordic ideology and masochistic literature all to simply say you look like a snow imp and I like that. I fell in love with her immediately. My new friend then, friend forever.

I would run into her often when I was down by the library. Most of my things at that time were scattered in lock boxes in places of public transit. I had no place for myself, however, so I stuck near the library. There were always students about, people to eavesdrop on, so I could sort of learn my way around the city as I tried to get myself settled. It was also close to the peepshow I worked at four nights out of the week.

I remember when I told Minka this the first time. She had asked how I was making my money. I told her I put on some barbie doll make-up, used a wig, and made pouty faces in a room with four other women as these little windows would open and close. No contact and in most cases you couldn't even see the person's face. It was like making an erotic show for your bedroom mirror, something I was practiced at by the age of thirteen.

She wasn't shocked, just fascinated in her odd little way. She asked if I liked it and all I could tell her was it was like a cake job at a store. It wasn't a lot of effort, it gave me a nice check, but I didn't exactly enjoy going to work and often I was bored. The other women made it entertaining. I liked watching the other women dance and Minka liked that answer. It led into one of our many conversations about how women are natural around one another in every way; how no type of affection really seems out of the ordinary. After that conversation, she offered me a night in a warm bed. If anyone else had offered me such, I would have thought it a hand out, or suddenly been struck by how pathetic my situation was. I mean, I was homeless, the ultimate sign of poverty in America, right? But I felt neither pathetic or impoverished. I always likened it to simply being a gypsy. I made do with what I had, I moved as I wished. Leases and man-made structures gave me no sense of security. Only the knowledge that I could go where I pleased, when I pleased, gave me comfort. This too she understood, even though she didn't practice such ideas.

This was ten years ago I think. In that time I have never known a more unique woman than my Minka. Sometimes she's like my personal geisha, sometimes a porcelain doll crafted by an eccentric's hands. She's worldly and blessed with her own erratic way of thinking. And sometimes she's just a flustered young woman happily at odds with the world she resides in.

I once had a dream where Minka, who looks faintly Asian from her father, was pale like the color of buttermilk. At her eyes, her lips, her cheeks was the most delicate of ice blue coloring, like an ice artist set to her make-up. Her black hair was woven with silk strands the shades of winter. And she wore this beautifully elaborate prom dress, or wedding dress, also made of winter hues. Atop it all she wore a small tierra of ice as she was the princess of snow.

In this dream she was walking across a river made of snow and her crystal slippers made no mark no matter how hard she stepped. She was walking towards a field where cold, large, war weary deities were clunking one another over the head again and again. There were no ice giants, they were long dead. The Valkyries above the battle were nothing more than harpies with wings, so they couldn't even sway Minka's attention. She passed through the dropping hammers and battle cries, leaving them all behind because the world was white in front of her. A white palate painted with all those subtle winter shades She kept walking till her whole form simply became one with the ice. Somewhere on the other side of this ice a child found a doll in the frost. A little Yukiko made of porcelain and silks, a small hint of a smile playing at the edges of her painted lips.

Sometimes when I want to describe Minka to people, I want to try and make them visualize this dream of mine. Of course they wouldn't be able to understand it, or see it as I saw it while sleeping. They wouldn't be able to understand why this dream so perfectly represents her. Why a collection of vivid and cold imagery, which makes no sense, even though there was some really profound truth in it, so aptly described her. Pity I'm no good with words. I believe the name Yukiko means Snow Child in Japanese. Perhaps that says it better.

In this moment Minka is turning a bit in her shallow sleep. She came awake long enough to see we were still in the lobby, registered this fact, before letting herself drift back to sleep. Right now I want nothing more than to be cuddling up to this ice woman in a warm bed. Especially one of these warm beds which are outfitted in good soft sheets and comforters of down. Kicking off a hundred dollars from our night's tab was a good gesture for our budget, but it didn't help with my want. My need for sleep, comfort, and the warm–almost soft snoring sounds–of the woman at my side. Another thirty minutes pass before a bellhop comes to show us to our room. A room that will offer another moment in my life.

Puzzles and Paradigms

I've been lost to dreaming in my waking state. I've passed through mirrors and slipped my hand through the wall to feel the reality hidden on the other side. I have found secrets. I found her.

It can be said that what I found was a configuration meant for a creature so much greater than myself. Like the toy maker's puzzle box, created with loving care and burning ambition, only to become the ever shifting paradigm. A riddle within a riddle, where the answer is known only to the very person who created it and could care less about solutions where there is no mystery or prize.

I looked past the configuration into the heart of the room itself. In ignorance and utter apathy I left the mystery to someone else, someone who might be crippled by the desire to see what lay at its heart. For me, there was only one thing that seemed to matter: To move beyond the barrier so I could look into her eyes.

False nature said there came absolution with the gift of just one glance. Common sense told me that as reality shifted in dreams, so too did the honesty given truth in this place.

I could rely on neither, I just wanted to touch her. I wanted to be close enough to breath her in. Like the sweat and smell pushed from her pores was a greater intoxicant than the oxygen my lungs fought for. I wanted to put my mouth on hers and leave it moist. To touch her skin, to feel her hair, to put physical textures to all the things I saw as I looked at her.

Her smile suggested an invitation. A greater sense reasoned that a hungry smile offered to prey would look much the same. Where was the line between a desire to welcome and the need to disassemble those before her? How well did she balance this line. Was she the demigoddess left to rot alone in the temple built for her? Or was this nothing more than a shrine to another unseen and dead force? She the useless thing left to guard the entrance.

Perhaps it did not matter. Or perhaps I had finally found a riddle that would cause me a desire to see it through to the end. Where my hands would fall over her form and twist it into some sort of position that offered me an answer. Would she lie on her back and confess to me the nature of living death? Or would she lay speechless and spread her legs to let spill the seeds spit from the mouths of gods? Would she tell me what fruit would grow from such a seed?

I could spend a lifetime there, silently answering my own questions, never once addressing them to her. I wanted to speak, but she wore such a weary look of futility across her features. Like every question would simply be answered with another question. Like every moment that passed was just another reminder of how she had found her way to that spot.

And I thought...

For all the beauty I saw in her sitting there, was there a force or reason in nature that would cause me to want to take her place? To be held fast to this dusty corner which smelled like used time and dead clocks. Would I want to know the sweetness in her smell was from the drying of her blood beneath the skin, or the vanilla air congealing on her body? Would I really want the answers if she had the mouth to voice them?

Curiosity suggested yes. A deep rooted knowledge of myself answered differently by pushing my feet to move. I turned away from her and wondered briefly if I looked back quick enough if I could catch the illusion broken. But I didn't do this. Whether she cracked and faded away from my eyes, I could offer her painless immortality by keeping the memory of her as it was: Something dead and beautiful. Something silently screaming for release. I left her a riddle.

About the Author

Bethalynne is a Michigan native who spent much of her early life chasing the fae around her grandfather's nearly mythical fairy tale garden. Where the fae weren't calling, the strange shadows in the closet were whispering. When it was finally suggested that she kindly bring herself down from the clouds (and out from those dark places) she turned her expansive imagination towards capturing her characters and their worlds through writing and drawing. The latter has led to her having a notable career as a professional artist for the past twenty years. She happily shares the stories behind the art through her writing site Ver Sacrum Books. To view all of Bethalynne's written works please visit VerSacrumBooks.com. Or to view all of her creative works visit her online portfolio at Bajema.com

First Ebook Edition

Book Cover: The cover was created by Bethalynne and features public domain artwork including works from John William Waterhouse (April 6, 1849 – February 10, 1917).

