I haven't been sleeping much lately. My schedule is way weird right now - working night shift for two weeks at the job I'm leaving, so that I can work days at my new, lower stress job. There isn't much room for sleep. I've had broken dreams, odd things that seem to disappear as soon as I wake, and one really upsetting one I can't really express. So, here's one that I've had many times before, and will probably have again.
I'm at an event. I'm not sure exactly what is occurring, but the area in which it is happening includes a big portion of the small town where I grew up. There seem to be multiple things going on, including a cross-country race that winds around the entire grounds.
On the ground in front of me is a great big guy. He's battered, severely injured, and unconscious. I know that I'm the one who did it, but I don't know why. I feel like I was pushed or trapped into it doing this, but I know I'll still be held accountable for it regardless, because from the appearance of his injuries, I didn't stop beating on him right away after he was down.
There are people nearby who heard the fight and are coming to see what is wrong. I back away rapidly from the man, trying to hide in the bushes before they see me. I realize I'm covered in his blood. If I don't get out of here, I'm going to be in huge trouble. I run away from the scene, barreling through a maze of snack trailers and equipment until I reach an area that seems to be outside of the event. If I can get a little further away, I might be able to make it home without being detected.
I hide between trashcans to avoid a police car driving by, then run down a series of alleyways toward my parents' house. The whole time, I'm sure someone is following me, but I can't see anyone. Finally, I get there, only to find that my whole family has gathered in the kitchen and is waiting for me. When I enter the house, they lecture me and say they are ashamed of what I've done. I beg them not to say that, telling them that what happened wasn't something I planned ahead, or even did on purpose, just a response to a situation that was inflicted upon me by the victim.
My father tells me that the man died from his injuries, that I punched him so hard in the chest that I stopped his heart. There are tears in Dad's eyes, and he asks me, "Do you have any idea how much force that takes?"
I don't know, but I figure it's a lot. I am filled with dread, realizing I've taken a life. The horror of it doesn't all dawn on me at once... at first, I just feel sorry that the man is dead, and guilty over being the cause. Then, I realize that there will be others affected by his death, people who loved him. And having killed him is a terrible crime. I'll be convicted and sentenced. I could even be sentenced to die as punishment, even with extenuating circumstances. As the reality of the situation begins to weigh on me, my family advances upon me and I understand that they mean to turn me in to the authorities. I turn to run, head out the door, and flee across the yard, pursued by everyone.
This is when I usually wake, feeling despondent, thinking about what to do next and how to survive, knowing that I would either have to hide forever, or turn myself in and face the criminal justice system. Upon waking, this dream stays with me, usually for at least a day, sometimes two or three, causing a sense of impending doom, and strong feelings of guilt, anxiety, and depression.
Just a dream
I can't even describe this one. I have the words, just not the fortitude, or the heart. I came out of it with this. This is all I can do.
EDGE
Baleful Craving
Echoing, pilfering
Wanton entreaty
Softened screaming
Heavy whisper
Nudging, edging
Trudging, hedging
Pushing, pulling
Rending, Seething
Exposed, unguarded
Dropping, falling
Down and away
Rattling on
Settling in
Infinitely bound
Unheeded, unheard
Unnoticed, unwanted
Unseen, unclaimed
Unclean, undone
EDGE
Baleful Craving
Echoing, pilfering
Wanton entreaty
Softened screaming
Heavy whisper
Nudging, edging
Trudging, hedging
Pushing, pulling
Rending, Seething
Exposed, unguarded
Dropping, falling
Down and away
Rattling on
Settling in
Infinitely bound
Unheeded, unheard
Unnoticed, unwanted
Unseen, unclaimed
Unclean, undone
And yet I miss them
To start this one, I need a bit of back story. I've always had a bit of a 6th sense. Not like in the movies, where everything is plain as day, just the ability to feel presences, hear and smell details that are not so obvious, but that others will notice when I point them out, and sometimes see auras or what I think of as energy disturbances. Sometimes I seem to pick up on "leftovers," energy or strong emotions that are attached to areas or objects. Once in a while, I'll have a full-on "psychic" experience, where I get an image, or a memory, or some other information that is hanging around waiting for someone susceptible to show up and feel it.
I've never been entirely comfortable with this, and have avoided messing too much with "the other side." I don't seek things out. If things find me, I do what I have to do to handle and extract myself from the situation, and try to have no more involvement than that, with the exception, at Samhain, of honoring those of my loved ones who have crossed over, or of helping friends handle and protect themselves from unwanted "other side" experiences that they have had.
In 1996, I moved in with a bunch of friends. When I say a bunch, I mean 7 of us all combining our resources together to rent a house. We had 1 kitchen, 1 bathroom, 3 guys 4 gals, a straight couple, a 1 -straight-1-bi couple, a lesbian couple, and a single gay man all living together. It was a beautiful disaster. We'd have made a great reality show.
The lesbians were into ghost hunting. My then fiance and I were practicing Wiccans. For some reason, the girls thought this should translate into a desire on my part to go ghost hunting with them.
It didn't. I refused. So, one day, my sweet buddies decided to take me out for fast food, then pull a half-bait-and-switch (we actually did get food) and take me to reputedly haunted places as kind of a psychic sensor without even giving me a heads-up. I was not a happy camper.
"This isn't the way home. Where are we going?"
I look around at my housemates. My fiance is in the front with SL & DK, with SL doing the driving. I'm in the middle of the back seat, between JD & TG, having just finished a fast food feast. I'm in the middle because it's the only way for me to have enough leg room. JD & TG are razzing me about my insanely huge appetite and how it doesn't go with my skinny ass. They're loud and funny, and I've been enjoying the camaraderie until this moment, when I realize they're taking me somewhere other than where they said we were going to go.
TG says, "This is the only way we could think of to get you out."
I admit, I've been cooped up since the accident, but I've also been in a lot of pain, and it's cold outside. I just recently found out that the reason my recovery from a simple whiplash injury has been so slow is that I have fibromyalgia.
ST pulls over in front of one of the area's more broken down farms. It's kind of odd in the Northwest Ohio area. Driving through the rural areas, you'll see everything ranging from state of the art to completely abandoned. This one looks abandoned. It's overgrown with weeds and brush, the buildings decaying, equipment sitting unused and rusted beside the slowly falling barn. Something about this place gives me the willies, and I shiver involuntarily.
"Everything ok? Why are we here? Is there something wrong with the car?"
The girls exchange a secretive smile. JD opens her door, gets out of the car, and before I can protest, grabs my arm and pulls me out too. TG is getting out on the other side. Everyone is exiting the vehicle. At this point, even my fiance is asking why we're here. We don't have a flat tire, and there were no funny noises from the motor.
I'm feeling a super-sized dose of get-the-hell-out-of-here from the barn. The energy here nauseates me. I feel the oddest sense of dread, like a kid who has been told "wait 'till your father gets home" and is anticipating far, far worse than just the lectures I had when I was a kid. I am shaking, fighting tears, and my back feels like it's covered in bee stings. I look around. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the car.
My fiance sees me losing the color in my face, shaking, and looking very upset. He is immediately right next to me, asking why we've stopped here and if I'm all right. I say we should leave, now. JD & TG start to look less sure of themselves, and ask what I'm "seeing."
I'm not seeing anything, but I'm feeling way too much. I try to push it away, mentally focusing on putting a divide between myself and the residual energy or feelings of this area. I don't know what's hitting me, but it feels totally awful. I use a technique I've learned in my Wicca studies with my fiance and some other people we practice with, drawing lines of strong, pure, positive energy around myself and spinning them into a hard, egg-shaped shell. That strongly mutes the "psychic" ambiance in my personal space, allowing me to take a more objective, uninfluenced look at what just hit me. In this case, the biggest relief I got was that my back felt better.
Something bad happened here, not just once, but over and over, to someone who was powerless to avoid it. I'm not skilled or practiced enough to be able to tell exactly what it was, because I don't practice this. I avoid this. I'm pissed as hell that they have done this to me. I don't want to be here. I told them that. Things like this are why.
I suspect that I'm feeling the residuals from a situation of serious abuse, but I can't feel how old it is, or whether it's attached to the building, or the property. It could have been anything; animal abuse, a family thing, an employer thing, a cruel slave owner, or mistreatment of native people by white immigrants. The only direction I have is the feeling that the origin of the dread is young and male.
I find myself unable to keep it to myself, and end up explaining that to the girls. They're eating it up like it's some kind of entertainment, but I'm not. Even with my shield, I feel like I'm going to heave on the lawn if we don't get out of here.
My fiance can see that I'm extremely uncomfortable with being here. He tells me he'll protect me, and he steps right up next to me, puts his arm around me, and creates the same kind of shield I just did. With him standing there, the residue is not getting through as easily, and I feel better, but I still really, really want to leave.
The girls ask if I can see anything. I'm looking at the barn, but there's no shadow or figure that doesn't belong there. The creepiest thing about the place, I tell them, is that rope hanging from the ceiling which can be seen through the sagging, half-open doors.
Both girls immediately give me the hairy eyeball. I'm confused until my fiance tells me that the barn isn't falling apart, the doors are shut tight, and there's no rope that any of the rest of them can see. When he says that, I'm finally able to see through the residue of the past, as the rot, rust, and decay just sort of slowly fade away. First, I can see through everything that isn't there, then it rapidly increases in transparency until it's gone. The house isn't the same house. It's not quite in the same spot, is made of wood instead of bricks, and is bigger. The barn is in the same spot, but it's taller, in good shape, and closed up tight. There's no farm equipment sitting out. The place is deserted, but not like before.
At that moment, the air of the place changes for me. There's a sense of the dreaded moment rapidly approaching, and I physically hear someone stomping across a hardwood floor in heavy boots. The far off sound of a deep, inhuman growl makes me jump out of my skin. It almost sounds more like someone dragging something heavy across a rough surface than a voice. I cover my ears with my hands. Whatever I'm feeling nearby wasn't here before, and it's malevolent. We could be in serious danger.
JD & TG both pepper me with questions. "What is it? What do you hear? Do you see something? Is there a ghost?"
At this point, SL & DK, both of whom have just been kind of watching, are starting to get really creeped out. If I'm going to convince anyone to leave, it'll probably be them, because JD & TG are too curious, and my fiance is bent on being a knight in shining armor. I look at DK and say, "We have to move, now. It's pissed, and it knows we're here. We have to go."
That creeps her out like nobody's business, and she starts pestering SL to get back into the car and drive away. I push my fiance toward the car and tell him to get in, at the same time shoving myself away from him. I climb into the back seat. SL agrees to leave, not willing to admit it's because he's got the heebie-jeebies, but quite able to admit that DK's emotional state is a concern. JD & TG reluctantly agree to go. As we all pile in and close the doors, I'm hit with a sense of urgency, my mind picturing SL stomping the gas and shooting forward like a race car. Something is approaching the vehicle.
SL turns the key. The car turns over, but doesn't start. He cusses a blue streak, pushing the pedal to the floor once, letting it up, and trying again. I hear pounding on the ground outside, turn to look, and see a dark shadow coming out of the barn. It looks like a big black cloud of smoke, moving slowly across the yard toward the car. I hear SL flat out yell at his car to start, still swearing like mad. My fiance puts his hands on the dashboard, closes his eyes, and quietly starts singing an elemental fire chant we sometimes use in the circle. SL turns the key, and the engine roars to life as that smokey cloud crosses the drainage ditch and reaches the car. The whole vehicle rocks sideways like something slammed into it. SL floors it and peels out of there, speeding up the road for quite a distance before slowing down. No one says a word until we get home, where I remind them "I don't go ghost hunting!" before heading up to my & my fiance's room to defrag with some music.
The actual experience was almost identical to the dream, until the last paragraph. I remember getting into the car, and SL having some difficulty starting it, but we actually got out of there without that black cloud getting anywhere near us. We drove around for awhile, hung out by a reservoir, and had a second experience I also wasn't happy about. I ended up telling the girls off a little, but I didn't wander off to sulk in my room when we got home. We sat around playing video games, instead. The memory of my fiance using the fire elemental chant to start the car was from an entirely different incident, with a different car, and for the record, after the chant, the previously unresponsive car started like nothing was ever wrong.
I don't know what made me think of this last night. We ended up having a falling-out, moving out of the house, and breaking off contact with them. It's been around 15 years since I've had any contact with anyone from that car except my then fiance, who is now my ex, but still a friend. Either way, the dream has stuck with me today. I'm not hugely bothered, but I do feel kind of weird, and to be honest, I do miss those guys.
I've never been entirely comfortable with this, and have avoided messing too much with "the other side." I don't seek things out. If things find me, I do what I have to do to handle and extract myself from the situation, and try to have no more involvement than that, with the exception, at Samhain, of honoring those of my loved ones who have crossed over, or of helping friends handle and protect themselves from unwanted "other side" experiences that they have had.
In 1996, I moved in with a bunch of friends. When I say a bunch, I mean 7 of us all combining our resources together to rent a house. We had 1 kitchen, 1 bathroom, 3 guys 4 gals, a straight couple, a 1 -straight-1-bi couple, a lesbian couple, and a single gay man all living together. It was a beautiful disaster. We'd have made a great reality show.
The lesbians were into ghost hunting. My then fiance and I were practicing Wiccans. For some reason, the girls thought this should translate into a desire on my part to go ghost hunting with them.
It didn't. I refused. So, one day, my sweet buddies decided to take me out for fast food, then pull a half-bait-and-switch (we actually did get food) and take me to reputedly haunted places as kind of a psychic sensor without even giving me a heads-up. I was not a happy camper.
"This isn't the way home. Where are we going?"
I look around at my housemates. My fiance is in the front with SL & DK, with SL doing the driving. I'm in the middle of the back seat, between JD & TG, having just finished a fast food feast. I'm in the middle because it's the only way for me to have enough leg room. JD & TG are razzing me about my insanely huge appetite and how it doesn't go with my skinny ass. They're loud and funny, and I've been enjoying the camaraderie until this moment, when I realize they're taking me somewhere other than where they said we were going to go.
TG says, "This is the only way we could think of to get you out."
I admit, I've been cooped up since the accident, but I've also been in a lot of pain, and it's cold outside. I just recently found out that the reason my recovery from a simple whiplash injury has been so slow is that I have fibromyalgia.
ST pulls over in front of one of the area's more broken down farms. It's kind of odd in the Northwest Ohio area. Driving through the rural areas, you'll see everything ranging from state of the art to completely abandoned. This one looks abandoned. It's overgrown with weeds and brush, the buildings decaying, equipment sitting unused and rusted beside the slowly falling barn. Something about this place gives me the willies, and I shiver involuntarily.
"Everything ok? Why are we here? Is there something wrong with the car?"
The girls exchange a secretive smile. JD opens her door, gets out of the car, and before I can protest, grabs my arm and pulls me out too. TG is getting out on the other side. Everyone is exiting the vehicle. At this point, even my fiance is asking why we're here. We don't have a flat tire, and there were no funny noises from the motor.
I'm feeling a super-sized dose of get-the-hell-out-of-here from the barn. The energy here nauseates me. I feel the oddest sense of dread, like a kid who has been told "wait 'till your father gets home" and is anticipating far, far worse than just the lectures I had when I was a kid. I am shaking, fighting tears, and my back feels like it's covered in bee stings. I look around. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the car.
My fiance sees me losing the color in my face, shaking, and looking very upset. He is immediately right next to me, asking why we've stopped here and if I'm all right. I say we should leave, now. JD & TG start to look less sure of themselves, and ask what I'm "seeing."
I'm not seeing anything, but I'm feeling way too much. I try to push it away, mentally focusing on putting a divide between myself and the residual energy or feelings of this area. I don't know what's hitting me, but it feels totally awful. I use a technique I've learned in my Wicca studies with my fiance and some other people we practice with, drawing lines of strong, pure, positive energy around myself and spinning them into a hard, egg-shaped shell. That strongly mutes the "psychic" ambiance in my personal space, allowing me to take a more objective, uninfluenced look at what just hit me. In this case, the biggest relief I got was that my back felt better.
Something bad happened here, not just once, but over and over, to someone who was powerless to avoid it. I'm not skilled or practiced enough to be able to tell exactly what it was, because I don't practice this. I avoid this. I'm pissed as hell that they have done this to me. I don't want to be here. I told them that. Things like this are why.
I suspect that I'm feeling the residuals from a situation of serious abuse, but I can't feel how old it is, or whether it's attached to the building, or the property. It could have been anything; animal abuse, a family thing, an employer thing, a cruel slave owner, or mistreatment of native people by white immigrants. The only direction I have is the feeling that the origin of the dread is young and male.
I find myself unable to keep it to myself, and end up explaining that to the girls. They're eating it up like it's some kind of entertainment, but I'm not. Even with my shield, I feel like I'm going to heave on the lawn if we don't get out of here.
My fiance can see that I'm extremely uncomfortable with being here. He tells me he'll protect me, and he steps right up next to me, puts his arm around me, and creates the same kind of shield I just did. With him standing there, the residue is not getting through as easily, and I feel better, but I still really, really want to leave.
The girls ask if I can see anything. I'm looking at the barn, but there's no shadow or figure that doesn't belong there. The creepiest thing about the place, I tell them, is that rope hanging from the ceiling which can be seen through the sagging, half-open doors.
Both girls immediately give me the hairy eyeball. I'm confused until my fiance tells me that the barn isn't falling apart, the doors are shut tight, and there's no rope that any of the rest of them can see. When he says that, I'm finally able to see through the residue of the past, as the rot, rust, and decay just sort of slowly fade away. First, I can see through everything that isn't there, then it rapidly increases in transparency until it's gone. The house isn't the same house. It's not quite in the same spot, is made of wood instead of bricks, and is bigger. The barn is in the same spot, but it's taller, in good shape, and closed up tight. There's no farm equipment sitting out. The place is deserted, but not like before.
At that moment, the air of the place changes for me. There's a sense of the dreaded moment rapidly approaching, and I physically hear someone stomping across a hardwood floor in heavy boots. The far off sound of a deep, inhuman growl makes me jump out of my skin. It almost sounds more like someone dragging something heavy across a rough surface than a voice. I cover my ears with my hands. Whatever I'm feeling nearby wasn't here before, and it's malevolent. We could be in serious danger.
JD & TG both pepper me with questions. "What is it? What do you hear? Do you see something? Is there a ghost?"
At this point, SL & DK, both of whom have just been kind of watching, are starting to get really creeped out. If I'm going to convince anyone to leave, it'll probably be them, because JD & TG are too curious, and my fiance is bent on being a knight in shining armor. I look at DK and say, "We have to move, now. It's pissed, and it knows we're here. We have to go."
That creeps her out like nobody's business, and she starts pestering SL to get back into the car and drive away. I push my fiance toward the car and tell him to get in, at the same time shoving myself away from him. I climb into the back seat. SL agrees to leave, not willing to admit it's because he's got the heebie-jeebies, but quite able to admit that DK's emotional state is a concern. JD & TG reluctantly agree to go. As we all pile in and close the doors, I'm hit with a sense of urgency, my mind picturing SL stomping the gas and shooting forward like a race car. Something is approaching the vehicle.
SL turns the key. The car turns over, but doesn't start. He cusses a blue streak, pushing the pedal to the floor once, letting it up, and trying again. I hear pounding on the ground outside, turn to look, and see a dark shadow coming out of the barn. It looks like a big black cloud of smoke, moving slowly across the yard toward the car. I hear SL flat out yell at his car to start, still swearing like mad. My fiance puts his hands on the dashboard, closes his eyes, and quietly starts singing an elemental fire chant we sometimes use in the circle. SL turns the key, and the engine roars to life as that smokey cloud crosses the drainage ditch and reaches the car. The whole vehicle rocks sideways like something slammed into it. SL floors it and peels out of there, speeding up the road for quite a distance before slowing down. No one says a word until we get home, where I remind them "I don't go ghost hunting!" before heading up to my & my fiance's room to defrag with some music.
The actual experience was almost identical to the dream, until the last paragraph. I remember getting into the car, and SL having some difficulty starting it, but we actually got out of there without that black cloud getting anywhere near us. We drove around for awhile, hung out by a reservoir, and had a second experience I also wasn't happy about. I ended up telling the girls off a little, but I didn't wander off to sulk in my room when we got home. We sat around playing video games, instead. The memory of my fiance using the fire elemental chant to start the car was from an entirely different incident, with a different car, and for the record, after the chant, the previously unresponsive car started like nothing was ever wrong.
I don't know what made me think of this last night. We ended up having a falling-out, moving out of the house, and breaking off contact with them. It's been around 15 years since I've had any contact with anyone from that car except my then fiance, who is now my ex, but still a friend. Either way, the dream has stuck with me today. I'm not hugely bothered, but I do feel kind of weird, and to be honest, I do miss those guys.
By request
A few readers have asked me to try to draw the Doc. Though I'm not a confident (because I don't feel competent) artist when it comes to drawing, I decided to give it a shot (no pun intended.)
Instead of trying to put pencil to paper, this time I did the entire thing in photoshop. That worked out slightly better, though I couldn't focus on his relaxed state and ended up drawing the last time I saw him. I think this one came out better than the drawing of the monster. Maybe I draw better with a mouse than with a pencil.
Instead of trying to put pencil to paper, this time I did the entire thing in photoshop. That worked out slightly better, though I couldn't focus on his relaxed state and ended up drawing the last time I saw him. I think this one came out better than the drawing of the monster. Maybe I draw better with a mouse than with a pencil.
Parting shot down
This is one of those that started off with me knowing a bunch of things that had "happened," but which I didn't actually experience in the dream. I knew them as memories, though in reality, they have not occurred. There are some of them which might, though, because I'm in the process right now of changing jobs, and that was the subject of the dream.
I had finished the hiring process with the place I'm interviewing with now. I had a start date, giving me just enough time to provide my current employer and my psychotic, abusive boss with two weeks' notice and then have two days off before starting my new job. I hope that happens, but in reality, employers often don't give new employees start dates that far off, and I'll probably be unable to do anything like that.
I wanted very badly to be ungracious, tell her off, or quit without notice to make her scramble to cover my shift, but instead, I typed up a nice letter about how I was moving on to an environment that I felt was more suited to my professional capabilities. The one thing I could not bring myself to leave out of the letter was that I the work environment had strongly contributed to my decision to seek other employment. Not only is that an important truth, I was sure that if I didn't say it, my employer would try to use the letter as evidence against my retaliation claim with OSHA, because they've been that sneaky and underhanded about everything else.
I'm printing my "resignation" letter after having read it for what feels like the billionth time. I feel bad writing about the work environment in a notice like this, but I'd be more uncomfortable leaving the company with anything that gave the illusion that we were parting on good terms.
It takes three tries, because I'm so nervous about how this is going to go that I keep choosing the wrong printer, the one that isn't hooked up, instead of the one that is. Finally, I get it to print. I put it in a labeled envelope, for added formality. I throw a jacket on and head out the door to warm up the van.
It's freezing outside, and my old van doesn't want to start. Instead of fighting with it, I decide to walk there instead. Might as well. I've got two weeks before I'll be driving across town to work every day. The thought gives me a boost. I lock the van, go get my coat and gloves, and head up the street with my letter in hand.
The cold air beats on my face, but it's not bad. It's freezing, but not windy. By the time I get to work, though, my nose is red. I should have worn a scarf.
I'm early. From where I live, it actually takes me less time to walk to work than to drive. I take a moment and buy my usual - a quart of chocolate milk - to substitute for the fact that I won't get a lunch break during the first 6 or possibly 7 hours of the 9 hour shift for which I'm scheduled. In two weeks, I won't have to deal with that any more. The place where I'm going doesn't schedule past 8 hours, and has mandatory breaks. That's going to be different for me after 6 years of this place.
I take my purchase, with receipt, into the back room, and hand my boss the envelope. She's on the phone. She doesn't look at it, so she doesn't notice that it says my name, followed by "two weeks' notice" on the front. I wait until she is off the phone. She glances at the envelope, does a double-take, then gets up and walks out of the room.
Okay, fine. I'm not playing her game today. I'm in a good mood.
I wait to clock in. I can hear her "pissed off" laugh, a harsh, pounding laughter she pulls out for occasions when she wants to sound like she's not bothered or upset, but she's actually really steamed. That lets me know she definitely read the front of the envelope and is pretending not to have noticed.
Whatever. Time comes around, and I clock in, walk out, and ask which register I'm on. She tells me. I start the routine for opening that register. I'm about to ask to make sure she did read the front of that envelope, when she abruptly turns and walks into the back room again.
My co-worker asks me what set her off. I tell him. He laughs. I ask what's so funny, and he very quietly says, "She was talking about you on the phone this morning, planning how to break you down by making you work swing shifts for a month. Now, she can't. You just ruined her plans."
We are stocking cigarettes while we talk, grabbing packs out of cartons and stuffing them into the pack rack behind us. It's an unending task, so we're kept pretty busy even though there's not a customer in the store.
She hears our quiet voices, comes out to the front, and says, "You guys going to do any work today, or just stand around talking?" We both stop what we're doing, hands full of cigarettes, and look at her like she's grown a second head. She can see that we're performing job duties. She's just in a bad mood.
I say, "Look, just because you're annoyed about my notice doesn't mean you have to bark at us. You can see that we're working." Now that I don't have to fear unemployment, her behavior doesn't evoke the same impotent, head-down-closed-mouth resentful anger. I'm not caged any more.
My coworker chokes on thin air, coughs and sputters, and escapes the situation by heading over to brew a pot of coffee. He's not abandoning me. He's getting out of my way.
She says, "So, where will you be working?"
I remind her that, as it says in my letter, I'm not disclosing that information. What I didn't say in the letter is my reason, which is that I fully expect her to try to sabotage my new position by showing up and bad-mouthing me to my new boss before she even gets a chance to get to know me.
My boss glares at me and tells me that by refusing to answer her question, I'm being insubordinate, and she can fire me on the spot. I know that's not true. It takes the company two weeks just to write an employee up, and they can't fire me without doing that first. By the time they get anything done, I'll be at my new workplace anyway. She's just blowing smoke, and we're both aware of that.
I smile and wait. Forced to back down from what she said, she starts handing out crap duty, literally. I'm ordered to first clean the restrooms, then take lot duty. No one ever gets both of those chores in one shift, and I know it's meant as a punishment, but it doesn't bother me, because I know that's all she can do.
Then she says, "...and when you get done with that, you can meet me in the cooler."
So, I'm assigned all of the heavy lifting for the day. Okay. I can handle that.
I start the tasks, grabbing the necessary tools. While I'm in the men's room cleaning, I hear someone go into the ladies' and move around. When I go in there, it's a mess, toilet paper everywhere, wetness on the floor, walls, and bowl. I leave the cleaning equipment there, put up the wet floor sign, and go for a bucket. I can't believe she thought this would phase me. All I have to do is sweep up the paper, then pour water on everything before washing and sanitizing. There's a drain in the floor, for crying out loud.
She has this smug look on her face. I smile and wander off with the bucket and broom, as the smug look changes to confusion. When it doesn't take me any longer to do the ladies' room than to do the men's, and I don't complain about it, she has to look and make sure I actually did the chore, taking my coworker with her to witness, because she's assuming I didn't get it done. While she's doing that, I gather the stuff for lot duty. I hear the coworker say, "...looks like she washed the walls, too." as I'm on my way out the door. My boss glares at me, but what can she say? It's clean and dry.
I go through the whole series of tasks for lot without incident, taking about half an hour to get everything done, because for once, it isn't that bad. Usually, she waits until later in the day to send me out, so I'm used to the chore being messier and heavier.
I come back inside and head for the cooler, but she's not there. I find her in the back room, let her know lot is done, and I'm ready for the next thing. She tells me it can't be done that fast, and she's going to go inspect my work for short cuts. I shrug, and ask if she wants me to wait here or start in the cooler. That I'm not concerned pisses her off, and she tells me I'd better check my attitude, as if I said something different. When that also fails to bother me, she sends me on into the cooler and goes outside.
By the time she joins me in the cooler ten minutes later, I've got two "doors" filled with product and am working on the third. I work much faster when I'm in there by myself. She immediately begins working on whatever she can find that involves reaching for things that are over my head. Everywhere I go, she has to put the step ladder right over me, then climb up and reach for stuff, knocking it down so that I have to catch it to keep it from falling on me. I stop working on what I'm doing, go to the other end of the cooler where there are no shelves, and start putting away bottles of pop. She glares at me, starts telling me how worthless she thinks I am, and how it won't matter if I go someplace new because I'm never going to amount to anything. She says I'll end up in as much trouble at my new job as I am with her, calls me lazy and stupid, and accuses me of having issues with people in authority.
That finally gets to me. I've never had trouble at work like this. In my past, to which she is not privy, I've been far above the position I'm in now, and my success in the past was due to my work ethic and professionalism. She doesn't know anything about me, and has no right to make such criticisms. I grit my teeth and continue stocking, reminding myself that I've only got two more weeks to deal with her. She continues berating me, pushing and pushing, talking about the person she's made up in her head for me to be, instead of the person I know that I am. Then she starts talking about what kind of parents must have raised me.
I can handle all of it, until she starts talking about my mother. I know what she's trying to do. She thinks if she pisses me off enough, I'll hit her, and she'll be able to press charges, once again showing me the false image of me she's built up in her mind. I struggle to not lose my temper, but I've been subjected to a half-hour barrage, and I'm worn down. I finally tell her what I'm thinking. I've been a foreign ambassador for my hometown. I've been a business owner, a teacher, a professional artist, and a model. I've been not only above the position I'm in now, but above the position she's in. With the way she treats her subordinates, and the attitude she has toward other people, she'll never be anything more than the fat fish in a little pond that she is now. And it doesn't matter what she says, because I'm out from under her thumb, and there's nothing she can do about that. There's nothing more she can do to me but stupid, petty little things like this.
She turns beet red and rushes me. I try to put the cooler door between us, but she runs around it, slams into me, and knocks me into the beer cave, landing on top of me. She sits up and starts swinging at my face, calling me obscene names the whole time. I'm trying to dodge and block, but she's getting through anyway. A regular customer sees the fight, and rushes in to pull my boss off of me. I scramble away from her, backing up against a rack of 12-pack bottles. The customer is looking at us like we're from another planet, but at the same time, he's kind of grinning, and I know he's thinking, "Cool! Chick fight!"
She immediately cools off, tells the guy that this isn't what it looks like, and I attacked her. He looks at the shiner that's all ready forming under my eye, blood on my lip, bruised arms, and messed up hair, then at her undamaged face, and unruffled demeanor, and says, "Riiiiiight."
She still pulls out her phone, calls the police, and says she wants to press charges. The customer immediately tells me he'll hang around and act as a witness, and I know that the bulk of the assault is on the store's video of the beer cave, but there's no proof of what happened in the cooler, and I'll probably be arrested on her word before the whole thing gets straightened out. I hear her also tell the dispatcher that I stole a quart of chocolate milk, which is sitting in the back room without a receipt. I paid with my check card, so again, I'll be able to prove she's lying, but it's going to take time to get that proof.
She's going to try to make sure I'm unavailable to start my new job. My heart sinks, and I feel totally defeated, wondering if I'm ever going to win one instead of getting trampled all the time.
I woke today feeling pretty depressed, probably because tomorrow is my first day back after being on vacation for a week. My boss hasn't had me at work to harass every day, and I know what happens when she doesn't get her fix. After her week's vacation in December, she was intolerable for days. That's why I ended up taking these days off. I just needed to get the hell away from her. I've really been dreading going back.
A few minutes ago, I got a phone call that has changed all of that. I just got hired in to the photo center of a bigger chain store. It's going to start out part time, but I've all ready been told I'll be getting more hours soon.
I've actually got a new job. I am out from under her thumb. It's real. And unlike in my nightmares, there's going to be nothing she can do about it. I'll never have to deal with her again.
In the meantime, I'm really glad I'm not dreaming about the scary monster that has been haunting my nightmares for almost a month. Between getting through that, and the good news today, I'm feeling pretty darned good, like a thousand pound weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.
Gotta go - time to start composing my letter. ˆ֊ˆ
I had finished the hiring process with the place I'm interviewing with now. I had a start date, giving me just enough time to provide my current employer and my psychotic, abusive boss with two weeks' notice and then have two days off before starting my new job. I hope that happens, but in reality, employers often don't give new employees start dates that far off, and I'll probably be unable to do anything like that.
I wanted very badly to be ungracious, tell her off, or quit without notice to make her scramble to cover my shift, but instead, I typed up a nice letter about how I was moving on to an environment that I felt was more suited to my professional capabilities. The one thing I could not bring myself to leave out of the letter was that I the work environment had strongly contributed to my decision to seek other employment. Not only is that an important truth, I was sure that if I didn't say it, my employer would try to use the letter as evidence against my retaliation claim with OSHA, because they've been that sneaky and underhanded about everything else.
I'm printing my "resignation" letter after having read it for what feels like the billionth time. I feel bad writing about the work environment in a notice like this, but I'd be more uncomfortable leaving the company with anything that gave the illusion that we were parting on good terms.
It takes three tries, because I'm so nervous about how this is going to go that I keep choosing the wrong printer, the one that isn't hooked up, instead of the one that is. Finally, I get it to print. I put it in a labeled envelope, for added formality. I throw a jacket on and head out the door to warm up the van.
It's freezing outside, and my old van doesn't want to start. Instead of fighting with it, I decide to walk there instead. Might as well. I've got two weeks before I'll be driving across town to work every day. The thought gives me a boost. I lock the van, go get my coat and gloves, and head up the street with my letter in hand.
The cold air beats on my face, but it's not bad. It's freezing, but not windy. By the time I get to work, though, my nose is red. I should have worn a scarf.
I'm early. From where I live, it actually takes me less time to walk to work than to drive. I take a moment and buy my usual - a quart of chocolate milk - to substitute for the fact that I won't get a lunch break during the first 6 or possibly 7 hours of the 9 hour shift for which I'm scheduled. In two weeks, I won't have to deal with that any more. The place where I'm going doesn't schedule past 8 hours, and has mandatory breaks. That's going to be different for me after 6 years of this place.
I take my purchase, with receipt, into the back room, and hand my boss the envelope. She's on the phone. She doesn't look at it, so she doesn't notice that it says my name, followed by "two weeks' notice" on the front. I wait until she is off the phone. She glances at the envelope, does a double-take, then gets up and walks out of the room.
Okay, fine. I'm not playing her game today. I'm in a good mood.
I wait to clock in. I can hear her "pissed off" laugh, a harsh, pounding laughter she pulls out for occasions when she wants to sound like she's not bothered or upset, but she's actually really steamed. That lets me know she definitely read the front of the envelope and is pretending not to have noticed.
Whatever. Time comes around, and I clock in, walk out, and ask which register I'm on. She tells me. I start the routine for opening that register. I'm about to ask to make sure she did read the front of that envelope, when she abruptly turns and walks into the back room again.
My co-worker asks me what set her off. I tell him. He laughs. I ask what's so funny, and he very quietly says, "She was talking about you on the phone this morning, planning how to break you down by making you work swing shifts for a month. Now, she can't. You just ruined her plans."
We are stocking cigarettes while we talk, grabbing packs out of cartons and stuffing them into the pack rack behind us. It's an unending task, so we're kept pretty busy even though there's not a customer in the store.
She hears our quiet voices, comes out to the front, and says, "You guys going to do any work today, or just stand around talking?" We both stop what we're doing, hands full of cigarettes, and look at her like she's grown a second head. She can see that we're performing job duties. She's just in a bad mood.
I say, "Look, just because you're annoyed about my notice doesn't mean you have to bark at us. You can see that we're working." Now that I don't have to fear unemployment, her behavior doesn't evoke the same impotent, head-down-closed-mouth resentful anger. I'm not caged any more.
My coworker chokes on thin air, coughs and sputters, and escapes the situation by heading over to brew a pot of coffee. He's not abandoning me. He's getting out of my way.
She says, "So, where will you be working?"
I remind her that, as it says in my letter, I'm not disclosing that information. What I didn't say in the letter is my reason, which is that I fully expect her to try to sabotage my new position by showing up and bad-mouthing me to my new boss before she even gets a chance to get to know me.
My boss glares at me and tells me that by refusing to answer her question, I'm being insubordinate, and she can fire me on the spot. I know that's not true. It takes the company two weeks just to write an employee up, and they can't fire me without doing that first. By the time they get anything done, I'll be at my new workplace anyway. She's just blowing smoke, and we're both aware of that.
I smile and wait. Forced to back down from what she said, she starts handing out crap duty, literally. I'm ordered to first clean the restrooms, then take lot duty. No one ever gets both of those chores in one shift, and I know it's meant as a punishment, but it doesn't bother me, because I know that's all she can do.
Then she says, "...and when you get done with that, you can meet me in the cooler."
So, I'm assigned all of the heavy lifting for the day. Okay. I can handle that.
I start the tasks, grabbing the necessary tools. While I'm in the men's room cleaning, I hear someone go into the ladies' and move around. When I go in there, it's a mess, toilet paper everywhere, wetness on the floor, walls, and bowl. I leave the cleaning equipment there, put up the wet floor sign, and go for a bucket. I can't believe she thought this would phase me. All I have to do is sweep up the paper, then pour water on everything before washing and sanitizing. There's a drain in the floor, for crying out loud.
She has this smug look on her face. I smile and wander off with the bucket and broom, as the smug look changes to confusion. When it doesn't take me any longer to do the ladies' room than to do the men's, and I don't complain about it, she has to look and make sure I actually did the chore, taking my coworker with her to witness, because she's assuming I didn't get it done. While she's doing that, I gather the stuff for lot duty. I hear the coworker say, "...looks like she washed the walls, too." as I'm on my way out the door. My boss glares at me, but what can she say? It's clean and dry.
I go through the whole series of tasks for lot without incident, taking about half an hour to get everything done, because for once, it isn't that bad. Usually, she waits until later in the day to send me out, so I'm used to the chore being messier and heavier.
I come back inside and head for the cooler, but she's not there. I find her in the back room, let her know lot is done, and I'm ready for the next thing. She tells me it can't be done that fast, and she's going to go inspect my work for short cuts. I shrug, and ask if she wants me to wait here or start in the cooler. That I'm not concerned pisses her off, and she tells me I'd better check my attitude, as if I said something different. When that also fails to bother me, she sends me on into the cooler and goes outside.
By the time she joins me in the cooler ten minutes later, I've got two "doors" filled with product and am working on the third. I work much faster when I'm in there by myself. She immediately begins working on whatever she can find that involves reaching for things that are over my head. Everywhere I go, she has to put the step ladder right over me, then climb up and reach for stuff, knocking it down so that I have to catch it to keep it from falling on me. I stop working on what I'm doing, go to the other end of the cooler where there are no shelves, and start putting away bottles of pop. She glares at me, starts telling me how worthless she thinks I am, and how it won't matter if I go someplace new because I'm never going to amount to anything. She says I'll end up in as much trouble at my new job as I am with her, calls me lazy and stupid, and accuses me of having issues with people in authority.
That finally gets to me. I've never had trouble at work like this. In my past, to which she is not privy, I've been far above the position I'm in now, and my success in the past was due to my work ethic and professionalism. She doesn't know anything about me, and has no right to make such criticisms. I grit my teeth and continue stocking, reminding myself that I've only got two more weeks to deal with her. She continues berating me, pushing and pushing, talking about the person she's made up in her head for me to be, instead of the person I know that I am. Then she starts talking about what kind of parents must have raised me.
I can handle all of it, until she starts talking about my mother. I know what she's trying to do. She thinks if she pisses me off enough, I'll hit her, and she'll be able to press charges, once again showing me the false image of me she's built up in her mind. I struggle to not lose my temper, but I've been subjected to a half-hour barrage, and I'm worn down. I finally tell her what I'm thinking. I've been a foreign ambassador for my hometown. I've been a business owner, a teacher, a professional artist, and a model. I've been not only above the position I'm in now, but above the position she's in. With the way she treats her subordinates, and the attitude she has toward other people, she'll never be anything more than the fat fish in a little pond that she is now. And it doesn't matter what she says, because I'm out from under her thumb, and there's nothing she can do about that. There's nothing more she can do to me but stupid, petty little things like this.
She turns beet red and rushes me. I try to put the cooler door between us, but she runs around it, slams into me, and knocks me into the beer cave, landing on top of me. She sits up and starts swinging at my face, calling me obscene names the whole time. I'm trying to dodge and block, but she's getting through anyway. A regular customer sees the fight, and rushes in to pull my boss off of me. I scramble away from her, backing up against a rack of 12-pack bottles. The customer is looking at us like we're from another planet, but at the same time, he's kind of grinning, and I know he's thinking, "Cool! Chick fight!"
She immediately cools off, tells the guy that this isn't what it looks like, and I attacked her. He looks at the shiner that's all ready forming under my eye, blood on my lip, bruised arms, and messed up hair, then at her undamaged face, and unruffled demeanor, and says, "Riiiiiight."
She still pulls out her phone, calls the police, and says she wants to press charges. The customer immediately tells me he'll hang around and act as a witness, and I know that the bulk of the assault is on the store's video of the beer cave, but there's no proof of what happened in the cooler, and I'll probably be arrested on her word before the whole thing gets straightened out. I hear her also tell the dispatcher that I stole a quart of chocolate milk, which is sitting in the back room without a receipt. I paid with my check card, so again, I'll be able to prove she's lying, but it's going to take time to get that proof.
She's going to try to make sure I'm unavailable to start my new job. My heart sinks, and I feel totally defeated, wondering if I'm ever going to win one instead of getting trampled all the time.
I woke today feeling pretty depressed, probably because tomorrow is my first day back after being on vacation for a week. My boss hasn't had me at work to harass every day, and I know what happens when she doesn't get her fix. After her week's vacation in December, she was intolerable for days. That's why I ended up taking these days off. I just needed to get the hell away from her. I've really been dreading going back.
A few minutes ago, I got a phone call that has changed all of that. I just got hired in to the photo center of a bigger chain store. It's going to start out part time, but I've all ready been told I'll be getting more hours soon.
I've actually got a new job. I am out from under her thumb. It's real. And unlike in my nightmares, there's going to be nothing she can do about it. I'll never have to deal with her again.
In the meantime, I'm really glad I'm not dreaming about the scary monster that has been haunting my nightmares for almost a month. Between getting through that, and the good news today, I'm feeling pretty darned good, like a thousand pound weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.
Gotta go - time to start composing my letter. ˆ֊ˆ
The sun will show no mercy
I feel watched, but not immediately threatened.
Slowly and carefully, I take inventory of myself, focusing first on my own spirit and my energy, looking for anything that doesn't belong. I find the marker again, but aside from that, there is nothing, only me. I turn my focus to the physical.
I feel the hard mat under my back, pillow of leaves under my head. The blanket is flat, pulled up to my throat, tucked up under my chin. I'm still half-sitting, half-supine, with my hands flat by my sides. The pain is gone. The numbness is gone, too. There is no discomfort.
In my right hand is a small object. Under the blanket, concealed by my resting form, I turn it over in my hand, testing it with my fingertips. What am I holding? It's cold... round, but not solid, thin on one side, becoming thicker as I feel around it, then thinner again; a ring. I focus attention on it, keeping just a little behind to keep my face expressionless, my breathing normal. I reach inside the smooth, cold metal, and the little stone set into it, to feel the ring's energy.
There is warmth here, familiarity. In my mind's eye, I can see it's form; cut amethyst set in a slender, delicate sliver circle. I remember this ring. A host of emotions slam through me as the memory eclipses everything.
"What's this for?" I ask, holding the ring in the palm of my hand. Instead of answering, she picks it up and draws my fingers apart, sliding the ring on next to my wedding band. It doesn't fit, falls right off, and she gives me the most melodramatic sad face. It tears my heart out, but at the suddenness of it, I have to stifle a giggle.
I pick it up, put it on my middle finger. "Is this ok?" I'm rewarded with a nod. I ask again, "But what is it for?" It's not a gift giving occasion. Is this the commitment she's been wavering on?
She smiles an affectionate, but half-troubled smile, and answers, "For now."
The moment, so sweet when it happened, is a hard blow to my heart now. Awash in a sea of conflicting impulses, I fight just to breathe at all. The craving that hits me brings with it stabbing pangs of regret and a deep, dragging concern. Why the hell did I bring this with me? As I struggle to maintain control, my mind touches on another scene, the moment when I realized that the monster had put on her form to trick me. My heart protests... you had no right. Who would be next? My friends? My Husband?
My son? As the thought crosses my mind, I know that he would. The monster will use anything to twist me into something he can use.
The present pain is joined by a conflagration of heady wrath, and I realize why I need this ring. I seize on the emotion, feeling it try to expand, blaze wild, and erupt. This is mine. My memories, my rage, my struggle. I have fought this battle. I know all of the steps. In a second, I'm holding within myself a hot ball of righteous indignation, not blind rage. The feeling is bright, white-hot, and pure, fueled not by my hatred and fear of him, but the almost territorial devotion I feel for my loved ones. And I still feel watched.
The monster is waiting.
I open my eyes to see him staring at me from across the room. I failed to control my face, my breathing. He isn't stepping forward.
Instead, I feel a blanket of dank, bleak energy rising across me, poking and prodding at my presence. Light pressure grazes above my forehead, lingers and pokes, then falls between my eyes and lingers there and prods, followed by my throat, right above the thyroid. I feel the touch fall to my heart, searching, as the monster's jaw sets, his eyes narrow, and his ears stand straight up. The energy rolls toward my belly, and that indignation rises, bringing with it the impulse to administer a hard slap. I push the impulse forward, feeling my will strike a blow, and the pressure stops.
I sit up, push the blanket off of me, turn to let my feet hit the floor, rest my elbows on my knees, watch, and wait. The more I look at him, the hotter that ball becomes, melting into a pool of liquid outrage, but a calm settles over my consciousness. I've been here before, not with him, not in this way, but I've been here. This is my charge.
We sit like that for several moments; I, relaxing on the edge of the bed, and he, studying me warily. He knows I've cleared myself of his poison, but I haven't expelled the marker. I know that he's trying to size me up, figure out what I'm doing and how capable I might actually be of doing it. He's probably also confused, because I haven't put up a shield.
Finally, I decide there's been enough waiting, and ask why he let me build my strength back up, "...and don't tell me you still 'want through,' because that's bullshit. You could have taken that while I was down. What are you really after?"
He sits down with a slightly surprised, suspicious look on his face. I feel that prodding at my belly again, and I shove it away with another slap. "Mitts off. It's not there. If you want it back, look behind me. Are you gonna answer my question, or not?"
This time, the surprise isn't so slight. He shoots forward, moving almost faster than I can see. One second, he's sitting on the floor a few yards away from me, and the next, he's to my right, reaching behind me, poking at the mat with his fingers. I resist the impulse to move away. I'll not give him any ground, and besides, it could be worse. At least he isn't groping my chakras any more.
Finding the residue of his attitude soaked into the mat, he falls back into that sitting position, bemused, muttering something I don't understand, then says something to me about not realizing I was that sentient.
Finally, he answers my question. He struggles to describe some of the concepts, but gets across to me that it's rare for him to encounter someone who carries his favorite flavor of torment, who isn't either insensitive to anything beyond physical consciousness, entirely self-destructive, or a one-time producer. Most are all three. He can use them for a while, but they get used up. They don't replenish, or they damage themselves to death, and then he can't find them any more.
The callousness of his description pisses me off, my heart going out to his previous victims, but I keep myself calm, tell myself not to lose sight of what I have to do. I have to know what kind of mindset I'm dealing with. I ask, "What has that got to do with me?"
He answers, "You're the rarity."
My stomach turns. I think I know where this is going. The molten pool inside me boils. I keep my face neutral and watch him.
He frowns. "But you're a stubborn (gibberish). I can dominate you enough to take what I need, but not enough to take what I want. Your friends are going to protect you to death again, and I'll have to look for you again." It's almost as if he's thinking out loud instead of talking to me.
He looks up with eyes as red as blood, leans forward, says my Name with striking gravity, and tells me, "This is the covenant I offer. I will see you protected from my kind, and any other. I will educate you beyond the knowledge of your peers, and provide you with material wealth. I will not dominate your will. In return, you agree to completely surrender your torment to me upon demand, and to admit my marker, that others know not to trespass, and you will remember to yield."
For one dimwitted moment, I feel horribly threatened by his posture and the glow in his eyes, especially combined with that gravelly, dragging voice. I want to crawl backward, hide on the other side of the bed from whatever this thing is, that is leaning into my face. Then, it dawns on me. He wants me to agree to be used as livestock, wear his mark of ownership, and periodically feed him the most tremendous challenge of my being, as if everything I've invested in refining myself were worthless. Oh, HELL NO. My control is tenuous at this point. It's ready, and it's going to blow if I don't make a move.
"What do I have to do?" I beat back the fear and disgust, focus on my outrage and my goal. I bring back the image of the moment when she gave me the ring, permit the pain of knowing where it is now to assail my heart, and draw tears. It has to look real. He has to think it's what I want.
"Be still."
The monster pretends to care. I can see through the charade, but he in his eagerness, he isn't even trying to look through mine. He pulls himself to his knees before me, facing me at eye level, arranges his face in a terrible mockery of compassion that could only fool someone who didn't want to know any better. Behind it is a ghastly, slavish voracity that I'm sure he doesn't know I can see. It takes every ounce of my will to maintain the facade when he takes my hands. My inner self cringes away, revolted, horrified, and enraged.
Keeping eye contact, he says, "You don't have to fight any more." What a pro... I am so disgusted. He doesn't know much about human women. I sniff, hiccup, and look as pitiful as I can, holding that eye contact.
"Do you have to use that... thing... on me?" I don't have to act for this part. That aversion is totally real.
"Not if you don't resist." One hand moves up to my face. I have to struggle to stifle the urge to vomit, or to fight, holding that blistering inner fire in check for the right moment. "Be still. I'm not going to hurt you." His face is a mask of false concern, the stark craving barely hidden behind contrived sympathy. The act is so practiced. How many people has he consumed? At that thought, the awareness of being in the grasp of a soulless predator threatens to freeze me. My blood is like ice, but I hold on.
Suddenly, I'm wrapped in a many-armed embrace. His face is beside mine, his body pressed against me. I didn't even see him move. I hear, "Hold on," and my reflex forces me to do just that, as the world falls out from under me. There's a pull on my mind, searching for a connection. Jagged claws and cold fingertips graze my cheek, and he closes the gap. At that moment, I release not the sick, impotent rage he's looking for, not my lifelong onus, but the blinding, searing light I've built up inside. It erupts from me with a deafening shriek. I give it a massive shove, feel it pouring out of me, striking home, expelling the marker and lighting up the monster's insides.
Shock registers in his eyes as he chokes on the barrage of righteous anger. He tries to pull out of the embrace, but I'm not giving up. I grab a hand full of his filthy, matted hair, and hold him up to the assault. My voice is joined by a howl of agony as my attack rages through his system, burning him from the inside out. The red in his eyes fades, replaced by brilliant light. He pounds my back with his fists, kicks and squirms, struggling to escape from my grip. The molten, bubbling anger continues to erupt, flowing through the connection he chose to make. I feel him shaking, and I push again. The howl rises from that low, guttural tone to an animalistic scream, and I can actually feel heat emitting from his chest.
His hands stop beating on me. His arms drop, hanging limply at his sides. I release the hand full of hair, and his head rocks back, exposing his throat. His eyes are totally expressionless. The last of my shriek dies down. The energy stops flowing. I can feel the mat beneath me, but it's soft now, as if it's not completely formed. I lower him to the floor, laying him on his back, meaning to examine him carefully.
Before I can, there's a loud crackling noise, and fissures begin to appear all over his skin. I flee to the doorway, fearing an explosion, but instead, the body collapses onto the floor. I go back for a closer look, but there's nothing recognizable left, just clumps of what appears to be gray dirt on the floor. Even the clothing is gone.
I look down at the dust, as cracks spread across the floor toward the walls, and the bed collapses in on itself. That's all he is now? That's the scary monster? That's nothing. I kick at the dirt on the floor.
"I told you not to touch me."
I turn around and walk out the door...
...and find myself waking.
Picked on as a child, dumped on as an adult, kicked aside, smacked around, a person can only take so much. I always let it go, suck it up, and drive on, until it gets to something that I can't tolerate. Before I learned control, this is where the meltdown would happen, with uncontrolled verbal storms raging indiscriminately out of the furthest place from my true heart, lashing out at whoever happened to be closest, cutting deep, leaving other people's fragile psyches burned, scarred, and broken. Even the people I love.
Especially the people I love.
Nothing in my life has ever hurt me more than looking at the damage I've done to others. I can't even pretend it's not my fault, because I have this clingy, telescopic memory that focuses on things like that, gets a grip on them, and holds them up to me long after my victims have worked past the incident and moved on. I call the effect my overactive guilt gland.
Years of hard work have gone into the battle with my disposition. It took me twenty years just to realize I couldn't get rid of my temper. It isn't going to go away; it's part of what I am. It's not that I'm charged with overcoming the existence of it; I'm responsible for refining and controlling it, so that it doesn't shape who I am. And it took another decade to get a shaky handle on that. It's been nearly a fourth decade since it clicked inside me, the ability to detach myself from the emotional experience, and act outside of it, separating my tone from my timbre, so to speak. Just because it's loud, doesn't mean I have to be obnoxious.
I've been practicing that control the whole time, and I still slip up on occasion, but I've mostly gotten to a level at which I can let the emotion be the motivational fuel that pushes me to solve a conflict, without letting it be the hand that shapes the method I choose to address that. Only a true fool would ask me to give up now.
Slowly and carefully, I take inventory of myself, focusing first on my own spirit and my energy, looking for anything that doesn't belong. I find the marker again, but aside from that, there is nothing, only me. I turn my focus to the physical.
I feel the hard mat under my back, pillow of leaves under my head. The blanket is flat, pulled up to my throat, tucked up under my chin. I'm still half-sitting, half-supine, with my hands flat by my sides. The pain is gone. The numbness is gone, too. There is no discomfort.
In my right hand is a small object. Under the blanket, concealed by my resting form, I turn it over in my hand, testing it with my fingertips. What am I holding? It's cold... round, but not solid, thin on one side, becoming thicker as I feel around it, then thinner again; a ring. I focus attention on it, keeping just a little behind to keep my face expressionless, my breathing normal. I reach inside the smooth, cold metal, and the little stone set into it, to feel the ring's energy.
There is warmth here, familiarity. In my mind's eye, I can see it's form; cut amethyst set in a slender, delicate sliver circle. I remember this ring. A host of emotions slam through me as the memory eclipses everything.
"What's this for?" I ask, holding the ring in the palm of my hand. Instead of answering, she picks it up and draws my fingers apart, sliding the ring on next to my wedding band. It doesn't fit, falls right off, and she gives me the most melodramatic sad face. It tears my heart out, but at the suddenness of it, I have to stifle a giggle.
I pick it up, put it on my middle finger. "Is this ok?" I'm rewarded with a nod. I ask again, "But what is it for?" It's not a gift giving occasion. Is this the commitment she's been wavering on?
She smiles an affectionate, but half-troubled smile, and answers, "For now."
The moment, so sweet when it happened, is a hard blow to my heart now. Awash in a sea of conflicting impulses, I fight just to breathe at all. The craving that hits me brings with it stabbing pangs of regret and a deep, dragging concern. Why the hell did I bring this with me? As I struggle to maintain control, my mind touches on another scene, the moment when I realized that the monster had put on her form to trick me. My heart protests... you had no right. Who would be next? My friends? My Husband?
My son? As the thought crosses my mind, I know that he would. The monster will use anything to twist me into something he can use.
The present pain is joined by a conflagration of heady wrath, and I realize why I need this ring. I seize on the emotion, feeling it try to expand, blaze wild, and erupt. This is mine. My memories, my rage, my struggle. I have fought this battle. I know all of the steps. In a second, I'm holding within myself a hot ball of righteous indignation, not blind rage. The feeling is bright, white-hot, and pure, fueled not by my hatred and fear of him, but the almost territorial devotion I feel for my loved ones. And I still feel watched.
The monster is waiting.
I open my eyes to see him staring at me from across the room. I failed to control my face, my breathing. He isn't stepping forward.
Instead, I feel a blanket of dank, bleak energy rising across me, poking and prodding at my presence. Light pressure grazes above my forehead, lingers and pokes, then falls between my eyes and lingers there and prods, followed by my throat, right above the thyroid. I feel the touch fall to my heart, searching, as the monster's jaw sets, his eyes narrow, and his ears stand straight up. The energy rolls toward my belly, and that indignation rises, bringing with it the impulse to administer a hard slap. I push the impulse forward, feeling my will strike a blow, and the pressure stops.
I sit up, push the blanket off of me, turn to let my feet hit the floor, rest my elbows on my knees, watch, and wait. The more I look at him, the hotter that ball becomes, melting into a pool of liquid outrage, but a calm settles over my consciousness. I've been here before, not with him, not in this way, but I've been here. This is my charge.
We sit like that for several moments; I, relaxing on the edge of the bed, and he, studying me warily. He knows I've cleared myself of his poison, but I haven't expelled the marker. I know that he's trying to size me up, figure out what I'm doing and how capable I might actually be of doing it. He's probably also confused, because I haven't put up a shield.
Finally, I decide there's been enough waiting, and ask why he let me build my strength back up, "...and don't tell me you still 'want through,' because that's bullshit. You could have taken that while I was down. What are you really after?"
He sits down with a slightly surprised, suspicious look on his face. I feel that prodding at my belly again, and I shove it away with another slap. "Mitts off. It's not there. If you want it back, look behind me. Are you gonna answer my question, or not?"
This time, the surprise isn't so slight. He shoots forward, moving almost faster than I can see. One second, he's sitting on the floor a few yards away from me, and the next, he's to my right, reaching behind me, poking at the mat with his fingers. I resist the impulse to move away. I'll not give him any ground, and besides, it could be worse. At least he isn't groping my chakras any more.
Finding the residue of his attitude soaked into the mat, he falls back into that sitting position, bemused, muttering something I don't understand, then says something to me about not realizing I was that sentient.
Finally, he answers my question. He struggles to describe some of the concepts, but gets across to me that it's rare for him to encounter someone who carries his favorite flavor of torment, who isn't either insensitive to anything beyond physical consciousness, entirely self-destructive, or a one-time producer. Most are all three. He can use them for a while, but they get used up. They don't replenish, or they damage themselves to death, and then he can't find them any more.
The callousness of his description pisses me off, my heart going out to his previous victims, but I keep myself calm, tell myself not to lose sight of what I have to do. I have to know what kind of mindset I'm dealing with. I ask, "What has that got to do with me?"
He answers, "You're the rarity."
My stomach turns. I think I know where this is going. The molten pool inside me boils. I keep my face neutral and watch him.
He frowns. "But you're a stubborn (gibberish). I can dominate you enough to take what I need, but not enough to take what I want. Your friends are going to protect you to death again, and I'll have to look for you again." It's almost as if he's thinking out loud instead of talking to me.
He looks up with eyes as red as blood, leans forward, says my Name with striking gravity, and tells me, "This is the covenant I offer. I will see you protected from my kind, and any other. I will educate you beyond the knowledge of your peers, and provide you with material wealth. I will not dominate your will. In return, you agree to completely surrender your torment to me upon demand, and to admit my marker, that others know not to trespass, and you will remember to yield."
For one dimwitted moment, I feel horribly threatened by his posture and the glow in his eyes, especially combined with that gravelly, dragging voice. I want to crawl backward, hide on the other side of the bed from whatever this thing is, that is leaning into my face. Then, it dawns on me. He wants me to agree to be used as livestock, wear his mark of ownership, and periodically feed him the most tremendous challenge of my being, as if everything I've invested in refining myself were worthless. Oh, HELL NO. My control is tenuous at this point. It's ready, and it's going to blow if I don't make a move.
"What do I have to do?" I beat back the fear and disgust, focus on my outrage and my goal. I bring back the image of the moment when she gave me the ring, permit the pain of knowing where it is now to assail my heart, and draw tears. It has to look real. He has to think it's what I want.
"Be still."
The monster pretends to care. I can see through the charade, but he in his eagerness, he isn't even trying to look through mine. He pulls himself to his knees before me, facing me at eye level, arranges his face in a terrible mockery of compassion that could only fool someone who didn't want to know any better. Behind it is a ghastly, slavish voracity that I'm sure he doesn't know I can see. It takes every ounce of my will to maintain the facade when he takes my hands. My inner self cringes away, revolted, horrified, and enraged.
Keeping eye contact, he says, "You don't have to fight any more." What a pro... I am so disgusted. He doesn't know much about human women. I sniff, hiccup, and look as pitiful as I can, holding that eye contact.
"Do you have to use that... thing... on me?" I don't have to act for this part. That aversion is totally real.
"Not if you don't resist." One hand moves up to my face. I have to struggle to stifle the urge to vomit, or to fight, holding that blistering inner fire in check for the right moment. "Be still. I'm not going to hurt you." His face is a mask of false concern, the stark craving barely hidden behind contrived sympathy. The act is so practiced. How many people has he consumed? At that thought, the awareness of being in the grasp of a soulless predator threatens to freeze me. My blood is like ice, but I hold on.
Suddenly, I'm wrapped in a many-armed embrace. His face is beside mine, his body pressed against me. I didn't even see him move. I hear, "Hold on," and my reflex forces me to do just that, as the world falls out from under me. There's a pull on my mind, searching for a connection. Jagged claws and cold fingertips graze my cheek, and he closes the gap. At that moment, I release not the sick, impotent rage he's looking for, not my lifelong onus, but the blinding, searing light I've built up inside. It erupts from me with a deafening shriek. I give it a massive shove, feel it pouring out of me, striking home, expelling the marker and lighting up the monster's insides.
Shock registers in his eyes as he chokes on the barrage of righteous anger. He tries to pull out of the embrace, but I'm not giving up. I grab a hand full of his filthy, matted hair, and hold him up to the assault. My voice is joined by a howl of agony as my attack rages through his system, burning him from the inside out. The red in his eyes fades, replaced by brilliant light. He pounds my back with his fists, kicks and squirms, struggling to escape from my grip. The molten, bubbling anger continues to erupt, flowing through the connection he chose to make. I feel him shaking, and I push again. The howl rises from that low, guttural tone to an animalistic scream, and I can actually feel heat emitting from his chest.
His hands stop beating on me. His arms drop, hanging limply at his sides. I release the hand full of hair, and his head rocks back, exposing his throat. His eyes are totally expressionless. The last of my shriek dies down. The energy stops flowing. I can feel the mat beneath me, but it's soft now, as if it's not completely formed. I lower him to the floor, laying him on his back, meaning to examine him carefully.
Before I can, there's a loud crackling noise, and fissures begin to appear all over his skin. I flee to the doorway, fearing an explosion, but instead, the body collapses onto the floor. I go back for a closer look, but there's nothing recognizable left, just clumps of what appears to be gray dirt on the floor. Even the clothing is gone.
I look down at the dust, as cracks spread across the floor toward the walls, and the bed collapses in on itself. That's all he is now? That's the scary monster? That's nothing. I kick at the dirt on the floor.
"I told you not to touch me."
I turn around and walk out the door...
...and find myself waking.
Picked on as a child, dumped on as an adult, kicked aside, smacked around, a person can only take so much. I always let it go, suck it up, and drive on, until it gets to something that I can't tolerate. Before I learned control, this is where the meltdown would happen, with uncontrolled verbal storms raging indiscriminately out of the furthest place from my true heart, lashing out at whoever happened to be closest, cutting deep, leaving other people's fragile psyches burned, scarred, and broken. Even the people I love.
Especially the people I love.
Nothing in my life has ever hurt me more than looking at the damage I've done to others. I can't even pretend it's not my fault, because I have this clingy, telescopic memory that focuses on things like that, gets a grip on them, and holds them up to me long after my victims have worked past the incident and moved on. I call the effect my overactive guilt gland.
Years of hard work have gone into the battle with my disposition. It took me twenty years just to realize I couldn't get rid of my temper. It isn't going to go away; it's part of what I am. It's not that I'm charged with overcoming the existence of it; I'm responsible for refining and controlling it, so that it doesn't shape who I am. And it took another decade to get a shaky handle on that. It's been nearly a fourth decade since it clicked inside me, the ability to detach myself from the emotional experience, and act outside of it, separating my tone from my timbre, so to speak. Just because it's loud, doesn't mean I have to be obnoxious.
I've been practicing that control the whole time, and I still slip up on occasion, but I've mostly gotten to a level at which I can let the emotion be the motivational fuel that pushes me to solve a conflict, without letting it be the hand that shapes the method I choose to address that. Only a true fool would ask me to give up now.
Trying my hand
I decided I needed an image to give more visual idea of what the monster from my recent nightmares looks like. It didn't come out right, but I'm posting it anyway. Since I've had zero training in drawing techniques (unless public school elementary art class from 30 years ago counts) I warn you, I totally suck at drawing (and you can tell by the hand, which I should have positioned with the fingers curling more around the arm.) I did do the original outline by hand before editing for color in photoshop (during which the program decided to crash about 20 times, which is unusual.) The image isn't going to look like a photograph, it's going to look like a badly drawn cartoon version of the guy. But, it at least gives a visual of the eyes, the boots (which I am pretty sure are steel-toed,) and the (originally) gaunt face. I chose the pose because I had something in that same pose to look at, and because he's actually stood almost like that at one point.
On a side note, no, I didn't draw the wall. It's a small section of Zane Cavern in Ohio, where I shot like 500 photos when I visited. I pasted it in layers and manipulated it to create the two walls shown in the image.
Into the light
Inside of my heart is a tiny, bright little light. It's mine, and it's like a nightlight. I can feel the warmth of it, constructed of the right that is in me, my love for my family, my identity, my conscience. It is reminding me what I need to do. I reach in, and focus on it, holding on tightly.
My head hurts again, but it's not bad. I've felt much, much worse before. This is only a minor thing. I am not going to let it distract me.
I pull the light, stretching it over my whole heart, filling it with what is only me, and my will. I feel warm. I keep stretching and pulling, careful to keep the light close to, but under, the skin on the front. It has to be done just right, or this will be noticed. I stretch it over my ribs, grow it across my belly and my shoulders, down my arms and legs, through my throat and over my face, down into my hands and feet. It's like there's a blanket of light under my skin, warming my body.
Once the light has filled every inch, I begin to expand it down toward my back, letting it push out everything that is not me, not my will. The cold, dank, darkness begins to sink through my body, until I feel it pushing against the skin of my back, all except for in my head. There, I find a marker that must be left for now, or he'll know what I'm doing. I surround the marker with my light, isolate it, and harden the light into a solid covering, so that the marker is in place, but it is not touching me. It will remain, but it cannot poison me.
I push the light out through my back, feeling the nasty, clammy darkness oozing out before it like pus. I focus on rejecting that energy, pushing it down into the mat where it won't be seen. It's not mine. I don't want it. Go away!
Relief floods me as the last drop is pushed out, leaving me no longer longer feeling contaminated, no longer compromised. But now, I'm really, really tired again.
I could open my eyes, try to talk, but instead, I find myself drifting, and then there is nothing.
I had little fragments of dreams throughout the rest of the night, nothing I can really place today. It was like I was drifting in an out from the snippet dreams, into and out of one main dream about resting on a bed made with a hard mat, and a pillow of leaves. The whole time, I felt watched, the way my mother used to watch me when I was sick as a kid with really bad asthma, or the time I got bit by a mosquito and almost died of Encephalitis. I felt kind of tended to, for lack of a better term.
This morning, I feel more rested than yesterday, like I got about half a night's sleep... but now I'm definitely sure that I'm fighting a cold... probably a sinus infection. My son is sick, too, so we're headed off to get checked out. I swear, I have never produced this much snot in my entire life!
The word of the day is: Blaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!
My head hurts again, but it's not bad. I've felt much, much worse before. This is only a minor thing. I am not going to let it distract me.
I pull the light, stretching it over my whole heart, filling it with what is only me, and my will. I feel warm. I keep stretching and pulling, careful to keep the light close to, but under, the skin on the front. It has to be done just right, or this will be noticed. I stretch it over my ribs, grow it across my belly and my shoulders, down my arms and legs, through my throat and over my face, down into my hands and feet. It's like there's a blanket of light under my skin, warming my body.
Once the light has filled every inch, I begin to expand it down toward my back, letting it push out everything that is not me, not my will. The cold, dank, darkness begins to sink through my body, until I feel it pushing against the skin of my back, all except for in my head. There, I find a marker that must be left for now, or he'll know what I'm doing. I surround the marker with my light, isolate it, and harden the light into a solid covering, so that the marker is in place, but it is not touching me. It will remain, but it cannot poison me.
I push the light out through my back, feeling the nasty, clammy darkness oozing out before it like pus. I focus on rejecting that energy, pushing it down into the mat where it won't be seen. It's not mine. I don't want it. Go away!
Relief floods me as the last drop is pushed out, leaving me no longer longer feeling contaminated, no longer compromised. But now, I'm really, really tired again.
I could open my eyes, try to talk, but instead, I find myself drifting, and then there is nothing.
I had little fragments of dreams throughout the rest of the night, nothing I can really place today. It was like I was drifting in an out from the snippet dreams, into and out of one main dream about resting on a bed made with a hard mat, and a pillow of leaves. The whole time, I felt watched, the way my mother used to watch me when I was sick as a kid with really bad asthma, or the time I got bit by a mosquito and almost died of Encephalitis. I felt kind of tended to, for lack of a better term.
This morning, I feel more rested than yesterday, like I got about half a night's sleep... but now I'm definitely sure that I'm fighting a cold... probably a sinus infection. My son is sick, too, so we're headed off to get checked out. I swear, I have never produced this much snot in my entire life!
The word of the day is: Blaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!
Hangover
I'm in a bed, but it isn't mine. It's narrow, barely wide enough for just me, and it's not soft. I'm propped in a half-sitting, half-reclining position. Something less firm than what I'm laying on is under my head, and it feels like I'm covered by a thin blanket. Feeling totally disoriented, I try to figure out where I am, and why, but I can't remember anything prior to this moment, except that I was just dreaming there were ghosts in my apartment, talking to me. I learned how old they are by asking them what year it is, each of them answering with the year in which they died. The rest of the details have all ready faded.
I feel watched. It's a terribly disconcerting sensation. I'm sure there is someone in the room, but I can't feel what kind of presence it is. It's not masked. I'm a bit groggy. I try to pretend to still be asleep, hoping that whoever it is won't notice as I try to get a better sense of the room.
It feels like it's just me, and the watching presence. I feel mentally prodded at, and I'm pretty sure it knows I'm awake. I find my eyes opening, despite my intent.
He's leaning against the wall at the head of the bed, about ten feet away from me. He looks a little different from before. For a second, I can't place it, but then it clicks; he's less scrawny, and less ragged looking. His eyes aren't as dark or as red-rimmed as before. His face isn't quite as gaunt, and his form isn't so wiry. He looks like he's put on a couple of pounds, and maybe gotten some sleep. Except, I know that isn't why. I don't know what happened. My mind reaches back for the memory, and encounters something that feels like a huge wad of cotton. Thinking in that direction floods my heart with chagrin and loss. Why?
I try to turn my head, and a bolt of pain shoots through from the back into both of my eyes. Something laying across my forehead pulls at my skin, and I reach up to feel dampness on a smooth, flat, surface. He says, "It's an herb. Don't try to move around yet."
I can't move? Why can't I move? What the hell is going on? I'm engulfed in a feeling of dread, not like I'm in imminent danger, but like I feel when I've had a blowout at someone and said something I'm going to feel guilty about for the rest of my life. It's an all-to-familiar feeling, but not being able to recall the incident, and knowing it involves him, is totally unnerving.
The fact that we're not on my beach suddenly registers with me. This place doesn't look familiar. The wall he's leaning on is stone... the whole rest of the room seems to be stone. It's not constructed - it seems to be cut out of one piece. There's an arched doorway to another room in the middle of the wall across from me. I can't see into the next room. Where is this?
He steps over to me, crouches down, and reaches for my face. I cringe, startled, and that pain shoots through me again. He looks annoyed. "I told you, don't move. You're injured." He lifts the damp herbs off of my forehead. I see that what he has is a poultice of long, narrow brown leaves. He turns it over and places it back on my head, reaches down beside the bed, and then places his fingers on the poultice. A coolness spreads through it, and I am able to guess that he's just put a few drops of water on it. He holds a spoon up to my mouth, and out of instinct, I open without thinking, and swallow warm, sweet liquid with a distinctly grassy flavor.
He slides his fingers behind my shoulder, and then upward toward my head. I hear the pillow behind my head rustling, and I realize it's not a pillow, but a big bundle of leaves. His fingers brush the spot that is sore, and my head explodes with pain. Darkness closes in on my vision, and I'm instantly nauseous. I'm overtaken by the memory of being dominated and then pinned, the pain in my arms and shoulders, and the feeling of having my head punctured by that thing. I fail to suppress an agonized scream.
I feel his fingers withdraw, and there's cool dampness beneath the wound. It's incredibly soothing, and I feel numbness blooming through the back of my head. My awareness slowly expands from inside my head to the rest of my body, and I find that my breathing is hard, eyes are clamped shut, and I have a death grip on the blanket, holding it bunched up around my throat. The feeling of dread deepens, accompanied by a nagging sense that I can't place. I remember seeing the Doc with a terrible, somber and guilty expression on his face, holding a blade to my neck, but he's not looking at me. I let go of the blanket and feel the skin there. My fingers brush over another of those leaves. The area beneath it feels bruised, and my heart aches. I'm pretty sure I have lost an ally.
I force myself to breathe, bite back tears. This is bad, and I know it. I'm in trouble, and I'm not going to get out of it by wallowing self-pity and remorse. I'm going to have to be able to defend myself, somehow. Opening my eyes, I look to see what the monster is doing.
The monster is hovering over me with a strange expression on his face. His jaw is set, lips drawn together in a tight line, eyes wide, and his brow creased with apparent anxiety. One hand still rests on my shoulder. The other hovers over my body indecisively, as if he's not sure what to do. Is he serious? Does he think this act is going to fool me after everything else he's done. I'm offended. For just a split second, there is the impulse to tell him off, but before I act on it, another thought occurs to me.
I'm injured. I can't get up and fight. I don't know if I can use energy, or if anything I do if I can use it would work against him. I can get angry and blow off some verbal steam, but that would only serve to alert him that he hasn't broken me down. As long as he's feigning concern and treating my injuries, he's not an immediate, active threat in the way that he is when he's overtly aggressive. I have no viable alternative but to play along.
I allow my distrust of him to show, but I don't offer any resistance. Instead, I begin asking questions. I let a little of the fear I'm feeling bleed into my voice. "Where are we? What did you do to me?"
He answers "This is a hidden place. You're safe here."
Oh, yeah. Safe. With a monster 10 inches from my face. Now, that's security. I force my face to relax a little. It takes a huge amount of control to not flinch away from his raspy, growling voice.
"I brought you here to recover."
Okay. Why would he do that? Wouldn't an injury give him an advantage? Why isn't he using my condition to gain access to what I've been protecting? I want to ask, but I'm afraid to. Instead, I ask what I'm recovering from.
He explains that he's never "crossed through" during what he first tries to describe with one of his gibberish words, then pauses, and says "a transference." He seems to think this explains everything, until I shoot him a look of total confusion. Then he clarifies with "I injured you during the escape. It's not as bad as it feels. There is inflammation, but it's not in the nerves, and it's receding. You'll heal, unless you irritate it."
I start to ask him what he means by "crossed through," but before I speak, I catch a fleeting glimpse of the beach again, melting around me, then the nausea returns and I remember falling to my hands and knees, puking butterflies in the woods. We moved. Didn't he say not to move? I think I remember that, but I'm feeling sleepy again.
I try to keep the look of suspicion off of my face, but he notices. "It's all right. I don't expect you to trust me. You have no choice but to cooperate. You have no defenses, and no escape. You know full well that I could crush you with no effort right now."
So much for acting. I try to find any source of energy around me, reaching out to the walls and floor, though it takes a lot more effort to feel outward than normal. The rock feels totally different than before. It's not like real stone. Its energy feels just like that thunderstorm did. I ask if we're still on the beach, and this is just another illusion.
He says, "No."
I try to reach beyond the walls, but it feels like there is no beyond. What the hell is this place?
He says, "You're going to hurt yourself."
I ask why he cares. If he has me broken down, why is he helping me? The sound of my voice seems odd to me, like it's coming from far away, and I'm pretty sure I'm speaking unusually slowly. Why do my eyelids feel so heavy?
He says, "I still want through."
And that's it. The concern is not fake. It's just not compassionate. I'm being preserved because I have something the monster wants. And the Doc was going to kill me, because I have something the monster wants. The monster didn't save me; he hid me. The state I'm in starts to dawn on me.
I am thinking out loud, without realizing it. "If he had killed me, I wouldn't really have died. I just wouldn't be here. I'd be awake. I wasn't in any danger, so why did he look so sad?" Am I slurring my words?
The monster looks amused. "Wait. You think this is all just a dream? That explains a lot."
I glare at him. What kind of a trick is he playing now?
He says, "If you're just dreaming, why would I have to drug you to get you to sleep?"
I start to answer, but my mouth feels like rubber, and I can't keep my eyes open. Somewhere off in the distance, I can hear him saying something else, but I don't really understand the words.
I don't know what to say about either this dream, or the last one (which I blogged in the middle of the night) except that I woke this morning with the most horrendous headache, bad enough that I've taken medicine. I don't usually do that.
Aside from the headache, though, I feel oddly relaxed today. It may be because I've taken time off of work, but I can say I haven't felt like this in years. It feels like something is missing, but for some reason, I don't care.
On a side note, this is the first time I can ever remember that the realization that I'm dreaming has not been immediately followed by a massive panic response.
I feel watched. It's a terribly disconcerting sensation. I'm sure there is someone in the room, but I can't feel what kind of presence it is. It's not masked. I'm a bit groggy. I try to pretend to still be asleep, hoping that whoever it is won't notice as I try to get a better sense of the room.
It feels like it's just me, and the watching presence. I feel mentally prodded at, and I'm pretty sure it knows I'm awake. I find my eyes opening, despite my intent.
He's leaning against the wall at the head of the bed, about ten feet away from me. He looks a little different from before. For a second, I can't place it, but then it clicks; he's less scrawny, and less ragged looking. His eyes aren't as dark or as red-rimmed as before. His face isn't quite as gaunt, and his form isn't so wiry. He looks like he's put on a couple of pounds, and maybe gotten some sleep. Except, I know that isn't why. I don't know what happened. My mind reaches back for the memory, and encounters something that feels like a huge wad of cotton. Thinking in that direction floods my heart with chagrin and loss. Why?
I try to turn my head, and a bolt of pain shoots through from the back into both of my eyes. Something laying across my forehead pulls at my skin, and I reach up to feel dampness on a smooth, flat, surface. He says, "It's an herb. Don't try to move around yet."
I can't move? Why can't I move? What the hell is going on? I'm engulfed in a feeling of dread, not like I'm in imminent danger, but like I feel when I've had a blowout at someone and said something I'm going to feel guilty about for the rest of my life. It's an all-to-familiar feeling, but not being able to recall the incident, and knowing it involves him, is totally unnerving.
The fact that we're not on my beach suddenly registers with me. This place doesn't look familiar. The wall he's leaning on is stone... the whole rest of the room seems to be stone. It's not constructed - it seems to be cut out of one piece. There's an arched doorway to another room in the middle of the wall across from me. I can't see into the next room. Where is this?
He steps over to me, crouches down, and reaches for my face. I cringe, startled, and that pain shoots through me again. He looks annoyed. "I told you, don't move. You're injured." He lifts the damp herbs off of my forehead. I see that what he has is a poultice of long, narrow brown leaves. He turns it over and places it back on my head, reaches down beside the bed, and then places his fingers on the poultice. A coolness spreads through it, and I am able to guess that he's just put a few drops of water on it. He holds a spoon up to my mouth, and out of instinct, I open without thinking, and swallow warm, sweet liquid with a distinctly grassy flavor.
He slides his fingers behind my shoulder, and then upward toward my head. I hear the pillow behind my head rustling, and I realize it's not a pillow, but a big bundle of leaves. His fingers brush the spot that is sore, and my head explodes with pain. Darkness closes in on my vision, and I'm instantly nauseous. I'm overtaken by the memory of being dominated and then pinned, the pain in my arms and shoulders, and the feeling of having my head punctured by that thing. I fail to suppress an agonized scream.
I feel his fingers withdraw, and there's cool dampness beneath the wound. It's incredibly soothing, and I feel numbness blooming through the back of my head. My awareness slowly expands from inside my head to the rest of my body, and I find that my breathing is hard, eyes are clamped shut, and I have a death grip on the blanket, holding it bunched up around my throat. The feeling of dread deepens, accompanied by a nagging sense that I can't place. I remember seeing the Doc with a terrible, somber and guilty expression on his face, holding a blade to my neck, but he's not looking at me. I let go of the blanket and feel the skin there. My fingers brush over another of those leaves. The area beneath it feels bruised, and my heart aches. I'm pretty sure I have lost an ally.
I force myself to breathe, bite back tears. This is bad, and I know it. I'm in trouble, and I'm not going to get out of it by wallowing self-pity and remorse. I'm going to have to be able to defend myself, somehow. Opening my eyes, I look to see what the monster is doing.
The monster is hovering over me with a strange expression on his face. His jaw is set, lips drawn together in a tight line, eyes wide, and his brow creased with apparent anxiety. One hand still rests on my shoulder. The other hovers over my body indecisively, as if he's not sure what to do. Is he serious? Does he think this act is going to fool me after everything else he's done. I'm offended. For just a split second, there is the impulse to tell him off, but before I act on it, another thought occurs to me.
I'm injured. I can't get up and fight. I don't know if I can use energy, or if anything I do if I can use it would work against him. I can get angry and blow off some verbal steam, but that would only serve to alert him that he hasn't broken me down. As long as he's feigning concern and treating my injuries, he's not an immediate, active threat in the way that he is when he's overtly aggressive. I have no viable alternative but to play along.
I allow my distrust of him to show, but I don't offer any resistance. Instead, I begin asking questions. I let a little of the fear I'm feeling bleed into my voice. "Where are we? What did you do to me?"
He answers "This is a hidden place. You're safe here."
Oh, yeah. Safe. With a monster 10 inches from my face. Now, that's security. I force my face to relax a little. It takes a huge amount of control to not flinch away from his raspy, growling voice.
"I brought you here to recover."
Okay. Why would he do that? Wouldn't an injury give him an advantage? Why isn't he using my condition to gain access to what I've been protecting? I want to ask, but I'm afraid to. Instead, I ask what I'm recovering from.
He explains that he's never "crossed through" during what he first tries to describe with one of his gibberish words, then pauses, and says "a transference." He seems to think this explains everything, until I shoot him a look of total confusion. Then he clarifies with "I injured you during the escape. It's not as bad as it feels. There is inflammation, but it's not in the nerves, and it's receding. You'll heal, unless you irritate it."
I start to ask him what he means by "crossed through," but before I speak, I catch a fleeting glimpse of the beach again, melting around me, then the nausea returns and I remember falling to my hands and knees, puking butterflies in the woods. We moved. Didn't he say not to move? I think I remember that, but I'm feeling sleepy again.
I try to keep the look of suspicion off of my face, but he notices. "It's all right. I don't expect you to trust me. You have no choice but to cooperate. You have no defenses, and no escape. You know full well that I could crush you with no effort right now."
So much for acting. I try to find any source of energy around me, reaching out to the walls and floor, though it takes a lot more effort to feel outward than normal. The rock feels totally different than before. It's not like real stone. Its energy feels just like that thunderstorm did. I ask if we're still on the beach, and this is just another illusion.
He says, "No."
I try to reach beyond the walls, but it feels like there is no beyond. What the hell is this place?
He says, "You're going to hurt yourself."
I ask why he cares. If he has me broken down, why is he helping me? The sound of my voice seems odd to me, like it's coming from far away, and I'm pretty sure I'm speaking unusually slowly. Why do my eyelids feel so heavy?
He says, "I still want through."
And that's it. The concern is not fake. It's just not compassionate. I'm being preserved because I have something the monster wants. And the Doc was going to kill me, because I have something the monster wants. The monster didn't save me; he hid me. The state I'm in starts to dawn on me.
I am thinking out loud, without realizing it. "If he had killed me, I wouldn't really have died. I just wouldn't be here. I'd be awake. I wasn't in any danger, so why did he look so sad?" Am I slurring my words?
The monster looks amused. "Wait. You think this is all just a dream? That explains a lot."
I glare at him. What kind of a trick is he playing now?
He says, "If you're just dreaming, why would I have to drug you to get you to sleep?"
I start to answer, but my mouth feels like rubber, and I can't keep my eyes open. Somewhere off in the distance, I can hear him saying something else, but I don't really understand the words.
I don't know what to say about either this dream, or the last one (which I blogged in the middle of the night) except that I woke this morning with the most horrendous headache, bad enough that I've taken medicine. I don't usually do that.
Aside from the headache, though, I feel oddly relaxed today. It may be because I've taken time off of work, but I can say I haven't felt like this in years. It feels like something is missing, but for some reason, I don't care.
On a side note, this is the first time I can ever remember that the realization that I'm dreaming has not been immediately followed by a massive panic response.
All the rage
I'm on my back in the sand. I don't know how long I've been like this.
I remember running. I remember getting hit in the face, and then feeling like I was falling.
I remember him laughing at me.
I can feel that time has passed. I don't know how much. I have to get out of here, now. I roll over onto my hands and knees, get up, and turn around to face the little building.
The sky suddenly darkens to almost black, and something behind me grabs my arms, pulls them back, and twists them up behind me in a painful hammerlock. Clawed hands have a tight grip on my wrists, holding them high against my back, so I can't move anything but my feet. It's not even been a second since I stood.
Something wraps around my shoulders, across my chest. A scream escapes me, as I'm yanked backward this way, through several feet across the sand. I try to pick up a foot and kick, but I don't hit anything except sand. As I'm dragged, his voice sounds in my ear, "You've worn out my patience. I'm done being gentle with you."
I'm pulled up against him, pressure put on my wrists, pain radiating across my shoulders, down into my chest, down my triceps. Quickly, something pushes my hair aside, and at the same time, there's a soft, wet, smacking sound, and a stinging sensation in the back of my neck, right up under the base of my skull. I start to raise my foot to kick again, get less than an inch, and I hear, "I wouldn't."
Something terrible is in that voice that wasn't there before, a gravity that sends ice down my spine. He also sounds like he's talking through teeth gritted around a cigar. I freeze. He continues. "I'm right in next to your brain stem. One slip, and there will be damage. You know what that means. You shouldn't move."
I very slowly rest my foot back in the sand. Does he have something sharp against my skull? Did he stab through the back of my neck with that... thing? My neck feels kind of... pinched... in that spot. I don't know how else to describe it. My heart is pounding, as an icy, sick feeling of dread fills me. I don't want to know, but I ask anyway. "What are you doing to me?"
He growls, "Be still."
My head hurts, and I feel dizzy. I know that something really bad is happening, and I know that it will be worse if I try to fight right now. If he damages the nerves in my brain stem, he could kill me. The thought makes my knees want to buckle, but I can't let myself fall.
I feel light touches on the back of my neck and head, and cold breath against my skin where the stinging sensation is. I feel his other arm across my chest pull tighter, pressing me against him, his hand gripping my shoulder tightly. There is pressure in that pinched, stinging spot. The dizziness is worse, and then suddenly, I'm overpowered by vivid memories, and dark, painful emotions.
It feels like being carried down a rushing stream, unable to control my movement, sometimes going under so that I can't breathe. I watch - almost relive - moments of conflict and pain that I thought I'd reconciled. Bitterness rises in my chest, resentment toward people who aren't even part of my life any more, as the memories move through my consciousness, browsed like the pages of a magazine, until the faces of four women come to the forefront - three I'm angry at, and one I'm angry about - and I am filled with cutting rage. I hear my own voice screaming in fury, obscenities mixed with inarticulate sounds. I try to subdue my anger, but I can feel something pulling from the other side. I try harder, and pain explodes inside my head. His voice sounds distant, "Don't fight me. You'll only make it hurt worse."
I struggle to control my emotions, using every technique I have to rein in my temper. It isn't happening, and the pain is becoming unbearable. I want to kill someone right now. I can feel myself actually leaking animosity. In the distance, I hear thunder, and then closer, his voice. "Very good. Now let it go."
Something cold is against the side of my neck, resting on my shoulder, on top of my hair. A familiar voice says, "Don't move, either of you."
I'm not moving, except my eyes. I look up to see the edge of a blade beside my face, running back beyond my vision. The other end is held by the hand of the Doc. His face is grim. He's not looking at me. I can feel the blade pressing against my skin. I can tell by the sudden stillness that it's against the monster's neck, too. It's cold, and painfully sharp, and in a blink, I understand that if Doc can't get me out of this, he means to use it on both of us. He's not willing to let this monster through the door.
No matter how logical it seems, I can't control how I feel about it. I'm hurt, feeling cast aside by a comrade instead of defended. If he cuts me, will I really die?
Resolve is not all I can see in the Doc's eyes. I see regret. There is also grief. He says, "Let her go."
Deep in my mind, a question rises that didn't originate from me. "Do you want to survive this?"
Of course I want to survive. I'm almost indignant at the thought.
I see a scene play out; the Doc and nurse talking, discussing my situation, deciding I've been compromised, corrupted. On the inside, I hear that raspy voice. "He's going to 'rescue' you, then kill you to keep the door safe from me."
I don't want to believe that. The doc is a protector, isn't he? But he has to protect the door, not me. My heart resists it, but the logic is there; why would he let me live, after I've been corrupted? I look at him. He won't look at me, but I can see on his face that the something is hurting him from the inside. His eyes totally betray what he's going to do. I'm as good as dead.
Something breaks inside, and the anger drains, wholly replaced by terror. Several yards away, lightning strikes the beach. Doc jumps, and I feel the burn of a shallow cut. His eyes turn to me, and I see surprise added to the other emotions. The hand on my shoulder grips harder. In my head, I hear, "Steady. Don't fight him. And for the sake of your life, don't fight me."
And then everything around me blurs, and fades. I hear the Doc shout, feel the blade start to move, and then it's gone. There is nothing but darkness. I can't feel anything. My body feels cold. I can't breathe. Panic rises in my chest, threatening to overcome my thoughts. I'm sure that I'm dead. There was no time, and the doc killed me.
Light floods my vision, and the pinched sensation returns at the base of my skull, then the feeling of my arms twisted behind me. My feet are on the ground, and there's an arm across my chest, a hand gripping my shoulder. We're surrounded by trees. There is no doc.
I feel the proboscis thing slip out of my neck, accompanied by a wet, popping sound. All of the strength leaves my legs, and I start to fall. He lets go of my wrists, and carefully lowers me to the ground, so that I'm on my knees when the nausea hits, very suddenly, and very hard. I lurch forward, retching forcefully, but it's not my lunch that I lose. With each gut-wrenching heave, I spew out hundreds of little black butterflies. Wave after wave of tiny winged insects flies out of my body, spiraling away from me, off into the forest. As I cough out the last ones, spitting the last delicate creature out of my mouth, I realize that the monster who brought me here, from whom I begged for protection, against whom I've fought viciously for days, is holding my hair while I puke. And what's that look on his face? Concern? That can't be right.
I notice that he seems to be getting taller, then realize I'm falling down, but instead, I feel an arm under me, and darkness closes in on my vision again.
I remember running. I remember getting hit in the face, and then feeling like I was falling.
I remember him laughing at me.
I can feel that time has passed. I don't know how much. I have to get out of here, now. I roll over onto my hands and knees, get up, and turn around to face the little building.
The sky suddenly darkens to almost black, and something behind me grabs my arms, pulls them back, and twists them up behind me in a painful hammerlock. Clawed hands have a tight grip on my wrists, holding them high against my back, so I can't move anything but my feet. It's not even been a second since I stood.
Something wraps around my shoulders, across my chest. A scream escapes me, as I'm yanked backward this way, through several feet across the sand. I try to pick up a foot and kick, but I don't hit anything except sand. As I'm dragged, his voice sounds in my ear, "You've worn out my patience. I'm done being gentle with you."
I'm pulled up against him, pressure put on my wrists, pain radiating across my shoulders, down into my chest, down my triceps. Quickly, something pushes my hair aside, and at the same time, there's a soft, wet, smacking sound, and a stinging sensation in the back of my neck, right up under the base of my skull. I start to raise my foot to kick again, get less than an inch, and I hear, "I wouldn't."
Something terrible is in that voice that wasn't there before, a gravity that sends ice down my spine. He also sounds like he's talking through teeth gritted around a cigar. I freeze. He continues. "I'm right in next to your brain stem. One slip, and there will be damage. You know what that means. You shouldn't move."
I very slowly rest my foot back in the sand. Does he have something sharp against my skull? Did he stab through the back of my neck with that... thing? My neck feels kind of... pinched... in that spot. I don't know how else to describe it. My heart is pounding, as an icy, sick feeling of dread fills me. I don't want to know, but I ask anyway. "What are you doing to me?"
He growls, "Be still."
My head hurts, and I feel dizzy. I know that something really bad is happening, and I know that it will be worse if I try to fight right now. If he damages the nerves in my brain stem, he could kill me. The thought makes my knees want to buckle, but I can't let myself fall.
I feel light touches on the back of my neck and head, and cold breath against my skin where the stinging sensation is. I feel his other arm across my chest pull tighter, pressing me against him, his hand gripping my shoulder tightly. There is pressure in that pinched, stinging spot. The dizziness is worse, and then suddenly, I'm overpowered by vivid memories, and dark, painful emotions.
It feels like being carried down a rushing stream, unable to control my movement, sometimes going under so that I can't breathe. I watch - almost relive - moments of conflict and pain that I thought I'd reconciled. Bitterness rises in my chest, resentment toward people who aren't even part of my life any more, as the memories move through my consciousness, browsed like the pages of a magazine, until the faces of four women come to the forefront - three I'm angry at, and one I'm angry about - and I am filled with cutting rage. I hear my own voice screaming in fury, obscenities mixed with inarticulate sounds. I try to subdue my anger, but I can feel something pulling from the other side. I try harder, and pain explodes inside my head. His voice sounds distant, "Don't fight me. You'll only make it hurt worse."
I struggle to control my emotions, using every technique I have to rein in my temper. It isn't happening, and the pain is becoming unbearable. I want to kill someone right now. I can feel myself actually leaking animosity. In the distance, I hear thunder, and then closer, his voice. "Very good. Now let it go."
Something cold is against the side of my neck, resting on my shoulder, on top of my hair. A familiar voice says, "Don't move, either of you."
I'm not moving, except my eyes. I look up to see the edge of a blade beside my face, running back beyond my vision. The other end is held by the hand of the Doc. His face is grim. He's not looking at me. I can feel the blade pressing against my skin. I can tell by the sudden stillness that it's against the monster's neck, too. It's cold, and painfully sharp, and in a blink, I understand that if Doc can't get me out of this, he means to use it on both of us. He's not willing to let this monster through the door.
No matter how logical it seems, I can't control how I feel about it. I'm hurt, feeling cast aside by a comrade instead of defended. If he cuts me, will I really die?
Resolve is not all I can see in the Doc's eyes. I see regret. There is also grief. He says, "Let her go."
Deep in my mind, a question rises that didn't originate from me. "Do you want to survive this?"
Of course I want to survive. I'm almost indignant at the thought.
I see a scene play out; the Doc and nurse talking, discussing my situation, deciding I've been compromised, corrupted. On the inside, I hear that raspy voice. "He's going to 'rescue' you, then kill you to keep the door safe from me."
I don't want to believe that. The doc is a protector, isn't he? But he has to protect the door, not me. My heart resists it, but the logic is there; why would he let me live, after I've been corrupted? I look at him. He won't look at me, but I can see on his face that the something is hurting him from the inside. His eyes totally betray what he's going to do. I'm as good as dead.
Something breaks inside, and the anger drains, wholly replaced by terror. Several yards away, lightning strikes the beach. Doc jumps, and I feel the burn of a shallow cut. His eyes turn to me, and I see surprise added to the other emotions. The hand on my shoulder grips harder. In my head, I hear, "Steady. Don't fight him. And for the sake of your life, don't fight me."
And then everything around me blurs, and fades. I hear the Doc shout, feel the blade start to move, and then it's gone. There is nothing but darkness. I can't feel anything. My body feels cold. I can't breathe. Panic rises in my chest, threatening to overcome my thoughts. I'm sure that I'm dead. There was no time, and the doc killed me.
Light floods my vision, and the pinched sensation returns at the base of my skull, then the feeling of my arms twisted behind me. My feet are on the ground, and there's an arm across my chest, a hand gripping my shoulder. We're surrounded by trees. There is no doc.
I feel the proboscis thing slip out of my neck, accompanied by a wet, popping sound. All of the strength leaves my legs, and I start to fall. He lets go of my wrists, and carefully lowers me to the ground, so that I'm on my knees when the nausea hits, very suddenly, and very hard. I lurch forward, retching forcefully, but it's not my lunch that I lose. With each gut-wrenching heave, I spew out hundreds of little black butterflies. Wave after wave of tiny winged insects flies out of my body, spiraling away from me, off into the forest. As I cough out the last ones, spitting the last delicate creature out of my mouth, I realize that the monster who brought me here, from whom I begged for protection, against whom I've fought viciously for days, is holding my hair while I puke. And what's that look on his face? Concern? That can't be right.
I notice that he seems to be getting taller, then realize I'm falling down, but instead, I feel an arm under me, and darkness closes in on my vision again.
Crystal clear as mud
I'm just getting home from a long work shift, and a hell of a day. Memories of it float through my head as I try to figure out how to explain to my family what happened. They're going to have questions when they see the shiner on my left eye, and my broken glasses.
My boss had attacked me in the cooler at the height of an argument she started. She was pissed off because I helped a co-worker she recently fired get unemployment from the company. All I did was answer a phone call from his case worker, and tell the truth. Problem is, I can't keep my big mouth shut, and I told her that it was her own fault she got caught in another lie. Usually, that gets me restroom cleaning duty, or outside (super-heavy) trash can duty, but this time, she turned around and slugged me twice - once in the jaw, and once in the eye. The attack was totally unexpected. She knocked me clear across the room, into a stack of soda trays.
I've been fired for filing criminal assault charges. My boss was hauled out in cuffs, and about an hour later, the district manager came in and notified me that I was being let go because the company was considering my choice to "carry the conflict beyond the company" (call the cops on my boss for assault) to be insubordination, and therefore a firing offense. I know that the unemployment office is not going to agree with the company, but I also know it's going to take me at least a month to get through that process.
I don't want to tell my family that we just lost half of our household income for a month, and we'll only be able to recover half of that until - or if, in this economy - I can get another job.
And, oh, yeah. I need new glasses, because that punch in the eye broke the left lens in mine.
Because we can afford them, now that I'm not working.
Again.
I am feeling totally defeated, even though I know I'm not.
My husband's car isn't in his spot. Great. I wonder where the guys went. Hopefully they're not buying fast food. We can't afford it now. Then, I remember, they went out of town, and they won't be back until late. I'm home alone for the next several hours. At first I'm disheartened, but then, I figure being alone will at least give me time to get online and file for unemployment right away. I decide that's what I'm going to do.
I step inside, remove my shoes, and shake the sand out of them outside before closing the door.
I'm not alone. My girlfriend is there, sitting on the couch. When I walk in, she starts to say "surprise," but stops at "su" and stares at my face. She half-panics, asks what happened and if I'm ok, and whose ass she needs to kick for me. I still want to know what she's doing in my apartment. Where is her fiance?
Instead of answering me, she runs across the room and touches my face with both hands, looking up at me with a deeply concerned expression on her face. She sees the empty left frame on my glasses, and immediately demands to know if I got glass in my eye. I ask about the fiance again, and she says he's at work, and she just wanted some "us" time. It's been a long time since we've had a girls' day. She tells me to quit stalling, and explain the bruises. She draws me over to the couch, sits me down, and curls up next to me, staring at me with those wide, tender eyes. I tell her everything that happened at work, starting with having been given every crap duty my boss had, to the argument in the cooler, and the assault, to being fired, and being worried about finances for the next month or so until I get through the unemployment process. Before, I was just disheartened, but now I realize the position my boss has put me in, and I'm pissed. By the time I finish talking, I'm so angry, I'm actually shaking.
Her eyes widen throughout the story, her expression becoming more sympathetic. She asks why I didn't hit my boss back, and I remind her how small the woman is. I just can't. Even though she's strong, I'm bigger and stronger. And I don't hit people. I just don't. She knows that.
I'm overwhelmed with frustration, anger, and a sense of complete powerlessness. I don't want to worry my girlfriend, but I can't keep from crying. She shushes me, pulls me into a hug, wraps herself around me and pulls me down on the couch. The cushions feel oddly lumpy and hard, almost gritty, giving me the stray thought that it also needs replaced, but I'm lost in her soft, comforting affection. I let myself sob into her shoulder, frustration spilling over in the form of tears. She whispers in my ear, reminding me that this is not so bad, calling me babe, reminding me that I won't stay down like this; I never do. I'll get unemployment, and then another job, and I'll never have to deal with that bitch again.
She must be really mad. She doesn't usually use that word in seriousness.
Well, she is really protective. Feeling loved, I hug her closer and take deep breaths, trying to stop the tears. I feel soft kisses on my temple, then my cheek, and she gently presses under my chin with her fingers. I turn my face to hers, feel her lips brush against mine, and her teasing tongue...
The wrongness finally registers with me. Her tongue should feel soft and flexible, not solid, and kind of rounded. She never calls me "babe." This isn't the right apartment... we moved from here 4 years ago. There shouldn't have been sand in my shoes, because I was on the pavement the whole time. My husband's car wouldn't make it out of town. And she and I don't snuggle up like this... not any more.
I open my eyes, try to push back so I can see, and feel pressure from appendages wrapped around me, more than two legs, more than two arms. From the lips in front of me protrudes something that looks like a bug's proboscis, a long, tube-like appendage. And the couch isn't just hard and lumpy. It's made of sand. I feel new bruises forming on my temple, then my cheek, and realize that "she" wasn't kissing me. He was tasting me. My spine turns to ice, and my gut to water as I begin to understand the position I'm in. I feel so stupid!
Screaming in horror, I struggle to extract myself from the grip in which I'm held, thrashing and kicking, trying to move my arms. "Her" face wears an expression of disappointment, and then it begins to melt into something else. "Her" brow widen, and her chin narrows. "Her" eyes grow larger, darkening to a deep, impenetrable black, rimmed in darkness and bordered on the bottom by red. "Her" full lips disappear, only to be replaced by that thin little mouth he has. He slurps the proboscis back in like a spaghetti noodle. He says, "I was hoping you wouldn't notice. It's so much easier if you don't struggle. You know how this is going to end. Why keep doing this to yourself?"
My struggles don't seem to bother him at all. He lets the movement happen, not losing his grip on me, my efforts only serving to roll us off of the dune he masked with the couch illusion. Even then, he doesn't seem to lose any momentum. We land in almost the same position. With a determined look, he takes one of his arms out of the embrace, reaches up with the same fingers that seemed so gentle just moments ago, and tries to pry open my mouth. Hard as I fight, he gets one sharp claw between my teeth, and wrenches my jaw down. I try to bite, but his hands are strong. I can see his mouth opening, and that proboscis thing coming back out. Greedy anticipation fills his eyes.
I find a solid chunk of his hair with the hand of the arm is pinned under his body. I get a good grip and yank hard, pulling his head backward. He lets go of my face, and reaches back to try to find my hand. I put my teeth on his throat and clamp down. I'm unable to break the skin, but I get what I want. He forgets about his hair, and uses both of his "up" hands to push on my face, trying to prevent the bite. My other arm freed, I reach into the pocket of the armor-pants, and pull out one of those little crystals. It's no bigger than the size of a sweet pea. I put as much thought into it as I can in short order, howling my intent. I want to hurt him. He was wearing her form. I'm trying to remember a familiar word that sums up what I want this to do to him, but it won't come to me. All I can think of is "toxic."
It will have to do. I reach up and shove the little crystal deep into the end of that tube with my finger, then clamp the end of it shut with my hand, focusing on toxicity. The tube, previously a translucent pink color, turns deep red around the crystal, and his face contorts in an expression of agony.
He releases his grip on me with all four arms, half of his body rising up so he can grab at the hand holding the crystal in. With my other hand loose, I grab the tube between my fingers and the crystal, squeeze that, and push back toward his mouth. He's clawing at my clamping hand, trying to pull it off. With his two other hands, he's gripping my shoulders, trying to push me away. His eyes are wide with dismay and... is that fear?
There's a burning sensation in my fingertips, and I realize I'm running them over little tiny, spiky teeth, but I don't stop until I get almost to his lips. There, I run across something that feels almost like a cartilage joint. The thickness and texture changes there, and I can't squeeze that part shut. He makes a choking, gagging noise, and I see the crystal sucked in past his thin lips.
He shoves me away, rolling back in the sand, his body curling up, head thrown back, hands clawing at his throat. I see that behind the second pair of legs is what looks like the back-end of a wasp again, only the stinger isn't sticking out. That deep, raspy voice of his is raised in a half-yell, half growl. He thrashes, around, alternately roaring at me, coughing and sputtering, retching up some kind of black ooze, but he can't seem to spit out that crystal.
The last growl comes out almost like a whine, and he curls up in a ball in the sand, hands over his head. I can see the second pair of arms melting into his body. The legs are going, too, and so is the stinger. Slowly, he returns to the form I see the most frequently, tucked into an almost fetal position, knees up to his elbows, hands grasping his own hair.
Is he dead? Dying? Injured? I'm afraid to approach. I crouch in the sand, ready to try to run if he moves. I watch. He just lays there, uneven breathing the only movement I can see.
I stay where I am for several moments. Nothing changes, except that his breathing becomes more shallow, and then I can't tell if he's breathing at all. I watch for what seems like an eternity. He's totally still. My heart is pounding. I don't know what I should do.
Finally, I get up the guts to approach. He doesn't respond to the sound of my footsteps.
I touch his arm. I think I might hear something, but I'm not sure.
I push on him, and he rolls backward. His hands fall, and I can see that his eyes are wide open, showing not just the red on the bottom, but also the red on the top. And his pupils are totally dilated. I can just barely see a border of iris around them. He's wearing an expression of dazed amazement. His eyes turn to me, but they don't focus. Then, he giggles, madly, points at me, says "Bad," and mumbles four syllables of complete gibberish. "You are smarter than" and then he spouts more gibberish. The laughter returns. It's just about the creepiest sounding laugh I've ever heard. I back away, but he doesn't pursue. He sits up and wipes his face with his hands, his movements totally uncoordinated.
Oh, my God. He's high. I didn't shove enough of the burnt shield into him. He's not poisoned enough. I didn't kill him. He's only stoned out of his mind.
I have more. I've got to get it into him while he's incapacitated like this. Maybe I can overdose him. I grab another one out of my pocket, this one slightly larger.
Approaching him carefully, I try to figure out how I'm going to open his mouth and get it into that proboscis thing. I hold up the crystal, and he crosses his eyes trying to look at it. Then, he turns his gaze to me, reaches up with lightning quickness, and grabs my wrist with a clumsy, too-hard grip. He yanks me forward so that I'm inches from his face again, and says, as if correcting a wayward toddler, "Noooooo, now you cut that out." I try to wrestle my arm out of his grip. He leans forward on me, knocking me off balance, and I end up on my butt in the sand. He takes the crystal from my hand and pops it into his mouth. I hear him crunching it between his teeth. He says, "You should stop trying to kill me. It's such a waste of time." For a moment, he looks totally serious. Then he bursts into another laughing fit. This feels more dangerous than before, probably because he's less predictable. And he just ate my secret weapon like candy.
I back away, but he doesn't come after me. He's looking at his fingers, completely fascinated. I run back along the beach, toward the little building I'm not supposed to enter. I have to get out of here. Maybe she knows how.
As before, I don't seem to be getting any closer to it for quite some time. Then, suddenly, I'm right in front of it. Even though I'm running in sand, I'm moving way too fast to stop, and I smack right into the wall. I feel the impact of the wood against my face.
And suddenly, I'm awake, lying on the floor, face down. In my haste to run away from him, I must have rolled over in bed and fallen out. Now, I've got a sinus headache that won't go away, probably from breathing the dust in the carpet.
My girlfriend. I don't even know how to go there. "It's complicated" isn't good enough to cover the bases. We're together, but we're not. She's engaged. I'm married. Both of them are aware of us, and both have agreed that we shouldn't be kept apart, and neither of them minds. Both find the concept sexy. So, we're like a family, but we're not. They live across town. I don't do anything with him. She doesn't do anything with my husband. And I'm afraid to do too much with her, because I don't want to step on her fiance's toes. He's my friend.
But, I'm also afraid to be with anyone else. She and I have agreed to an open relationship, but I've got a pretty good sense that she gets jealous of other women who attract my attention. My husband and I have the same - open, but really not. He's ok with other women, but I'm pretty sure he's not as ok as he wants to believe he is with other men, and I'm really not interested in testing that theory.
I've pretty much made my peace with the situation, as long as no one stirs the waters, so to speak. This dream churned them up like a blender. Today is going to be a rough day. Tomorrow, I'll see her at a friend's house, where we hang out for a few hours every other weekend. That's going to be even harder.
Right now, I just want to curl up in a blanket and pretend I don't exist. Yep, a deal with something that wants to take my feelings away and eat them... is very tempting.
My boss had attacked me in the cooler at the height of an argument she started. She was pissed off because I helped a co-worker she recently fired get unemployment from the company. All I did was answer a phone call from his case worker, and tell the truth. Problem is, I can't keep my big mouth shut, and I told her that it was her own fault she got caught in another lie. Usually, that gets me restroom cleaning duty, or outside (super-heavy) trash can duty, but this time, she turned around and slugged me twice - once in the jaw, and once in the eye. The attack was totally unexpected. She knocked me clear across the room, into a stack of soda trays.
I've been fired for filing criminal assault charges. My boss was hauled out in cuffs, and about an hour later, the district manager came in and notified me that I was being let go because the company was considering my choice to "carry the conflict beyond the company" (call the cops on my boss for assault) to be insubordination, and therefore a firing offense. I know that the unemployment office is not going to agree with the company, but I also know it's going to take me at least a month to get through that process.
I don't want to tell my family that we just lost half of our household income for a month, and we'll only be able to recover half of that until - or if, in this economy - I can get another job.
And, oh, yeah. I need new glasses, because that punch in the eye broke the left lens in mine.
Because we can afford them, now that I'm not working.
Again.
I am feeling totally defeated, even though I know I'm not.
My husband's car isn't in his spot. Great. I wonder where the guys went. Hopefully they're not buying fast food. We can't afford it now. Then, I remember, they went out of town, and they won't be back until late. I'm home alone for the next several hours. At first I'm disheartened, but then, I figure being alone will at least give me time to get online and file for unemployment right away. I decide that's what I'm going to do.
I step inside, remove my shoes, and shake the sand out of them outside before closing the door.
I'm not alone. My girlfriend is there, sitting on the couch. When I walk in, she starts to say "surprise," but stops at "su" and stares at my face. She half-panics, asks what happened and if I'm ok, and whose ass she needs to kick for me. I still want to know what she's doing in my apartment. Where is her fiance?
Instead of answering me, she runs across the room and touches my face with both hands, looking up at me with a deeply concerned expression on her face. She sees the empty left frame on my glasses, and immediately demands to know if I got glass in my eye. I ask about the fiance again, and she says he's at work, and she just wanted some "us" time. It's been a long time since we've had a girls' day. She tells me to quit stalling, and explain the bruises. She draws me over to the couch, sits me down, and curls up next to me, staring at me with those wide, tender eyes. I tell her everything that happened at work, starting with having been given every crap duty my boss had, to the argument in the cooler, and the assault, to being fired, and being worried about finances for the next month or so until I get through the unemployment process. Before, I was just disheartened, but now I realize the position my boss has put me in, and I'm pissed. By the time I finish talking, I'm so angry, I'm actually shaking.
Her eyes widen throughout the story, her expression becoming more sympathetic. She asks why I didn't hit my boss back, and I remind her how small the woman is. I just can't. Even though she's strong, I'm bigger and stronger. And I don't hit people. I just don't. She knows that.
I'm overwhelmed with frustration, anger, and a sense of complete powerlessness. I don't want to worry my girlfriend, but I can't keep from crying. She shushes me, pulls me into a hug, wraps herself around me and pulls me down on the couch. The cushions feel oddly lumpy and hard, almost gritty, giving me the stray thought that it also needs replaced, but I'm lost in her soft, comforting affection. I let myself sob into her shoulder, frustration spilling over in the form of tears. She whispers in my ear, reminding me that this is not so bad, calling me babe, reminding me that I won't stay down like this; I never do. I'll get unemployment, and then another job, and I'll never have to deal with that bitch again.
She must be really mad. She doesn't usually use that word in seriousness.
Well, she is really protective. Feeling loved, I hug her closer and take deep breaths, trying to stop the tears. I feel soft kisses on my temple, then my cheek, and she gently presses under my chin with her fingers. I turn my face to hers, feel her lips brush against mine, and her teasing tongue...
The wrongness finally registers with me. Her tongue should feel soft and flexible, not solid, and kind of rounded. She never calls me "babe." This isn't the right apartment... we moved from here 4 years ago. There shouldn't have been sand in my shoes, because I was on the pavement the whole time. My husband's car wouldn't make it out of town. And she and I don't snuggle up like this... not any more.
I open my eyes, try to push back so I can see, and feel pressure from appendages wrapped around me, more than two legs, more than two arms. From the lips in front of me protrudes something that looks like a bug's proboscis, a long, tube-like appendage. And the couch isn't just hard and lumpy. It's made of sand. I feel new bruises forming on my temple, then my cheek, and realize that "she" wasn't kissing me. He was tasting me. My spine turns to ice, and my gut to water as I begin to understand the position I'm in. I feel so stupid!
Screaming in horror, I struggle to extract myself from the grip in which I'm held, thrashing and kicking, trying to move my arms. "Her" face wears an expression of disappointment, and then it begins to melt into something else. "Her" brow widen, and her chin narrows. "Her" eyes grow larger, darkening to a deep, impenetrable black, rimmed in darkness and bordered on the bottom by red. "Her" full lips disappear, only to be replaced by that thin little mouth he has. He slurps the proboscis back in like a spaghetti noodle. He says, "I was hoping you wouldn't notice. It's so much easier if you don't struggle. You know how this is going to end. Why keep doing this to yourself?"
My struggles don't seem to bother him at all. He lets the movement happen, not losing his grip on me, my efforts only serving to roll us off of the dune he masked with the couch illusion. Even then, he doesn't seem to lose any momentum. We land in almost the same position. With a determined look, he takes one of his arms out of the embrace, reaches up with the same fingers that seemed so gentle just moments ago, and tries to pry open my mouth. Hard as I fight, he gets one sharp claw between my teeth, and wrenches my jaw down. I try to bite, but his hands are strong. I can see his mouth opening, and that proboscis thing coming back out. Greedy anticipation fills his eyes.
I find a solid chunk of his hair with the hand of the arm is pinned under his body. I get a good grip and yank hard, pulling his head backward. He lets go of my face, and reaches back to try to find my hand. I put my teeth on his throat and clamp down. I'm unable to break the skin, but I get what I want. He forgets about his hair, and uses both of his "up" hands to push on my face, trying to prevent the bite. My other arm freed, I reach into the pocket of the armor-pants, and pull out one of those little crystals. It's no bigger than the size of a sweet pea. I put as much thought into it as I can in short order, howling my intent. I want to hurt him. He was wearing her form. I'm trying to remember a familiar word that sums up what I want this to do to him, but it won't come to me. All I can think of is "toxic."
It will have to do. I reach up and shove the little crystal deep into the end of that tube with my finger, then clamp the end of it shut with my hand, focusing on toxicity. The tube, previously a translucent pink color, turns deep red around the crystal, and his face contorts in an expression of agony.
He releases his grip on me with all four arms, half of his body rising up so he can grab at the hand holding the crystal in. With my other hand loose, I grab the tube between my fingers and the crystal, squeeze that, and push back toward his mouth. He's clawing at my clamping hand, trying to pull it off. With his two other hands, he's gripping my shoulders, trying to push me away. His eyes are wide with dismay and... is that fear?
There's a burning sensation in my fingertips, and I realize I'm running them over little tiny, spiky teeth, but I don't stop until I get almost to his lips. There, I run across something that feels almost like a cartilage joint. The thickness and texture changes there, and I can't squeeze that part shut. He makes a choking, gagging noise, and I see the crystal sucked in past his thin lips.
He shoves me away, rolling back in the sand, his body curling up, head thrown back, hands clawing at his throat. I see that behind the second pair of legs is what looks like the back-end of a wasp again, only the stinger isn't sticking out. That deep, raspy voice of his is raised in a half-yell, half growl. He thrashes, around, alternately roaring at me, coughing and sputtering, retching up some kind of black ooze, but he can't seem to spit out that crystal.
The last growl comes out almost like a whine, and he curls up in a ball in the sand, hands over his head. I can see the second pair of arms melting into his body. The legs are going, too, and so is the stinger. Slowly, he returns to the form I see the most frequently, tucked into an almost fetal position, knees up to his elbows, hands grasping his own hair.
Is he dead? Dying? Injured? I'm afraid to approach. I crouch in the sand, ready to try to run if he moves. I watch. He just lays there, uneven breathing the only movement I can see.
I stay where I am for several moments. Nothing changes, except that his breathing becomes more shallow, and then I can't tell if he's breathing at all. I watch for what seems like an eternity. He's totally still. My heart is pounding. I don't know what I should do.
Finally, I get up the guts to approach. He doesn't respond to the sound of my footsteps.
I touch his arm. I think I might hear something, but I'm not sure.
I push on him, and he rolls backward. His hands fall, and I can see that his eyes are wide open, showing not just the red on the bottom, but also the red on the top. And his pupils are totally dilated. I can just barely see a border of iris around them. He's wearing an expression of dazed amazement. His eyes turn to me, but they don't focus. Then, he giggles, madly, points at me, says "Bad," and mumbles four syllables of complete gibberish. "You are smarter than" and then he spouts more gibberish. The laughter returns. It's just about the creepiest sounding laugh I've ever heard. I back away, but he doesn't pursue. He sits up and wipes his face with his hands, his movements totally uncoordinated.
Oh, my God. He's high. I didn't shove enough of the burnt shield into him. He's not poisoned enough. I didn't kill him. He's only stoned out of his mind.
I have more. I've got to get it into him while he's incapacitated like this. Maybe I can overdose him. I grab another one out of my pocket, this one slightly larger.
Approaching him carefully, I try to figure out how I'm going to open his mouth and get it into that proboscis thing. I hold up the crystal, and he crosses his eyes trying to look at it. Then, he turns his gaze to me, reaches up with lightning quickness, and grabs my wrist with a clumsy, too-hard grip. He yanks me forward so that I'm inches from his face again, and says, as if correcting a wayward toddler, "Noooooo, now you cut that out." I try to wrestle my arm out of his grip. He leans forward on me, knocking me off balance, and I end up on my butt in the sand. He takes the crystal from my hand and pops it into his mouth. I hear him crunching it between his teeth. He says, "You should stop trying to kill me. It's such a waste of time." For a moment, he looks totally serious. Then he bursts into another laughing fit. This feels more dangerous than before, probably because he's less predictable. And he just ate my secret weapon like candy.
I back away, but he doesn't come after me. He's looking at his fingers, completely fascinated. I run back along the beach, toward the little building I'm not supposed to enter. I have to get out of here. Maybe she knows how.
As before, I don't seem to be getting any closer to it for quite some time. Then, suddenly, I'm right in front of it. Even though I'm running in sand, I'm moving way too fast to stop, and I smack right into the wall. I feel the impact of the wood against my face.
And suddenly, I'm awake, lying on the floor, face down. In my haste to run away from him, I must have rolled over in bed and fallen out. Now, I've got a sinus headache that won't go away, probably from breathing the dust in the carpet.
My girlfriend. I don't even know how to go there. "It's complicated" isn't good enough to cover the bases. We're together, but we're not. She's engaged. I'm married. Both of them are aware of us, and both have agreed that we shouldn't be kept apart, and neither of them minds. Both find the concept sexy. So, we're like a family, but we're not. They live across town. I don't do anything with him. She doesn't do anything with my husband. And I'm afraid to do too much with her, because I don't want to step on her fiance's toes. He's my friend.
But, I'm also afraid to be with anyone else. She and I have agreed to an open relationship, but I've got a pretty good sense that she gets jealous of other women who attract my attention. My husband and I have the same - open, but really not. He's ok with other women, but I'm pretty sure he's not as ok as he wants to believe he is with other men, and I'm really not interested in testing that theory.
I've pretty much made my peace with the situation, as long as no one stirs the waters, so to speak. This dream churned them up like a blender. Today is going to be a rough day. Tomorrow, I'll see her at a friend's house, where we hang out for a few hours every other weekend. That's going to be even harder.
Right now, I just want to curl up in a blanket and pretend I don't exist. Yep, a deal with something that wants to take my feelings away and eat them... is very tempting.
Feed me, Seymour.
I didn't want to be here. I worked really hard to not come here. Why am I on the beach again?
I look up, and see that endless blue sky. No sun.
This is bad. I can't have used it up. It must be hidden.
I think about trying to change things, make a shelter or a shield, anything I can, but I get the feeling that doing so would draw attention to me. I have a vague memory of something with salt water and herbs, candles, and determination.
I was hoping that would help, but I feel almost like I've got food poisoning, and maybe a fever. I feel hot and cold at the same time, and there's this watery feeling in my gut.
I need to get out of here, but the beach is kind of endless. Maybe the water...
I hear that low, caustic voice behind me. "Are you sure?"
I'm not. I know what I usually find in deep water. This is why I hate coming here. And as if to punctuate the thought, I can see a dorsal fin sticking out of the water a few yards off shore. An icy chill runs through my chest, and my first impulse is to back away from the water, as if the shark can come out of there and get me on the beach, but I don't move. If I let him see me reacting, I'm sure he'll use that.
I decide that since I'm found, there's no point in hiding my energy. I pull from the sea and the sand, and make a shield around myself, keeping it close. In the split second it takes me to pull and form that, I hear movement in the sand. I charge my shield.
I hear a short, rough chuckle right behind me. His voice is repulsive. It makes my skin crawl, but I force myself to not respond. I close my eyes and picture a huge, no trespassing sign. KEEP OUT.
Something is touching my shield. I can feel it, just behind my right shoulder, something small, sliding along the bubble, moving across the surface. The feeling is bizarre, like having a hair inside my shirt. I want to fidget, scratch, grab at it and pull it off of me, but I also feel like that would be a form of surrender, like giving him a point - he'd be acknowledged. I take a deep breath, let it out slow, and push against the pressure of the touch with that same sense of KEEP OUT.
The touch moves around the side of the shield, past my arm, across the front of the shoulder. That stray hair feeling moves up the side of my neck, and an involuntary shiver threatens to break through. I feel myself gritting my teeth, tensing up every muscle in my body. I refuse to give him the satisfaction. Another deep breath, and I push again. That touch is still there, moving up past my jaw, across my cheek, my temple, my forehead, coming to rest right between my eyes, and then a slow tapping starts.
. . . tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .
Now, I'm ready to crawl out of my skin. I have to see what he's doing. I open my eyes to see a clawed finger tapping on the outside of the "glass."
He's repeatedly touching the outside of my charged, spiked shield, and nothing is happening to him.
He stares at me from behind his hand, and says, "Greetings."
My heart thumps hard, and there is a crushing pain in my chest. It's hard to breathe. I shouldn't have opened my eyes. It's immediately apparent that he can see right through my bravado. I'm not fooling anyone.
I stare back at him. He stops tapping on my shield, and lets his finger hang in the air in front of my face. The urge to get as far away from him as possible is now competing with the urge to reach out and break his finger. He sees me looking, pulls his hand back a bit. His head tilts slightly to the side, his expression thoughtful, then he reaches right through the shield, and pokes that claw at the area between my eyes. The shield melts away like butter, falling to the ground around my feet and soaking into the sand. It feels like a set of clothing falling off, and now I feel totally exposed.
I smack his arm away from my face with one hand, and shove the heel of the other against his chest to push him away. He shakes his head at me and says, "Whatever," sounding petulant.
I wait a moment to see what he's going to do. He seems to be waiting to see what I'm going to do.
I remind him, "When I asked you where "through" would take you, you just dodged my question. Are you going to answer it?"
He dodges again. "Are all of your people laced throughout with that lovely shade of rage and resentment, or is it just you?"
I start to open my mouth to answer that no, I'm not normal, but I have a bad feeling about sharing any information with him about "my" people. Instead, I close my mouth, and cross my arms, and look as stubborn as I can.
He doesn't seem intimidated by it. Instead, he moves right up to me, so quickly my eyes can't keep track, and says, "It's an affliction, isn't it? It touches everything about you. I could taste it, you know? Is it rare, or are there many of you?"
I don't answer him. I'm thinking about what he's asking me. Everything about this feels wrong. I don't like his sudden interest in my psychological make-up. I tell him to back off.
He doesn't.
He says, "You don't hide things very well. You don't have to answer me. I can see it on your face. I'm right about you. It is an affliction. You hate it, don't you? Don't you fear being consumed by it? Wouldn't you like to get rid of it?"
What is he asking me? Everyone gets angry. I have things to be angry about. I have lots of them, and I'm only actually mad about half of those. Of course there are things I resent. People have been abusive to me, lied to me, taken advantage of me, and stolen from me. Wouldn't it be abnormal and unnatural to have to work through some resentment?
I remind myself what I've been told about this guy. He's made of lies, and deception. He feeds on the things we poison ourselves with. If I let him, he'll eat me alive, and he'll probably hurt everyone I love and protect in the process. I remind myself what he tried to do to my Lady. I harden my resolve. It's the only shield I have left. I turn my face away from him.
"No. You can't have it. It's mine."
I feel his chilled breath on my neck, and he very quietly chides, "You're a bad liar." Then, he says my Name. Not the one my parents gave me, not any of the pet names my friends call me, not even the one I use in the circle; my Name name, the one from before, that is mine regardless of what others call me.
I turn my face back to look at him. His eyes are inches away from mine. Seeing him that close makes my stomach lurch. A chill washes down my back, and into my core. I can't keep myself from shaking.
He asks, "Why hold on to such a burden? Let it go. I want it, and you don't. It isn't going to do you any harm to give it up. You'd be better off without it."
My gut hurts. This thing standing before me wants to feed on me like a leech. The sad thing is, this is so tempting... to be able to get rid of something I have to fight tooth and nail to control, to not feel pissed off all of the time - I could happily get rid of my temper. He's right. I don't want it. I do hate it. It is a burden. But I don't trust him. He's a thief, stealing emotions and twisting souls. I'm angry over what he's done. This actually makes me furious. I ask, "Is this how you do it? Is this how you hunt your victims, talking them into making some kind of deal with you? Did you trick my Lady into some kind of bargain?"
He utters a short, barking laugh. "I don't have to bargain with prey. She didn't even know I was there until it was too late. Most never do."
I ask, "Why are you trying to bargain with me?"
Instead of answering, he looks at me like I'm trying to pull one over on him. Inside, I feel like I'm prying at something, or trying to get through a maze. There's something I'm not taking into account. Even that look seems familiar, like I've seen him do it before. I feel horribly confused, and at the same time, I've got that tip-of-the-tongue, memory not found kind of frustration building up.
He says, "You all ready know the answer to that question. You just don't want to confront it."
I don't want to believe him, but that feels true. That doesn't make me trust him any more than before, or rather mistrust him any less. It just gives me yet another thing to try to figure out.
He continues, "...so close to the surface I can smell it on you." I feel a light pressure on my throat, moving down toward my heart. He's looking down. I look, and see his finger tracing along the center of my armor. I'm overwhelmed with revulsion, disgust, and outrage. Pushed over the edge, and without even thinking about it, I haul off and slug him right in the nose, feeling the bone crack against my knuckles, knocking him back into the water, yelling at him.
"DON'T. YOU. TOUCH. ME."
He sits in the water, nose bleeding, wide-eyed with surprise. He reaches up and touches the blood, licks his fingers, and says, "See, you're even angry when you're frightened."
Still shaking, heart pounding, I turn my back on him and trudge back up the beach. Part of me is terrified to do this - never wanting to turn my back on an enemy - but I need to get away from him, and from this spot. I need this discussion to be over, before he starts to make sense to me. I don't want to be an angry person, but what he's offering usually comes with a terrible price, or at least I expect there to be one.
It felt like I walked for a long time after that. Nothing else happened, but I also never got further from the water, or closer to the fence. I feel kind of stuck, though I think if I tried hard enough, I could change the scene. I'd still be in the dream state, just with a different image. And I guess I'm too old to stay up all night, because that obviously didn't work, either.
I look up, and see that endless blue sky. No sun.
This is bad. I can't have used it up. It must be hidden.
I think about trying to change things, make a shelter or a shield, anything I can, but I get the feeling that doing so would draw attention to me. I have a vague memory of something with salt water and herbs, candles, and determination.
I was hoping that would help, but I feel almost like I've got food poisoning, and maybe a fever. I feel hot and cold at the same time, and there's this watery feeling in my gut.
I need to get out of here, but the beach is kind of endless. Maybe the water...
I hear that low, caustic voice behind me. "Are you sure?"
I'm not. I know what I usually find in deep water. This is why I hate coming here. And as if to punctuate the thought, I can see a dorsal fin sticking out of the water a few yards off shore. An icy chill runs through my chest, and my first impulse is to back away from the water, as if the shark can come out of there and get me on the beach, but I don't move. If I let him see me reacting, I'm sure he'll use that.
I decide that since I'm found, there's no point in hiding my energy. I pull from the sea and the sand, and make a shield around myself, keeping it close. In the split second it takes me to pull and form that, I hear movement in the sand. I charge my shield.
I hear a short, rough chuckle right behind me. His voice is repulsive. It makes my skin crawl, but I force myself to not respond. I close my eyes and picture a huge, no trespassing sign. KEEP OUT.
Something is touching my shield. I can feel it, just behind my right shoulder, something small, sliding along the bubble, moving across the surface. The feeling is bizarre, like having a hair inside my shirt. I want to fidget, scratch, grab at it and pull it off of me, but I also feel like that would be a form of surrender, like giving him a point - he'd be acknowledged. I take a deep breath, let it out slow, and push against the pressure of the touch with that same sense of KEEP OUT.
The touch moves around the side of the shield, past my arm, across the front of the shoulder. That stray hair feeling moves up the side of my neck, and an involuntary shiver threatens to break through. I feel myself gritting my teeth, tensing up every muscle in my body. I refuse to give him the satisfaction. Another deep breath, and I push again. That touch is still there, moving up past my jaw, across my cheek, my temple, my forehead, coming to rest right between my eyes, and then a slow tapping starts.
. . . tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .
Now, I'm ready to crawl out of my skin. I have to see what he's doing. I open my eyes to see a clawed finger tapping on the outside of the "glass."
He's repeatedly touching the outside of my charged, spiked shield, and nothing is happening to him.
He stares at me from behind his hand, and says, "Greetings."
My heart thumps hard, and there is a crushing pain in my chest. It's hard to breathe. I shouldn't have opened my eyes. It's immediately apparent that he can see right through my bravado. I'm not fooling anyone.
I stare back at him. He stops tapping on my shield, and lets his finger hang in the air in front of my face. The urge to get as far away from him as possible is now competing with the urge to reach out and break his finger. He sees me looking, pulls his hand back a bit. His head tilts slightly to the side, his expression thoughtful, then he reaches right through the shield, and pokes that claw at the area between my eyes. The shield melts away like butter, falling to the ground around my feet and soaking into the sand. It feels like a set of clothing falling off, and now I feel totally exposed.
I smack his arm away from my face with one hand, and shove the heel of the other against his chest to push him away. He shakes his head at me and says, "Whatever," sounding petulant.
I wait a moment to see what he's going to do. He seems to be waiting to see what I'm going to do.
I remind him, "When I asked you where "through" would take you, you just dodged my question. Are you going to answer it?"
He dodges again. "Are all of your people laced throughout with that lovely shade of rage and resentment, or is it just you?"
I start to open my mouth to answer that no, I'm not normal, but I have a bad feeling about sharing any information with him about "my" people. Instead, I close my mouth, and cross my arms, and look as stubborn as I can.
He doesn't seem intimidated by it. Instead, he moves right up to me, so quickly my eyes can't keep track, and says, "It's an affliction, isn't it? It touches everything about you. I could taste it, you know? Is it rare, or are there many of you?"
I don't answer him. I'm thinking about what he's asking me. Everything about this feels wrong. I don't like his sudden interest in my psychological make-up. I tell him to back off.
He doesn't.
He says, "You don't hide things very well. You don't have to answer me. I can see it on your face. I'm right about you. It is an affliction. You hate it, don't you? Don't you fear being consumed by it? Wouldn't you like to get rid of it?"
What is he asking me? Everyone gets angry. I have things to be angry about. I have lots of them, and I'm only actually mad about half of those. Of course there are things I resent. People have been abusive to me, lied to me, taken advantage of me, and stolen from me. Wouldn't it be abnormal and unnatural to have to work through some resentment?
I remind myself what I've been told about this guy. He's made of lies, and deception. He feeds on the things we poison ourselves with. If I let him, he'll eat me alive, and he'll probably hurt everyone I love and protect in the process. I remind myself what he tried to do to my Lady. I harden my resolve. It's the only shield I have left. I turn my face away from him.
"No. You can't have it. It's mine."
I feel his chilled breath on my neck, and he very quietly chides, "You're a bad liar." Then, he says my Name. Not the one my parents gave me, not any of the pet names my friends call me, not even the one I use in the circle; my Name name, the one from before, that is mine regardless of what others call me.
I turn my face back to look at him. His eyes are inches away from mine. Seeing him that close makes my stomach lurch. A chill washes down my back, and into my core. I can't keep myself from shaking.
He asks, "Why hold on to such a burden? Let it go. I want it, and you don't. It isn't going to do you any harm to give it up. You'd be better off without it."
My gut hurts. This thing standing before me wants to feed on me like a leech. The sad thing is, this is so tempting... to be able to get rid of something I have to fight tooth and nail to control, to not feel pissed off all of the time - I could happily get rid of my temper. He's right. I don't want it. I do hate it. It is a burden. But I don't trust him. He's a thief, stealing emotions and twisting souls. I'm angry over what he's done. This actually makes me furious. I ask, "Is this how you do it? Is this how you hunt your victims, talking them into making some kind of deal with you? Did you trick my Lady into some kind of bargain?"
He utters a short, barking laugh. "I don't have to bargain with prey. She didn't even know I was there until it was too late. Most never do."
I ask, "Why are you trying to bargain with me?"
Instead of answering, he looks at me like I'm trying to pull one over on him. Inside, I feel like I'm prying at something, or trying to get through a maze. There's something I'm not taking into account. Even that look seems familiar, like I've seen him do it before. I feel horribly confused, and at the same time, I've got that tip-of-the-tongue, memory not found kind of frustration building up.
He says, "You all ready know the answer to that question. You just don't want to confront it."
I don't want to believe him, but that feels true. That doesn't make me trust him any more than before, or rather mistrust him any less. It just gives me yet another thing to try to figure out.
He continues, "...so close to the surface I can smell it on you." I feel a light pressure on my throat, moving down toward my heart. He's looking down. I look, and see his finger tracing along the center of my armor. I'm overwhelmed with revulsion, disgust, and outrage. Pushed over the edge, and without even thinking about it, I haul off and slug him right in the nose, feeling the bone crack against my knuckles, knocking him back into the water, yelling at him.
"DON'T. YOU. TOUCH. ME."
He sits in the water, nose bleeding, wide-eyed with surprise. He reaches up and touches the blood, licks his fingers, and says, "See, you're even angry when you're frightened."
Still shaking, heart pounding, I turn my back on him and trudge back up the beach. Part of me is terrified to do this - never wanting to turn my back on an enemy - but I need to get away from him, and from this spot. I need this discussion to be over, before he starts to make sense to me. I don't want to be an angry person, but what he's offering usually comes with a terrible price, or at least I expect there to be one.
It felt like I walked for a long time after that. Nothing else happened, but I also never got further from the water, or closer to the fence. I feel kind of stuck, though I think if I tried hard enough, I could change the scene. I'd still be in the dream state, just with a different image. And I guess I'm too old to stay up all night, because that obviously didn't work, either.
Temper and a tempest
I'm cold and wet. It's dark, except in a few spots where the sun breaks through the clouds. Rain is falling all around me, and the tide is coming in. The sand under my feet is treacherous, slipping out from under me with each step, and if that isn't enough, there's a wind blowing hard enough to threaten to blow me off of my feet. I am absolutely miserable. I just want to get inside.
I'm searching along the side of the building, trying to find the door. I seem to remember being here before, but for some reason, I don't think I'm going to be able to get in. Moving all the way around the place, I confirm my suspicion. There is no entrance. I find a spot where the roof hangs over, and huddle underneath that. It provides little shelter, but at least less rain is hitting me.
I look out into the storm. There was someone here before, but now there isn't. I'm all alone.
I should be able to shape this. There are sunbeams coming through thin spots in the clouds, off in the distance. I can still use the energy from the sun. After a moment of reaching out, I can feel it. I draw it in, and try forming a small shelter up against the side of the building. It's kind of like half of a wigwam, with the open end right up against the wall of the building. Under the wigwam, I can hear the weather outside taking a turn for the worse. Thunder rolls across the sky, and the rain pounds my shelter so hard it sounds like hail.
I use energy to fortify the wigwam, then turn my attention to the wall. This temporary shelter is keeping me dry right now, but if the weather keeps getting worse, I'm going to need something better. I put both hands on the wall. I think of the wood temporarily becoming flexible, like a hanging curtain. I feel it relax, and move under my fingers. I pull several boards to the side, and look in. It's very dark. I can see what looks like a restaurant table a chair. I step through the wall/curtain, let it fall behind me, and make it solid again.
Now it won't matter if the wigwam blows away. I'm in a sturdier building, and the rain isn't getting in here.
It's completely dark in here. Feeling to see if I can still reach the energy from the sun, I'm able to produce a small glowing ball. I see a light switch on the wall, and I flip that up. Some of the areas on the ceiling light up. Oddly, they don't look like light bulbs. It looks like there's a mini-sun in here, and some other little round orbs that could be other suns. The ceiling is really dark blue, and the walls are dark brown, but the room still seems brightly lit.
The room actually seems to be some kind of a studio. Beside me, there is a drawing table positioned like the paste-up tables I used to work with at the newspaper (it's on a slant) and stocked with paper and art supplies. Further away, there's a tripod and a camera, and a backdrop stand. Beside the stand, there are a few different backdrops on the floor. Across the room is a chair surrounded by crochet and knitting supplies. A few feet away from that is a desk with a computer hooked up to a scanner and two printers. There are images sitting in the tray of one printer, and there are typed pages on the tray of another.
Next to the space where the computer set-up is, there is another table, this one laying flat. It's about a third covered in fabric, sewing tools, findings, and accessories. Mixed in with those items are jewelry making supplies. There is a dressmaker's dummy with a partially made outfit, and there are mannequin parts with partially made jewelry pieces on them.
There's a loud tapping noise on the roof, and then suddenly there are a whole lot of loud tapping noises. I wasn't imagining it earlier; that is definitely hail. I can hear the whistle of high winds, and the building shakes. Using some of the energy I pulled earlier, I thicken the walls. As I turn back to look at the room again, I see a trap door in the floor.
Curiosity compels me to open it, but my mind makes up the excuse that if there's hail, there will probably be a tornado. Maybe there's an underground tunnel leading away from the beach. Maybe it goes to another building, and that's why there was no door to get in here. I start to lift the door, and a child's voice from behind me says, "I wouldn't."
I spin around to see the voice's owner, a little girl of about 10 years old. At first glance, I only notice that every single thing she's wearing is pink, right down to the frames of her glasses. I had a pair of glasses exactly like those when I was her age. As I notice the frames, I really see her face for the first time, and realize she could be my 5th grade twin. She looks suspicious of me, and asks, "What are you doing in here? How did you get in?"
I tell her I'm sorry for intruding, and that I only came in because of the storm outside. I figure she has to know I've been out in it - I look like a drowned rat. I ask if it's all right if I stay in here until it blows over, and she looks at me like I've said the stupidest thing in the world. She says, "It's only storming like that because you pissed him off and then let him get away. And don't go into the cellar. You don't want to confront what you keep down there."
I ask the little girl who she is, and she rolls her eyes at me. "Oh-mih-GAWD. Do NOT tell me you're seriously asking me that." She executes a melodramatic flounce, and begins putting something together on the sewing/jewelry table. When I wait for more of an answer, she continues with, "Well, I can't tell you, anyway. It's not like I have a name or anything. Jeez . Anyway, you shouldn't be here. This is my place, not yours. You can dry off, but you're eventually going to have to go back outside, and you can't let him see you... did he see you come in here?"
I start to say that I don't think so, but then there's a loud thunk on the side of the building. I hear the wigwam crunch apart. Her eyes widen, and she says, "He may not have seen, but he knows you're here. You have to go!"
I start to ask how I'm going to get out without him seeing the opening, when suddenly I'm back on the beach. I'm in a sunny spot, but there's a storm raging all around. It's like I'm in the eye. I can see him walking along the edge of the water, heading my way. I can see hail hitting the roof of the building, and the wigwam being battered by the wind. I call the energy I used to make it back into myself, and it kind of dissolves. I want to make sure that building and the child inside are safe. I move the sand, piling it up around the walls, until the entire building is inside a huge dune. I pack it down, then melt the outer inch depth of sand and solidify it so that it's basically glass. Then, I work on my shield, making it like a narrow egg shape around my body.
Lightning strikes out on the water, then another flash strikes the sand near where I am standing. Finally, a flash strikes my shield. I hear a sound like a bomb going off in my head, but no damage is done. The shield holds.
I think to myself, so, he wants to play with the weather? That's my game. I do this all the time. It's my favorite toy.
I reach out and feel the storm. It feels like he's focusing on one thing at a time. He's gotten the storm going, and he set rain falling, hail stones falling, and wind moving, but is now ignoring all of that to use lightning. The entire rest of his creation is vulnerable.
I begin increasing the wind, but not at ground level where he'll notice. Instead, I move the air way over our heads, just below the clouds, creating a downdraft that hits the water a little out to sea, and behind his position. I move the air harder and faster, and pretty soon it's pulling other air along with it. I let go and watch as a funnel cloud forms, dropping down to the water. I grab it again, pulling it closer until he can hear the tell-tale whistle.
He turns to see it, then shoots a look of shock and indignation back over his shoulder at me. I wave at him. He grits his teeth and turns away from me, and suddenly I can feel an icy energy trying to remove my mental grip on the tornado, causing it to waver and threaten to disperse into the wind.
I flip the tail and smack him with it, picking him up, spinning him around, and tossing him into the air. He lands hard on his side, rolling across the sand before landing near me. I can see that his clothing is burned on one side, and he has scars on his arm, and on the skin under all of the rips.
He ducks his head and balls his hands into fists, and I feel his energy pushing against mine again.
I blast him with a gust of wind from the other side, and he falls over. He starts to get back up, and I pull another funnel cloud down from the sky, so that there's one on either side of him. Neither of them are huge, but the winds from both of them are battering him pretty well. He is getting hit by driftwood, shells, and hail, and scoured by blowing sand.
He puts his hands up on either side of him, and I can feel that cold, clammy energy again, trying to wrestle control away from me. I push, and the tornadoes move closer to him. I pull down a third one behind him. I've now got the thunder and lightning worked into a rhythm, with the cyclones whistling along, almost making the storm into a song. He turns around and looks at me again. I'm dancing with excitement as I trace a finger through the air, and lightning follows it across the sky, then down to the sand, striking the beach with a loud boom. I grin at him, then hit the sand with a wind sheer that kicks a huge cloud of it several feet into the air, like a bomb went off under it. Sand rains down on his head. He looks like he's taken a bite of something unappetizing, but can't spit it out. I'm feeling really triumphant, and quite proud. Playing with storms is something I'm good at.
He suddenly launches himself at me, moving so fast I don't even think to react before I'm tackled.
I forgot to maintain my shield. I put every ounce of energy I had into my little show. I realize it's gone as he knocks me down and lands right on top of me. I push him away, but he's got a grip on my arm with one hand. He slashes at me with the other, scraping along the front of my armor, which fortunately hasn't disappeared.
When he can't claw through my clothing, he balls up a fist and tries to punch me. I take the opportunity, while he's off balance, to throw him off of me. Scrambling backward, I begin indiscriminately pulling energy from the storm, trying to focus on shielding myself. In doing so, I end up sucking in the entire storm, taking both my energy, and his. It's nasty, like having to put on a smelly, sweaty article of clothing after a shower. I don't like it, and I don't want it, but since I have it, I use it to blast the sand around him again, kicking it up into his face and over his head to keep him busy while I shield myself. What I'm able to form quickly doesn't look right to me. It's got spikes, and it covers me, but it's oddly dark, like smoky glass.
For a moment, he doesn't move at all, just sits there in the wet sand, giving me a slack-jawed stare. I figure I must have stunned him. I step forward. He sits up a little, but doesn't take any action. I realize I still feel that cold, clammy touch, and I wonder if he put all of his power into that storm. I throw a gust of wind into the sand again, blasting him with it, and he does nothing but stare at me. His jaw moves like he's about to try to speak, but he doesn't. His eyes are more open than normal. I can almost see the top of his irises. Is that what he looks like when he's afraid?
My next thought is that if I can keep him out with a shield, I can keep him inside of one, too.
As he sits there, I work on building a bubble over him. It's different from encasing myself, because I'm not doing it from the inside, I'm doing it from the outside. The energy wants to form a box instead of a sphere. Instead of correcting the problem, I let it be that way. He sits there and watches me. As I walk around the box to make sure it is complete, he turns his head to follow my movements. I notice that one corner of his mouth has turned up.
I know something is wrong. The box is as smoky as my shield. I can feel that it's solid, and completely closed, but why isn't it clear, like normal, and why is he looking at me like that? I momentarily lower my shield to reach out and physically touch the box. Aside from the color, I can't find anything out of the ordinary. It feels like my shield always feels, a lot like glass. If I concentrate, I can reach right through my shield, as though reaching through a liquid, because it's energy that I've drawn through myself, and it's attuned to me.
As I place my fingers on the wall of the box, he stands up and steps toward me, still looking kind of stunned. Maybe now I can get him to talk to me.
"What do you want? Why do you keep attacking me?" I know he's replied to this, but he really hasn't given me an answer.
He acts like he's going to speak, but no sound comes out. I'm wondering if I made the box too heavy. Without thinking, I reach out and tap on it like a window. Fast as lightning, he reaches through it, folds his fingers around my hand, and grins broadly.
That cold, clammy feeling. . . the energy that made the storm was drawn through him, manipulated by him. And I drew it into me and used it. I used it to make the box, and I'd used it to make my shield. He could have gotten through the whole time.
He says, "You have quite an appetite."
I try to pull away from him. I don't want him touching me, even if it's not an outright attack - and it's not, because he hasn't even come the rest of the way out of the box. He doesn't let go of my hand, and even though I'm a bit taller than he is, and I'd guess that I outweigh him, he's got quite a grip. More than that, I can feel a pull through the palm of my hand, pulling on that energy, and on my focus.
I don't know what he's doing, but it can't be good. I make a mental stab at blocking off my hand, but I can still feel that pull. I pull back against it. Immediately, I get another taste of that icky, cold clammy feeling, and then he's pulling harder. I feel my control slipping away.
I say, "Good dodge. Not gonna answer me?"
I double my effort, pulling it back, and feel his claws dig into the back of my hand. Blood runs down onto my wrist. He's trying to use pain to distract me.
He steps through the wall of the box, right into my personal space, and says, "I told you, I want to get through." Even his breath is freezing cold. I'm completely repulsed. I want to pull away and run, but I know that won't do any good.
I give a hard pull, drawing something into myself that isn't me. It's not anything like the energy I've been manipulating. It makes my hand feel freezing cold. It's almost a burning kind of cold, like temperatures that cause frostbite. Intense, searing pain fills the bones in my hand. Whatever I just brought in has found my arthritis.
I realize that this won't end well for me. If I win the tug-of-war, I'm going to be filled with something terrible that feels like it might kill me. If I lose, he most certainly will. I have to change the rules.
I ask him where "through" will take him. He gives me a momentary look of confusion, then says, "You don't remember?"
He grabs my other hand, and starts to pull back, taking through both of them. I let the icky energy go, but try to hold on to my own. At the same time, I'm thinking about my family, how much I love them, and how much I want to protect them. I focus on the things about myself that make me proud to be me. I dwell on the joy I find in everyday things, and in the people who are closest to me. I use those thoughts build up a bright, warm energy within myself.
I ask what I'm supposed to be remembering.
I still feel the tug on my own supply. I don't seem to be able to separate those two energies from each other just by willpower. The warm brightness, though, seems to be untainted. I hold out, pulling just hard enough to keep him from getting anything, but not hard enough to subject myself to another burst of freezing cold.
His look of confusion changes to surprise. Instead of answering me, he says, "You don't remember. I can't believe you don't remember. Why are you even fighting me?"
I tell him, "Because you tried to take whatever it is you're after without my consent. You never even tried a peaceful path."
I move the warm, bright energy I've built up, letting it flow down through my arms and into my hands, displacing what's there with it. When he pulls again, I let it flow, pushing it through the connection he chose to make when he grabbed my hands. The feeling of it moving is so opposite the way what came from him felt, it has to do some kind of damage.
Except, it doesn't. I feel the energy flow from my hands, and into his. I can even see that it's affecting him. The pale skin of his hands takes on a little more color. His fingers twitch, pulling away from my hands, and he lets go. I can see that even his face is less pale, especially around the cheeks. Once again, he gives me that slack-jawed, wide-eyed stare. He backs up against the wall of the box. It cracks, then shatters and melts into the sand.
Only thing is, he doesn't look injured. He just looks really, really surprised. He blinks - which until now, I haven't seen him ever do. Even that is weird. His upper eyelids move down to meet his lower ones, but the lower ones don't move up, so it looks like his upper eyelids are really long, and the blink is kind of slow.
I'm all ready working on building up more energy, trying to figure out a way to knock him down before he snaps out of it and retaliates, but he doesn't. He just asks me if I realize what I've just done. Now it's my turn to be confused, and I can feel that it shows on my face. For a moment, he actually looks pensive and a little amused, but then he seems to snap out of it.
He says, "I still want through. I want through." He takes an aggressive posture, and then does absolutely nothing, just stands there. I don't even know what to do right now. I fully expected that positive energy would hurt him because he seems so evil. It didn't. I'm at a complete loss. I take a defensive stance and seriously hope that he makes the fight physical, because then I might have a chance.
Instead, he seems to melt into yet another swarm of bugs, but this time is different. Normally, the swarm is made up of wasps that look like Great Black wasps but are over 2 inches long. This time, it is a swarm of tiny, silvery-black butterflies, each no more than an inch. The swarm flies right at me and totally surrounds me for a moment, flying so close that I can feel some of them brushing up against my face and hands. I expect an attack, and try to focus energy on them, but nothing happens. There is no attack from either of us, and the butterflies move out of my reach and keep going until I can't see them any more.
I hear a noise behind me. I turn to see the little girl from inside the beach shack walking toward me on the sand. She gets up close, gives me an angry and incredulous look, and shoves me with a loud yell, "You IDIOT!"
I feel myself falling backward.
From there, this turned into one of those falling dreams, where you feel like you're falling endlessly. I woke when I "landed" on the bed. It was the weirdest thing - it really felt like she'd pushed me out of my own dream experience.
I'm pretty sure she's me, or part of me, because she looked just like my ten-year-old self, right down to my first pair of glasses. I don't know exactly what she represents, but it's got to be connected to my creative side, because her 'room' was full of arts and crafts that interest me.
Out of the whole screwed up dream, the thing that has messed with my head the most is the butterflies. They're the only non-stinging bug-like thing I've seen the whole time I've been dreaming about this particular monster, and the reason they bother me is that they don't fit the pattern. There's always something scary, never something nice. I really feel like it has to be some kind of a mental trap.
A note about the storm - playing with tornadoes was one of the first lucid things I ever did while dreaming. I absolutely love storms, particularly electrical storms, and am fascinated by tornadoes. I guess I just explored that to a more "me" kind of level in dreams growing up, and now it's kind of second nature. It doesn't even take any effort most of the time.
I'm searching along the side of the building, trying to find the door. I seem to remember being here before, but for some reason, I don't think I'm going to be able to get in. Moving all the way around the place, I confirm my suspicion. There is no entrance. I find a spot where the roof hangs over, and huddle underneath that. It provides little shelter, but at least less rain is hitting me.
I look out into the storm. There was someone here before, but now there isn't. I'm all alone.
I should be able to shape this. There are sunbeams coming through thin spots in the clouds, off in the distance. I can still use the energy from the sun. After a moment of reaching out, I can feel it. I draw it in, and try forming a small shelter up against the side of the building. It's kind of like half of a wigwam, with the open end right up against the wall of the building. Under the wigwam, I can hear the weather outside taking a turn for the worse. Thunder rolls across the sky, and the rain pounds my shelter so hard it sounds like hail.
I use energy to fortify the wigwam, then turn my attention to the wall. This temporary shelter is keeping me dry right now, but if the weather keeps getting worse, I'm going to need something better. I put both hands on the wall. I think of the wood temporarily becoming flexible, like a hanging curtain. I feel it relax, and move under my fingers. I pull several boards to the side, and look in. It's very dark. I can see what looks like a restaurant table a chair. I step through the wall/curtain, let it fall behind me, and make it solid again.
Now it won't matter if the wigwam blows away. I'm in a sturdier building, and the rain isn't getting in here.
It's completely dark in here. Feeling to see if I can still reach the energy from the sun, I'm able to produce a small glowing ball. I see a light switch on the wall, and I flip that up. Some of the areas on the ceiling light up. Oddly, they don't look like light bulbs. It looks like there's a mini-sun in here, and some other little round orbs that could be other suns. The ceiling is really dark blue, and the walls are dark brown, but the room still seems brightly lit.
The room actually seems to be some kind of a studio. Beside me, there is a drawing table positioned like the paste-up tables I used to work with at the newspaper (it's on a slant) and stocked with paper and art supplies. Further away, there's a tripod and a camera, and a backdrop stand. Beside the stand, there are a few different backdrops on the floor. Across the room is a chair surrounded by crochet and knitting supplies. A few feet away from that is a desk with a computer hooked up to a scanner and two printers. There are images sitting in the tray of one printer, and there are typed pages on the tray of another.
Next to the space where the computer set-up is, there is another table, this one laying flat. It's about a third covered in fabric, sewing tools, findings, and accessories. Mixed in with those items are jewelry making supplies. There is a dressmaker's dummy with a partially made outfit, and there are mannequin parts with partially made jewelry pieces on them.
There's a loud tapping noise on the roof, and then suddenly there are a whole lot of loud tapping noises. I wasn't imagining it earlier; that is definitely hail. I can hear the whistle of high winds, and the building shakes. Using some of the energy I pulled earlier, I thicken the walls. As I turn back to look at the room again, I see a trap door in the floor.
Curiosity compels me to open it, but my mind makes up the excuse that if there's hail, there will probably be a tornado. Maybe there's an underground tunnel leading away from the beach. Maybe it goes to another building, and that's why there was no door to get in here. I start to lift the door, and a child's voice from behind me says, "I wouldn't."
I spin around to see the voice's owner, a little girl of about 10 years old. At first glance, I only notice that every single thing she's wearing is pink, right down to the frames of her glasses. I had a pair of glasses exactly like those when I was her age. As I notice the frames, I really see her face for the first time, and realize she could be my 5th grade twin. She looks suspicious of me, and asks, "What are you doing in here? How did you get in?"
I tell her I'm sorry for intruding, and that I only came in because of the storm outside. I figure she has to know I've been out in it - I look like a drowned rat. I ask if it's all right if I stay in here until it blows over, and she looks at me like I've said the stupidest thing in the world. She says, "It's only storming like that because you pissed him off and then let him get away. And don't go into the cellar. You don't want to confront what you keep down there."
I ask the little girl who she is, and she rolls her eyes at me. "Oh-mih-GAWD. Do NOT tell me you're seriously asking me that." She executes a melodramatic flounce, and begins putting something together on the sewing/jewelry table. When I wait for more of an answer, she continues with, "Well, I can't tell you, anyway. It's not like I have a name or anything. Jeez . Anyway, you shouldn't be here. This is my place, not yours. You can dry off, but you're eventually going to have to go back outside, and you can't let him see you... did he see you come in here?"
I start to say that I don't think so, but then there's a loud thunk on the side of the building. I hear the wigwam crunch apart. Her eyes widen, and she says, "He may not have seen, but he knows you're here. You have to go!"
I start to ask how I'm going to get out without him seeing the opening, when suddenly I'm back on the beach. I'm in a sunny spot, but there's a storm raging all around. It's like I'm in the eye. I can see him walking along the edge of the water, heading my way. I can see hail hitting the roof of the building, and the wigwam being battered by the wind. I call the energy I used to make it back into myself, and it kind of dissolves. I want to make sure that building and the child inside are safe. I move the sand, piling it up around the walls, until the entire building is inside a huge dune. I pack it down, then melt the outer inch depth of sand and solidify it so that it's basically glass. Then, I work on my shield, making it like a narrow egg shape around my body.
Lightning strikes out on the water, then another flash strikes the sand near where I am standing. Finally, a flash strikes my shield. I hear a sound like a bomb going off in my head, but no damage is done. The shield holds.
I think to myself, so, he wants to play with the weather? That's my game. I do this all the time. It's my favorite toy.
I reach out and feel the storm. It feels like he's focusing on one thing at a time. He's gotten the storm going, and he set rain falling, hail stones falling, and wind moving, but is now ignoring all of that to use lightning. The entire rest of his creation is vulnerable.
I begin increasing the wind, but not at ground level where he'll notice. Instead, I move the air way over our heads, just below the clouds, creating a downdraft that hits the water a little out to sea, and behind his position. I move the air harder and faster, and pretty soon it's pulling other air along with it. I let go and watch as a funnel cloud forms, dropping down to the water. I grab it again, pulling it closer until he can hear the tell-tale whistle.
He turns to see it, then shoots a look of shock and indignation back over his shoulder at me. I wave at him. He grits his teeth and turns away from me, and suddenly I can feel an icy energy trying to remove my mental grip on the tornado, causing it to waver and threaten to disperse into the wind.
I flip the tail and smack him with it, picking him up, spinning him around, and tossing him into the air. He lands hard on his side, rolling across the sand before landing near me. I can see that his clothing is burned on one side, and he has scars on his arm, and on the skin under all of the rips.
He ducks his head and balls his hands into fists, and I feel his energy pushing against mine again.
I blast him with a gust of wind from the other side, and he falls over. He starts to get back up, and I pull another funnel cloud down from the sky, so that there's one on either side of him. Neither of them are huge, but the winds from both of them are battering him pretty well. He is getting hit by driftwood, shells, and hail, and scoured by blowing sand.
He puts his hands up on either side of him, and I can feel that cold, clammy energy again, trying to wrestle control away from me. I push, and the tornadoes move closer to him. I pull down a third one behind him. I've now got the thunder and lightning worked into a rhythm, with the cyclones whistling along, almost making the storm into a song. He turns around and looks at me again. I'm dancing with excitement as I trace a finger through the air, and lightning follows it across the sky, then down to the sand, striking the beach with a loud boom. I grin at him, then hit the sand with a wind sheer that kicks a huge cloud of it several feet into the air, like a bomb went off under it. Sand rains down on his head. He looks like he's taken a bite of something unappetizing, but can't spit it out. I'm feeling really triumphant, and quite proud. Playing with storms is something I'm good at.
He suddenly launches himself at me, moving so fast I don't even think to react before I'm tackled.
I forgot to maintain my shield. I put every ounce of energy I had into my little show. I realize it's gone as he knocks me down and lands right on top of me. I push him away, but he's got a grip on my arm with one hand. He slashes at me with the other, scraping along the front of my armor, which fortunately hasn't disappeared.
When he can't claw through my clothing, he balls up a fist and tries to punch me. I take the opportunity, while he's off balance, to throw him off of me. Scrambling backward, I begin indiscriminately pulling energy from the storm, trying to focus on shielding myself. In doing so, I end up sucking in the entire storm, taking both my energy, and his. It's nasty, like having to put on a smelly, sweaty article of clothing after a shower. I don't like it, and I don't want it, but since I have it, I use it to blast the sand around him again, kicking it up into his face and over his head to keep him busy while I shield myself. What I'm able to form quickly doesn't look right to me. It's got spikes, and it covers me, but it's oddly dark, like smoky glass.
For a moment, he doesn't move at all, just sits there in the wet sand, giving me a slack-jawed stare. I figure I must have stunned him. I step forward. He sits up a little, but doesn't take any action. I realize I still feel that cold, clammy touch, and I wonder if he put all of his power into that storm. I throw a gust of wind into the sand again, blasting him with it, and he does nothing but stare at me. His jaw moves like he's about to try to speak, but he doesn't. His eyes are more open than normal. I can almost see the top of his irises. Is that what he looks like when he's afraid?
My next thought is that if I can keep him out with a shield, I can keep him inside of one, too.
As he sits there, I work on building a bubble over him. It's different from encasing myself, because I'm not doing it from the inside, I'm doing it from the outside. The energy wants to form a box instead of a sphere. Instead of correcting the problem, I let it be that way. He sits there and watches me. As I walk around the box to make sure it is complete, he turns his head to follow my movements. I notice that one corner of his mouth has turned up.
I know something is wrong. The box is as smoky as my shield. I can feel that it's solid, and completely closed, but why isn't it clear, like normal, and why is he looking at me like that? I momentarily lower my shield to reach out and physically touch the box. Aside from the color, I can't find anything out of the ordinary. It feels like my shield always feels, a lot like glass. If I concentrate, I can reach right through my shield, as though reaching through a liquid, because it's energy that I've drawn through myself, and it's attuned to me.
As I place my fingers on the wall of the box, he stands up and steps toward me, still looking kind of stunned. Maybe now I can get him to talk to me.
"What do you want? Why do you keep attacking me?" I know he's replied to this, but he really hasn't given me an answer.
He acts like he's going to speak, but no sound comes out. I'm wondering if I made the box too heavy. Without thinking, I reach out and tap on it like a window. Fast as lightning, he reaches through it, folds his fingers around my hand, and grins broadly.
That cold, clammy feeling. . . the energy that made the storm was drawn through him, manipulated by him. And I drew it into me and used it. I used it to make the box, and I'd used it to make my shield. He could have gotten through the whole time.
He says, "You have quite an appetite."
I try to pull away from him. I don't want him touching me, even if it's not an outright attack - and it's not, because he hasn't even come the rest of the way out of the box. He doesn't let go of my hand, and even though I'm a bit taller than he is, and I'd guess that I outweigh him, he's got quite a grip. More than that, I can feel a pull through the palm of my hand, pulling on that energy, and on my focus.
I don't know what he's doing, but it can't be good. I make a mental stab at blocking off my hand, but I can still feel that pull. I pull back against it. Immediately, I get another taste of that icky, cold clammy feeling, and then he's pulling harder. I feel my control slipping away.
I say, "Good dodge. Not gonna answer me?"
I double my effort, pulling it back, and feel his claws dig into the back of my hand. Blood runs down onto my wrist. He's trying to use pain to distract me.
He steps through the wall of the box, right into my personal space, and says, "I told you, I want to get through." Even his breath is freezing cold. I'm completely repulsed. I want to pull away and run, but I know that won't do any good.
I give a hard pull, drawing something into myself that isn't me. It's not anything like the energy I've been manipulating. It makes my hand feel freezing cold. It's almost a burning kind of cold, like temperatures that cause frostbite. Intense, searing pain fills the bones in my hand. Whatever I just brought in has found my arthritis.
I realize that this won't end well for me. If I win the tug-of-war, I'm going to be filled with something terrible that feels like it might kill me. If I lose, he most certainly will. I have to change the rules.
I ask him where "through" will take him. He gives me a momentary look of confusion, then says, "You don't remember?"
He grabs my other hand, and starts to pull back, taking through both of them. I let the icky energy go, but try to hold on to my own. At the same time, I'm thinking about my family, how much I love them, and how much I want to protect them. I focus on the things about myself that make me proud to be me. I dwell on the joy I find in everyday things, and in the people who are closest to me. I use those thoughts build up a bright, warm energy within myself.
I ask what I'm supposed to be remembering.
I still feel the tug on my own supply. I don't seem to be able to separate those two energies from each other just by willpower. The warm brightness, though, seems to be untainted. I hold out, pulling just hard enough to keep him from getting anything, but not hard enough to subject myself to another burst of freezing cold.
His look of confusion changes to surprise. Instead of answering me, he says, "You don't remember. I can't believe you don't remember. Why are you even fighting me?"
I tell him, "Because you tried to take whatever it is you're after without my consent. You never even tried a peaceful path."
I move the warm, bright energy I've built up, letting it flow down through my arms and into my hands, displacing what's there with it. When he pulls again, I let it flow, pushing it through the connection he chose to make when he grabbed my hands. The feeling of it moving is so opposite the way what came from him felt, it has to do some kind of damage.
Except, it doesn't. I feel the energy flow from my hands, and into his. I can even see that it's affecting him. The pale skin of his hands takes on a little more color. His fingers twitch, pulling away from my hands, and he lets go. I can see that even his face is less pale, especially around the cheeks. Once again, he gives me that slack-jawed, wide-eyed stare. He backs up against the wall of the box. It cracks, then shatters and melts into the sand.
Only thing is, he doesn't look injured. He just looks really, really surprised. He blinks - which until now, I haven't seen him ever do. Even that is weird. His upper eyelids move down to meet his lower ones, but the lower ones don't move up, so it looks like his upper eyelids are really long, and the blink is kind of slow.
I'm all ready working on building up more energy, trying to figure out a way to knock him down before he snaps out of it and retaliates, but he doesn't. He just asks me if I realize what I've just done. Now it's my turn to be confused, and I can feel that it shows on my face. For a moment, he actually looks pensive and a little amused, but then he seems to snap out of it.
He says, "I still want through. I want through." He takes an aggressive posture, and then does absolutely nothing, just stands there. I don't even know what to do right now. I fully expected that positive energy would hurt him because he seems so evil. It didn't. I'm at a complete loss. I take a defensive stance and seriously hope that he makes the fight physical, because then I might have a chance.
Instead, he seems to melt into yet another swarm of bugs, but this time is different. Normally, the swarm is made up of wasps that look like Great Black wasps but are over 2 inches long. This time, it is a swarm of tiny, silvery-black butterflies, each no more than an inch. The swarm flies right at me and totally surrounds me for a moment, flying so close that I can feel some of them brushing up against my face and hands. I expect an attack, and try to focus energy on them, but nothing happens. There is no attack from either of us, and the butterflies move out of my reach and keep going until I can't see them any more.
I hear a noise behind me. I turn to see the little girl from inside the beach shack walking toward me on the sand. She gets up close, gives me an angry and incredulous look, and shoves me with a loud yell, "You IDIOT!"
I feel myself falling backward.
From there, this turned into one of those falling dreams, where you feel like you're falling endlessly. I woke when I "landed" on the bed. It was the weirdest thing - it really felt like she'd pushed me out of my own dream experience.
I'm pretty sure she's me, or part of me, because she looked just like my ten-year-old self, right down to my first pair of glasses. I don't know exactly what she represents, but it's got to be connected to my creative side, because her 'room' was full of arts and crafts that interest me.
Out of the whole screwed up dream, the thing that has messed with my head the most is the butterflies. They're the only non-stinging bug-like thing I've seen the whole time I've been dreaming about this particular monster, and the reason they bother me is that they don't fit the pattern. There's always something scary, never something nice. I really feel like it has to be some kind of a mental trap.
A note about the storm - playing with tornadoes was one of the first lucid things I ever did while dreaming. I absolutely love storms, particularly electrical storms, and am fascinated by tornadoes. I guess I just explored that to a more "me" kind of level in dreams growing up, and now it's kind of second nature. It doesn't even take any effort most of the time.
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