Three Weird Dreams

I don't know what was wrong with me last night. I couldn't sleep. I was restless and I hurt - headache, spine felt twisted and I had chest pains... really bad chest pains. Despite the tossing and turning, I must've slipped in and out. I don't feel I've slept - it feels more like I've stayed up all night playing video games or watching movies. Whether I slept or not or how I feel I've slept doesn't deny the fact that I had another strange dream last night. I had no control with the dreams... every time I "faded into darkness" I woke up... restless... time passing faster than it felt. It was really weird... really, really weird.

I wake up against a cold marble floor to the strange sound of silver bells. It almost sounds like coins falling in a fountain - chiming but watery. I'm dizzy, my senses take time to adjust as I slowly rise to a sitting position. The bubbles in my vision sizzle and burn until the blurriness clears completely from my eyes. There's an intense relief when they do. Suddenly, I feel a choking in my chest - like I've swallowed a little bit of water down the wrong tube. I start coughing, trying to clear it away, and, trying to be lady-like, I cover my mouth but it doesn't stop the blood from searing my throat, coating my tongue and dripping from my lips. I wipe it away with the flowing sleeve of the white robe I'm wearing. The spiderweb silk absorbs the blood and leaves no stain. Finally, I manage to sit up a little more and carefully check the two braids in my hair and pat down the soft material of the dress I'm wearing. In the process, my hand passes over something dangling from my neck. I feel the red velvet against my neck but from the o-ring dangles a golden chain and at the end of it is a golden ring - a ring set with a ruby.

The bells are still chiming - they're actually chiming more now, faster and louder. One particularly loud chime draws my curiosity from the ring dangling from my collar. I look around at the white marble temple and its unstained columns. There are three steps leading into a crystal blue pool. The pool is filled with pale coloured lillies where an occasional bright orange or red one rests. I look around and realize I'm kneeling beside a great big throne made of polished bone six steps from the main floor. When I finally try to stand, my hands move around and I realize I was laying in a bed of lavender. The crushed petals look suddenly sad to me. A gong sounds - once, twice, three, four times. A growl of thunder answers and I look up at the angry clouds above. The sky is so dark, so grey, yet the sound of thunder soothes me.

As the thunder quiets to a purr, a softer growl turns my attention to the emerging feline. The white tiger, dark blue eyes shining like sapphires, saunters up to me very slowly. In his maw is a card and he stops infront of me with a calm look. I pet him and touch the daisy collar and notice the long daisy chain flowing into the mist behind it. Finally I take the card, it's the nine of hearts and then, all of a sudden, my flesh absorbs the card. Struck with panic, I try to shake it off but it seeps into my veins and I feel thousands of little paper cuts slicing my nerves as it travels up my arm to my spine.

A searing pain explodes in the middle of my back and, somehow, I know the card has made its mark on my back flesh. From my hand, still cut open by the card and bleeding, blooms a wild violet and red orchid. It blooms and then bursts into flame, burning my hand but the sensation feels more like cold needles jabbing into my skin. It hurts, I feel tears welling up in my eyes, and then there are real needles poking into my skin - draining out fluids and putting others back in. Colours start unfolding before my eyes - bright colours - greens, pinks, blues, violets. Then there is nothing but darkness.

A cold wind scratches my face - dried tears make my skin feel like clay. I sit up, head spinning, in a dark alley. The walls around me are stone, the staircase behind me is chipped cement like the floor beneath me and the sky is star-kissed and somehow bright in its midnight blue blanket. I take a deep breath of the sharp air and watch it rise up in a thin white swirl as I exhale. I manage to get to my feet, straighten out my trenchcoat and the twin braids in my hair, dust off my black skirt and take another breath. My boots are scuffed and scratched and I wonder where I've been. I can't remember. Can't remember until I hear the silver bells chiming and it sounds like... almost like sparkling firecrackers. Looking around at this angle, I realize I'm in the little corner between U of S and the dorms, I think. The dark corner. It's always so quiet, so cryptic, everyone seems to walk a little faster down these steps - these steps far from the light of the star-kissed sky.

I think I'll stay here awhile. Well, I would if the incessant growling didn't start. It almost sounds like an angry piano solo. Building, gaining strength, almost like the first growl of thunder in a storm. It'd be beautiful if that thing wasn't drooling at me. I think my legs started running before I realized I had to run from it. The mass of shadow and liquor roared like a chainsaw and a rabbit screaming - grinding its serrated teeth until foam spewed from its eyes. It bounded, bounced, once, twice, three and four times and was upon me. I slid across the cement, feeling the burn of it against the back of my thighs as my flesh shredded. It kind of felt like that stainless steel cheese grater whipped across my backside as a kid. My weak arms attempted in vain to keep the beast's mighty jaws from my throat. We were halfway down that hill to U of S when it tore my throat open. It swallowed everything, even the ring, and I think it got most of my tongue too. The coppery taste of crimson welled up and over my tongue and I tried to blink the red out of my eyes. It purred - a mechanical sound like an old lawnmower failing to start - and leapt off. I tumbled the rest of the way down and lay still in a growing pool of my own lifefluid. Then I knew darkness again.

Oddly enough, I awoke. My throat was burning vehemently. It wouldn't let me forget that grievous wound so easily. I sat up again, a little less dizzy, but as I brought my hand to my throat expecting a scar or at most a real bad scab or stitches... I felt the hole. I think I might have touched my trachea and coated my hand in very cold and stale blood. I try to make a sound, maybe a call for help, but all that comes out is this garbled whimper and little blood bubbles. I lean forward and blood spills onto my hand. It doesn't gush, it just kind of leaks. Wiping it on my skirt, which absorbs the liquid hungrily, I stand and begin walking. Within the first few steps I realize another problem. I look down at the large piece of missing flesh. The bottom of my ribcage gleams a ghastly white in the moonlight and many of my organs are missing - My spleen is still visible and one of my kidneys too. I can see my lungs are intact though and very bright pink. Umm... yay? I can see my hipbone and even my spine. I take another step and my spine wobbles a little, tilting my body dramatically. I walk with the awkward limp down to the pit. I'm not sure how I manage. My lumina sits alone in the large gravel hole and I shamble over to it. When I sit down in the driver's seat and fiddle with the ignition, it roars to life and the song "Mad World" starts to play.

I nearly jump out of my skin when the two back doors slam shut. Josh is in the backseat with some female presence. I take my eyes away from the rearview mirror - it doesn't strike me as odd, almost as if I knew I'd be meeting them here. My brain is electrified and my eyes suddenly stretch wide - so wide it hurts. I focus on some point ahead of me, back out and drive down the way I usually go. When I hit Lorne, there's nothing. The gas station, the buildings, even the lights, are gone. I stop, put the car in park, just as a furious pain erupts in my hollowed guts. I open the car door and vomit - which worries me more because I have no stomach. Shaking, convulsing, I sit back in my seat and force it to go away. It feels like snakes have replaced my intestines - I check just to make sure but there's nothing there. My spleen wriggles a little but that's it.

Sighing, I close the door and keep driving until I fall into darkness again - hating myself until the white light envelops me... and the sound of my alarm throws me out of this restless hallucination.