The Awakening
Well, get up then.
He had been at a table in his dream. Sitting with other people. How many? That was already gone. He thought they were people in the dream, but now as he blinked depth and dimension into the world around him, he knew they weren’t people. Intangible, shimmering, grey. A woman had risen from the table. She was wearing a dress, but the dress and her body and her face were all one, all a grey wisp, like a tendril of smoke that had taken human form.
Pull back the sheet. The cold helps. Set the body in motion. One foot, then the other. Swing them out. Get vertical. What will it cost you, this day? Another day above ground. By the most crude of assessments, this is a good thing, a victory, even. Get the blood flowing — that’s good, too. Pistons still firing. Gears still turning. Bodies as machines. Bodies as computers. Power up. Reboot. What will be the next defining metaphor of life and consciousness? Maybe a throw back. Bodies as books. Open me, read me, one line, one page at a time. Don’t tell me how it ends. The grey woman had been laughing.
Shaving at the bathroom mirror. Think about the word. Blade. It might be the perfect word. It starts by slicing your lips open, carves past the tongue, cuts across the back of your throat, then moves along the mouth from back to front, honing itself, before ending on a point, sharp tongue gently stabbing at the roof of your mouth. The word is its purpose.
Too quickly. He cuts himself, a little nick along the jawline. First nothing, then cold thrill, then heat. A tiny bulb of blood, so bright it seems to be lit by filaments running under his skin. He turns his head to examine the cut in the mirror. Catches his own eyes, then looks over his shoulder in the mirror, thinks about the backwards apartment in the mirror. Wonders if the woman was laughing or crying in the backwards dream. If she laughed and then sat down. Wonders what the opposite of grey is. Looks back to the cut.
Got you, you left-handed son of a bitch.
←PREVIOUS EPISODE← →NEXT EPISODE→
__________