kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"DreamADream.0"

words

Stray Cats are yowling over a lackluster guitar riff in the dead of winter. It's a dream--I know it's a dream--but I can't control it. Or I could, but I just can't be bothered. I let it run its course, because that's easier than being responsible. Easier than taking control.

My shrink tells me it has to do with the drugs I'm taking. The drugs tell me it has to do with the phase of the moon. And when I stare at the moon, I start itching for more drugs.

The itching tells me I shouldn't think so much, I should just talk to my shrink.

My shrink is a dream, too. The drugs, I'm not so sure of. The cats really are outside my window, though, down in the alley. They fight a lot, and I like to pretend they're fighting over sex, or drugs, or my shrink--or sex with my shrink on drugs--but I know better.

They're fighting over my dreams.

I was communing with the moon the other day--she likes to slum with me, sometimes, when the yellow dude's strutting his stuff--we were both on acid, and she was singing Stray Cats, and her head kept morphing between phases. I was having the dream again, but waking--the acid was playing with echos, and I was having trouble keeping track of what Luna was belting. It resonated with the dream, and sometimes I thought it was the dream. Or I was. She can be like that, Luna, just ask my shrink. Anyway, --

They're fighting.

And I'm just trying to let it run its course--the dream, I know how it ends. It ends in death. My death. Dreams are funny like that, scrambling about trying to live, trying to hold coherence, trying to take control. My shrink tries to take control, sometimes, but I tell him he's just a dream and he fades behind the moon. Luna, she don't fade so much, but the strays, I mean Stray Cats, they're louder still. All of this, just to keep from waking.

If I wake, I've got to start all over again. Slog through the pain. Remember rejection. Remember acceptance. I've got to feel. I think. I'm not entirely sure if I can remember waking, of if that's all a dream. But I know--the way you know in dreams--if I sleep, well, they can all just have their way with me, and I'll ride. I know none of it is real, so it's easy. I let them--

They're fighting over my dreams.

And I'm wondering what's inside and what's out--really, am I smoking the butterfly, or is the butterfly smoking me? I look at my hands to try to center, but the flesh is crawling like a bad gel, whirling the whorls of my flesh like eddies in a not-so-placid pond. Something drops out of my mouth and I pray it's just spittle, and something's tearing at my gut--

They're fighting. Stray Cats are yowling, lackluster.

And I think, wait, did I drop? The acid is me, in me, but this is a dream, unreal; Luna or the shrink or the cats or the alley or the room, is the room, the bed, am the bed, --

Waking, pulling, tearing--

They.

Over my dreams, my dream, my--I don't want to wake

pain, the consciousness

They're fighting

my dreams

I

was a dream.

ends.

in a yawn, sleep-sticky eyes crusting open, consciousness traded, lost, gone.