An Unusual Day: The Dream kept on going
Posted: Tuesday, January 10, 2012
by Amanda Liesinger
http://www.lechampiondehockey.com
I wake up to the dreams that have become reality. The sensations are real and the unwaken life is the awakened life. My cat is still alive, fat as ever and I live in my childhood home. I'm sitting at the table, it is still in the kitchen before the refurbishing. The cat is so fat her belly rubs on the ground. I follow to my upstairs where my jewelry is missing. My heart is beating rapidly - who would steal this jewelry? It's worth nothing except for the sentimental value I've put on it. All those cheap earrings I got at Target before my trip to Munich or the italian dangly ones that my sister-in-law bought off a gypsy in Rome. All gone. I run to the adjacent bathroom. My sister in looking into the mirror, all punked out, black leather everywhere, and five distinct cuts below her chin. She's talking on the phone, mumbling about picking something up.
"Yeah, last night you said I could take it." She is still talking on the phone.
I was drunk last night, too drunk to remember consenting to that. I start to cry. I cry at my guilt in getting plastered, about the lost memories and the intense feeling that part of me is gone, the part that makes me special.
In reality, I woke up from this dream, like other dreams.
Not today. Not on this unusual day.
I look at my sister. "What did you trade my jewelry for?"
She looks at me with an annoyed look, "I was setting up for something. It was a really good deal."
"I need to get it back."
"You already said I could take it." she puts her phone in her purse. "I have to go."
My sister's car is parked a block away from my apartment. She tromps down the stairs while I go looking for my black coat. In the early morning, the sun is too tired to get up. I watch her pop into her car and I look for my keys. I open the door and stop in my train of thought, watching my sister drive towards the ocean. There is a maintinence van in front of my car. Parked there since Saturday, they were working on the roof for the whole weekend.
I get in my car door and slam myself in, crying again. The jewelry is stuff, I thought, just stuff. You can get other pieces to replace it, just start from scratch. The pain boils over, however, and I jam my key in my crappy 1989 grand prix and take a shortcut into the neighbor's dirt patched yard. I take out a lit-up reindeer left over from Christmas and a couple of bushes but I make it out without getting stuck. My sister veers right, toward Neptune Beach.
Her music is loud once I get closer and she's still talking on her cell phone. The sun is coming up behind us and I start to see children come out to wait for the bus and suit and ties to their sedans. A family of dogs comes out of one house, impeccably dressed, as though they're going to a church service. The large german shepard, dressed in black slacks and matching tie gets into the driver's seat of a large white truck and drives away.
My sister stops her car in front of a Chocolate store and waltzes in, her giant purse dragging behind her. I stop in the alley next to the building and there are a few bums dressed in old prom dresses, one a lavender spaghetti strapped one that resembles the one I wore junior year. When they open their mouths flute music comes out.
The Chocolate store isn't open so whomever was behind the door let her in. There is a flip doggy door by my feet but it's shaped like a small person. I know I can get my shoulders through it if I dislocate one but the pain would render me blind for 30 seconds. My mind is racing and the flute music is getting louder.
I do it quick, close to the door and shove my body through, only white light guiding me. I can smell the rich decadency and it allows me to focus on something else besides the pain. Once I stand in the store I hit my head on something and hear my sister swear. My vision is restored and I find the hardest surface in which to pop my arm back into place.
I twist around to see my sister talking with a tall man, maybe 6'7", bald, dressed in a protective suit, either for extensive cold or space travel. He acknowledges me only briefly before he rings a tiny hand bell. Forms similar to the flip door come out of the hallway behind my sister and the tall man. They are holding mugs of hot chocolate. The smell is intoxicating.
Each form smells like my mother, or my grandmother, or my childhood home. One smells like an old cocker spaniel my neighbors had when I was a kid. One smells like the pines of Wyoming in the Wind River Range. Another form is singing early 90's country music from my youth, Clint Black, Kathy Mattea, Reba McEntire. Another is speaking in my grandfather's voice, a man who's been dead for 15 years. They are all holding the chocolate, presenting it to me. My sister and the tall man disappear down the hallway.
"Why, it's so early, Amanda," one form says, placing the cup in my hand, "you've forgotten to put on shoes." The others laugh, laugh in the voices of my family, long lost friends, and acquaintances that have left their stain. All is familiar to me in a way that the rows of chocolate bars and dangling streamers from the ceiling melt away and I am left on a purple, daffodil yellow, and sky blue cloud with these forms.
A warmness rides over my body from my scratched up feet to the tips of my cold fingers. My whole body is radiating and the constant pain in my lower back dissapates and I'm left only wanting to sleep. The forms fade away and a green hippo swims up to me and opens his mouth wide. I open my mouth wide but I make no sound. Am I lost forever too?
A flicker of red catches my attention behind the wide mouth of this graceful beast. He is wearing the earrings with the turquoise skulls and deep red roses in their eyes. My goodness, this hippo is covered with my jewelry! The sense of urgency slows down as I inventory the cheap bracelet I got next to the Notre Dame, the leather cuff from my college days, the green Marge Simpson necklace I bought in Australia, the silver bracelet my sister made me that I had to adjust for fit. The bracelet my sister gave me. The bracelet my sister. My sister.
My head is in the hippo's mouth. It's not too bad in here, for some reason he closed around me with such gentleness, knowing full well he could smash my brains like a cantalope. I am back in my blindness and can only think to tickle him on his belly to let me back into the light. He abliges once I get to his padded feet and he all but breaks my eardrums with his laugh when I go behind his ears.
"I'm not your biggest enemy, Amanda," he says, while he shakes off my jewelry. It falls out of the cloud to the ground below.
I look at the hippo, a silly grin upon his face. He steps back into a soft, red velvet chair and lights a cigarette. He pulls one out for me wrapped in green paper. "Leaving so soon?" he says.
I step off the cloud.
I land into a giant pair of pants and the fabric wraps around me, eventually forming into a suit. It looks similar to the one the tall man was wearing before. My fallen jewelry is strewn about, only it is embedded into the ground and the beads and chains are sprouting, multiplying up to the sky. I pull them up by their roots and they return to me in normal form. This angers the ground and the tall man appears instantly before me.
"You were the one who got drunk and said your sister could take your jewelry." He is wearing the gypsy italian dangly earrings through each nostril. His eyes are the color of dried blood. "You're a junky, just like us."
My heart leaps up into my throat. "Where is my sister?"
"She's long gone on what I traded to her." He scratches his year, only to reveal the red coral necklace my mom got me in Hawaii around his wrist. There is an awkward silence. "Most of what she gave me was garbage anyway."
The anger washes my skin to white, like a newly stretch canvas. I look at the jewelry in my hand. "Maybe you are right about it being garbage, but it's my garbage." I slink to the floor and start to cry again.
The tall man rushes up to me. "What is wrong with you?"
"Oh shut up. My sister gave you a fair trade, didn't she?" I laugh through my tears. "You have what you wanted, now leave me alone."
"Your hand, your arm, they are covered in pictures," he grabs my fingers, stunned, flipping them over and over. "Where is the jewelry?"
"It's right there in my hand, now stop clutching my fingers. Your nails are digging into my skin." I stand up. "How do I get back to my car?"
He grabs my shoulders and raises my arms. "The pictures keep changing color." He touches my forearm and his eyes go wide. "Why do I have a chocolate taste in my mouth?" He touches my palm. "Why do I feel sea water on my fingers?" He grabs my shoulders. "When I wear the jewelry it does nothing." He rips the coral necklace from his wrist, the tiny pieces hitting me. "Your necklace, the pieces sparkle on your skin! Your eyes, they have a black sand beach mirrored in them!"
"I don't know what you're talking about." I replied. I walk down the hallway to the Chocolate store and use the door this time.
"Where are you going?" he cries. I hear the tall man scream a scream I've once heard from my sister - a scream of a junky who's tried it all with no drug in sight to get him high.
The sun is fully out when I find my car. The bums are dressed in athletic pants, laughing and giggling about the after prom party. I drive my car to my apartment and park it behind the maintenance van.
I walk to the ocean and through the sea air and the sound of the slate grey waves a mature woman with long blond hair appears, a green jewel on her nose. She opens a small pouch and dumps the contents in her hands.
"Care to look at my necklaces? They are handmade and a good price."
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)A sustained present tense is tough to do-well done - a single slip (I replied). most shift tense frequently when trying present. Images are Wonderlandish. Insanity, hint of alcoholism and addiction is good. Strengthen theme. Very good effort. Looks like it was fun and satisfying to do.Yes, Jack, you're correct - I read it today and thought the theme needed to be stronger. Thank you for the comments!
Wow Amanda I really enjoyed the read. It was gripping and interesting. Thank you fr sharing
Keep well
KacyCool - that was what I wanted to hear. Thank you.
Lucid dreams of such 3-D vividness reveal and betray that a strong Negative Thought Entity is within your energies broadcasting these images, seeking sanctuary within you, astrally residing within these lifelike surreal images; they have astounding psychic prowess and here, act as your muse.
This psychic vampire monster has succeeded in inspiring your writing to such a level of excellence as to make any writer jealous of your gift.
(Such "muses" who feed from your chakras energy, though hard to dislodge, are best cast off.)
Genius abounds in this article, within the genre of, "Surreal Realism"; I sound like the back of a matchbook cover selling a writing course, but you have the real thing!
Much affection,
PaulWow, now those comments are a full course meal. I hope I can savor them for a while.
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