I arrived into another world. Passing through a busy market place, dust at my barren feet.
Animal hides hanging everywhere for sale, their colour mixing with the colour of the sand and the sun.
When I met him, he smiled at me, with warmth and just a dash of lust and said my body is perfect.
Just as I started to feel that same smile spreading from inside of me to my lips, he explained:
“Perfect. For a death mask”. I didn’t know things are so different in this world.
I didn’t know a woman’s death is glory. The Great Leader chose with regularity one with a perfect body to be sacrificed. Women, dried to parchment, their skins spread like animal hides, each framed into a horrifying picture. There was hierarchy too, the closer the picture to the Great Leader, the more valuable.
He promised to value me low, so my dried death mask gets tossed away and he can keep me. This way, we would stay together forever. He would sit below my painting, below me and sip his drink. He said, with the same smile. I tried to explain that I’d love that very much, if only I could be alive. I’d love for us to be together forever, but I can only enjoy it if I am alive.
He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand why I don’t want to die now in order to be with him forever.
I don’t know how I got back to my world, all I know that now, years later I saw him again. I was passing through the market place, holding the tiny hands of my children. I caught his eye and he gave me a forgiving smile. He still didn’t understand, but he no longer wanted to take me back to that horrible world, where life must be exchanged for eternal love. What a horrible bargain. I hate market places.
Ok, I know this was very weird, but it was a dream and I had to get it out of my head. and my life. ugh.
4 comments:
I thought this was beautiful.
It reminded me of a group of Italian writers from the late XIX century for which I had a juvenile obsession. Their movement was called 'La Scapigliatura', which barely translates into 'Messy Hairdo'.
Their most important writer, Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, wrote a series of fantastic stories and poems, all revolving around the themes of love, death and mental derangement. In one of his most famous poems he sings the beauty of the beloved one he's kissing, only to remark that her beauty is a pale shroud covering her skull and skeleton, the object of his desire.
You would have made an excellent couple...
Wow. This was beautiful and disturbing.
What did you eat before bed and perhaps you should eat more of it? It is lovely stuff. Not for you maybe but for us.
Heidi
I'm glad that my mentally disturbing images scored me an imaginary date with a XIX century writer! :)
i will not post my last nightmare though, it could score me a forced hospitalisation. or free drugs from my friends..:) anyone? Bueller? anyone?
you've slacked off a bit here kabutzy dearest
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