(no subject)
Last night was weird.
At around one o'clock in the morning, I finally stopped listening to music and started pretending I am a normal human being who knows how to fall asleep. I didn't, of course. I just kind of lay on my bed cocooned in blankets, at once restless and cold and hopelessly tired. Darkness is pixelated, did you know that? It might just be a sign that I'm going blind, except that I have twenty-twenty.
Anyway, I really couldn't fall asleep so I put Elliot Smith on really quietly and hoped that no one else would hear it and come bother me. I find him extremely soothing especially when I'm not really paying attention to what he's saying. He's like a lullaby on drugs.
Some time later, I was standing on a thin red railing running around the side of a colosseum. I was so high up I couldn't even see the ground below me, everything just deteriorated into cloud. There were thousands of feet for me to fall, but all I could think about was how it was okay, because the ledge I was standing on at the Dresden Dolls concert wasn't even an inch big, so of course I wouldn't fall, this ledge was narrow but not narrow, and surely my balance was impeccable or why would I be there at all?
(The ledge wasn't actually a ledge, in case you are wondering; what it was was two red metal bars spaced a couple of inches apart. )
The sky was gray and misty around the colosseum, but farther away it was inky and dark as obsidian, spangled with stars. Picturesque night, a gorgeous dreamscape. Everything felt safe and surreal,helpless and hazy. I looked over the wall the ledge was on, and into the colosseum. On the other side of the wall, there was another ledge which was arranged of slightly different bars. Staircases shifted and migrated like escalators and Charlie's glass elevator, and on them sat many spectators,though I couldn't see what their blank ceramic gazes were so transfixed with because it to was obscured by dense white mist.
There were guards walking on air and wielding spears, using them like walking sticks. They marched by. They were dressed in black and red and gold, and there were plumes in their hat and there was malice in their eyes. They came in twos and threes. A few stopped to converse; another skittered nimbly to avoid being toppled by one of the stairways.
I could see someone coming my way, walking on the ledge with her arms held out for balance as though she were a bird. Two others followed in her way, looking much less concerned about falling. Their movement hiccuped briefly at the cluster of guards, they exchanged scant words and stark nods, and then they glided closer.
I could tell who they were,then. The one in front was Sophie, behind her Shannon and Osean.
They stopped in front of me, all three staring placidly over the wall that separated us. Finally, Sophie instructed me impatiently to get on the right side, so I climbed clumsily over the wall and lowered myself onto their ledge.
And this point, Shannon and Osean disappeared without warning. They didn't just blink out of existenceexactly, and at the time I am certain they just went back they way they had come, preceding us to what was to become our destination; but in retrospect I am certain they did not. I didn't see them leave, they were just...gone.
Sophie informed me that we would be late.
We began walking around the ledge, towards where Shannon and Osean had supposedly gone. At this point I actually became worried about how damnably precarious the situation was, and began shuffled slowly and staring at my feet. Sophie, a few steps ahead of me, kept pausing and glancing over her shoulder and telling me it was just a little bit farther.
Suddenly the ledge were on did not curve, it went straight,and were at a dead end. I looked over my shoulder and saw the colosseum, and it looked infinitely far away, as far away as reality,even though I knew it was no more than a pirate's plank away.
Perpendicular the part of the ledge we now stood was a set of frail,unstable-looking railings, and a gadgety thing with buttons in neon green and crimson. Sophie stepped forward and punched some of them. A dark,bleak,empty abyss faced us, but something was rising from it: a blur of bright of metal inscrutable by motion. I understood we were taking an elevator somewhere. I understood it was of VITAL IMPORTANCE THAT THE NAME OF THE PLACE WE WERE GOING BE STATED IMMEDIATELY.
The elevator arrived. It bumped the thing we stood on, pitching us forward. Everything went in slow motion. Sophie started to say something,stopped. I was tripping,tumbling,cascading like a waterfall. I should have landed on the floor of the elevator (the elevator didn't have a ceiling,by the way...), but I didn't, because the elevator was already moving, descending,accelerating into darkness, and were falling with it, just a bit behind. But we would never catch up,not ever, because that's what physics tells us.
There was a moment of all-consuming confusion as I watched as if from a bird's eye perspective Sophie and myself summersaulting down until there was no more light to see by. Then comprehension set in, and soon after, the panic. I called out, but the pixelated darkness swallowed my words,muted them,distorted them, and garnished them with an echo. Sophie was on my right, I was certain. When she spoke I could almost see her words, like vague cartoon speech bubbles, but I could hardly understand her. I shouted that WE HADN'T SAID THE PLACE WE WERE GOING, that she HADN'T SAID IT. She said something back to me but I didn't really catch it. Something bright flew by and Sophie spoke loudly now, clearly, somehow miraculously overcoming the oppression of silence, and she sounded stable and scolding like a mother talking to a child:
"We want to go to the first floor, but you can just let us off here. You can let us off here."
But now the assurance was eroding. "STOP!" she yelled, and the darkness dimmed her words again, made her shouts just wide-mouthed whispers. There was no trace of that bright thing any longer as we fell, momentum making my stomach sink and my innards churn.
we're going to fall forever I said, more to myself than to anyone. THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN DO. We've really done it now;we're going to fall forever.
There was so much horror in my weak,stolen voice;it was like I was trying to come to grips with the fact that I had been in a car crash and no longer had any legs. That was just how it felt.
And still,we descended.
Tumbling like acrobats and faster than lightening,down into nothingness as dark and sober and thunder. I understood with pure conviction that we were goingtofallforever. That were lost souls who would still be falling in a million years, in a million more, in a million after the world had ended. That no one would hear us shout, that this was not an elevator with a mechanic to fix it. I tried to imagine what it would be like to fall forever. The emptiness,the repetition, the never ending nightmare. I thought about Alice in the rabbit hole and I thought about eternity, and I imagined, just for a moment, the elevator's next riders staring over the railing and waiting for the elevator to come back up to take them. I saw the look on their clean,innocent faces when they realized it never would, and I felt like my last hope of escape was dwindling as I watched them walk away.
We kept falling.
I kept shouting.
My heart was breaking, my lungs were bursting, my eyes were burning. I was shoutingshoutingshouting. The screaming was like white against the black but I couldn't really see it.
After a while I realized that my eyes were closed, though I didn't remember closing them. Not that it made any difference;it was so black blackblack.
I opened my eyes.
I woke with my eyes open, an assault of gray dawn light shocking me and giving me my breath back. It was so scary. It was the worst dream I've had ever, even worse then the one where I woke up to a pink-shrouded room, looked in the mirror and saw that one of my eyes was missing. It was so fucking lucid, and it just kept goingandgoingandgoing.
*pause to breath*
Anyway, the whole thing made me feel really off all day; and it kind made me feel odd that Sophie was wearing what she had been in that dream. I was also somewhat relieved to see Osean and Shannon because I kept feeling like maybe they were elevator gotten.
Shit, that was long. My humblest of apolagys.
At around one o'clock in the morning, I finally stopped listening to music and started pretending I am a normal human being who knows how to fall asleep. I didn't, of course. I just kind of lay on my bed cocooned in blankets, at once restless and cold and hopelessly tired. Darkness is pixelated, did you know that? It might just be a sign that I'm going blind, except that I have twenty-twenty.
Anyway, I really couldn't fall asleep so I put Elliot Smith on really quietly and hoped that no one else would hear it and come bother me. I find him extremely soothing especially when I'm not really paying attention to what he's saying. He's like a lullaby on drugs.
Some time later, I was standing on a thin red railing running around the side of a colosseum. I was so high up I couldn't even see the ground below me, everything just deteriorated into cloud. There were thousands of feet for me to fall, but all I could think about was how it was okay, because the ledge I was standing on at the Dresden Dolls concert wasn't even an inch big, so of course I wouldn't fall, this ledge was narrow but not narrow, and surely my balance was impeccable or why would I be there at all?
(The ledge wasn't actually a ledge, in case you are wondering; what it was was two red metal bars spaced a couple of inches apart. )
The sky was gray and misty around the colosseum, but farther away it was inky and dark as obsidian, spangled with stars. Picturesque night, a gorgeous dreamscape. Everything felt safe and surreal,helpless and hazy. I looked over the wall the ledge was on, and into the colosseum. On the other side of the wall, there was another ledge which was arranged of slightly different bars. Staircases shifted and migrated like escalators and Charlie's glass elevator, and on them sat many spectators,though I couldn't see what their blank ceramic gazes were so transfixed with because it to was obscured by dense white mist.
There were guards walking on air and wielding spears, using them like walking sticks. They marched by. They were dressed in black and red and gold, and there were plumes in their hat and there was malice in their eyes. They came in twos and threes. A few stopped to converse; another skittered nimbly to avoid being toppled by one of the stairways.
I could see someone coming my way, walking on the ledge with her arms held out for balance as though she were a bird. Two others followed in her way, looking much less concerned about falling. Their movement hiccuped briefly at the cluster of guards, they exchanged scant words and stark nods, and then they glided closer.
I could tell who they were,then. The one in front was Sophie, behind her Shannon and Osean.
They stopped in front of me, all three staring placidly over the wall that separated us. Finally, Sophie instructed me impatiently to get on the right side, so I climbed clumsily over the wall and lowered myself onto their ledge.
And this point, Shannon and Osean disappeared without warning. They didn't just blink out of existenceexactly, and at the time I am certain they just went back they way they had come, preceding us to what was to become our destination; but in retrospect I am certain they did not. I didn't see them leave, they were just...gone.
Sophie informed me that we would be late.
We began walking around the ledge, towards where Shannon and Osean had supposedly gone. At this point I actually became worried about how damnably precarious the situation was, and began shuffled slowly and staring at my feet. Sophie, a few steps ahead of me, kept pausing and glancing over her shoulder and telling me it was just a little bit farther.
Suddenly the ledge were on did not curve, it went straight,and were at a dead end. I looked over my shoulder and saw the colosseum, and it looked infinitely far away, as far away as reality,even though I knew it was no more than a pirate's plank away.
Perpendicular the part of the ledge we now stood was a set of frail,unstable-looking railings, and a gadgety thing with buttons in neon green and crimson. Sophie stepped forward and punched some of them. A dark,bleak,empty abyss faced us, but something was rising from it: a blur of bright of metal inscrutable by motion. I understood we were taking an elevator somewhere. I understood it was of VITAL IMPORTANCE THAT THE NAME OF THE PLACE WE WERE GOING BE STATED IMMEDIATELY.
The elevator arrived. It bumped the thing we stood on, pitching us forward. Everything went in slow motion. Sophie started to say something,stopped. I was tripping,tumbling,cascading like a waterfall. I should have landed on the floor of the elevator (the elevator didn't have a ceiling,by the way...), but I didn't, because the elevator was already moving, descending,accelerating into darkness, and were falling with it, just a bit behind. But we would never catch up,not ever, because that's what physics tells us.
There was a moment of all-consuming confusion as I watched as if from a bird's eye perspective Sophie and myself summersaulting down until there was no more light to see by. Then comprehension set in, and soon after, the panic. I called out, but the pixelated darkness swallowed my words,muted them,distorted them, and garnished them with an echo. Sophie was on my right, I was certain. When she spoke I could almost see her words, like vague cartoon speech bubbles, but I could hardly understand her. I shouted that WE HADN'T SAID THE PLACE WE WERE GOING, that she HADN'T SAID IT. She said something back to me but I didn't really catch it. Something bright flew by and Sophie spoke loudly now, clearly, somehow miraculously overcoming the oppression of silence, and she sounded stable and scolding like a mother talking to a child:
"We want to go to the first floor, but you can just let us off here. You can let us off here."
But now the assurance was eroding. "STOP!" she yelled, and the darkness dimmed her words again, made her shouts just wide-mouthed whispers. There was no trace of that bright thing any longer as we fell, momentum making my stomach sink and my innards churn.
we're going to fall forever I said, more to myself than to anyone. THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN DO. We've really done it now;we're going to fall forever.
There was so much horror in my weak,stolen voice;it was like I was trying to come to grips with the fact that I had been in a car crash and no longer had any legs. That was just how it felt.
And still,we descended.
Tumbling like acrobats and faster than lightening,down into nothingness as dark and sober and thunder. I understood with pure conviction that we were goingtofallforever. That were lost souls who would still be falling in a million years, in a million more, in a million after the world had ended. That no one would hear us shout, that this was not an elevator with a mechanic to fix it. I tried to imagine what it would be like to fall forever. The emptiness,the repetition, the never ending nightmare. I thought about Alice in the rabbit hole and I thought about eternity, and I imagined, just for a moment, the elevator's next riders staring over the railing and waiting for the elevator to come back up to take them. I saw the look on their clean,innocent faces when they realized it never would, and I felt like my last hope of escape was dwindling as I watched them walk away.
We kept falling.
I kept shouting.
My heart was breaking, my lungs were bursting, my eyes were burning. I was shoutingshoutingshouting. The screaming was like white against the black but I couldn't really see it.
After a while I realized that my eyes were closed, though I didn't remember closing them. Not that it made any difference;it was so black blackblack.
I opened my eyes.
I woke with my eyes open, an assault of gray dawn light shocking me and giving me my breath back. It was so scary. It was the worst dream I've had ever, even worse then the one where I woke up to a pink-shrouded room, looked in the mirror and saw that one of my eyes was missing. It was so fucking lucid, and it just kept goingandgoingandgoing.
*pause to breath*
Anyway, the whole thing made me feel really off all day; and it kind made me feel odd that Sophie was wearing what she had been in that dream. I was also somewhat relieved to see Osean and Shannon because I kept feeling like maybe they were elevator gotten.
Shit, that was long. My humblest of apolagys.