DREAM;
There's a weight on his back. Warm, breathing, alive softthing, bag of bones, flesh sliding off carnivore-white hollow-bones. He stumbles, the weight of it oppressive.
"My son," it-he-she whispers, tiny chipped fingernails digging into his arms.
"I'm not your fucking son," he responds. He's angry. Angry at this bag-of-bones old woman, light as a naked feather. And even now, when nothing really makes sense beyond the quiet fall of brown-red leaves from the trees around them, he knows this anger is irrational.
"I'm so proud of you," she whispers.
"That's really sweet of you," another voice pipes up, and he whirls about, nearly displacing the old woman on his back. "But you'd punch me in the face if I mentioned that to you if we were face-to-face, so I guess I should shut my mouth."
The voice is familiar, and, for some reason, it just makes him angrier.
"I didn't want to leave. I would have been okay if I had just died there, you know. Out there. With your bicycle and your stupid manhwa and the instant meals and the detergent in my hair. I was happy. You were happy. Now --"
It cuts off, and his vision flickers, like an old television set, broken-motorcycle, ramen-by-the-sea, a pretty girl falling from an all too great height, a seagull with its beak dipped into a soda-can, a little brown dog named Crangela that ate pink roses and barked at white ones.
"Now -"
"I'm so proud of you, my son," the hag grins, her spit running coldly down the back of his neck. He's furious.