Dream fragment
Danief is the one we’re battling. I know him for evil and powerful, though he’s been kind to me. SHE is good, and powerful, and insane. She’s been torturing people to death since she went crazy.
The victim - I don’t know. Loved her, perhaps bedded her, and now he’s dying.
Danief was holed up in a room, an apartment, or suite. At least part of the space he was using was mine, my bedroom. He was asleep and we came in. Sable started gathering up the papers from my bed. They looked like newspapers. She took them away to look for clues to what he was doing so we could fight him. I lay down on the bed and was taking things from under it, looking at them. One was a small sculpture, some kind of animal, possibly a tiny concrete origami crane, a là Ursula Vernon. One was a rectangular wicker box my mind ID’s as a picnic hamper. Oh, wait - the animal was an animated (plastic?) gryphon, we needed it. It has to fly out to get what we need to win, but we don’t know where it has to go. The box is some kind of a map; there’s a verse that tells how to read the map but I don’t understand it and now it’s gone from my mind. I know where to start, and the gryphon needed to cross some kind of square (iambic or ionic or something like that)and if it transversed (?) the distance upwards we’d get one kind of help, downwards another. But if it made the journey at all we’d get the help.
Danief was asleep or unconscious in the next room. I didn’t know he was awake until he spoke from the other room, asking me where the other person was, who came with me and took the papers. I tell him she’s sleeping. Edged banter ensues. He questions my explanation that I’ve come here from a desire to sleep in my own bed but acknowledges that I’ve slept in it with him before (although nothing in this exchange leads me to believe we are either lovers or friends). He comes into the room and is either scantily clad or naked (clad, I think. I don’t remember noticing genitalia.) He’s bleeding from dozens of cuts, on his arms, chest, and face. Some are only scratches but some are still oozing blood and seem very deep. He doesn’t seem to notice them.
We talk. I don’t remember what we said, either of us. He takes me through a doorway and down some stairs to where SHE is torturing someone.
“Would you save him?” she cries, “Help him die!”
I reach for the wound at his groin, the ruin of his manhood. My hands are covered in his blood, scalding hot and still flowing.
Danief pulls a black knife from somewhere, thrusts it in one of his own wounds, re-opening the wound and coating the knife with blood. He holds the knife out to me. I (know, believe) he wants me to pour the blood in my hands onto the knife, but I grasp the blade, and when he pulls it away it’s covered in my blood as well. He flings the knife, and it passes through her with a flash, landing on the floor beyond, now shining like light made into glass. She is gone like a soap bubble folding into the air, and like a soap bubble some rag of essence floats for a moment and falls.
He bounds across the intervening space and stands staring down at where it landed, “Clean that up” he snaps, and I follow him to see a tiny damp spot on the floor. With my bloody left hand I lay a handprint over it, wiping the blood in a counter-clockwise circle. When I lift my hand from the floor, there’s something ambiguous in it - a gem as clear as water or a coin-sized disk so dark it looks like a hole in my hand, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s both.
The blood, our mixed blood, has power - when my hand is cut I feel the burn of that power like whiskey up your nose. Part of the power comes from who we are but part comes from our number and part comes from the roles we play, innocent sacrifice, unwilling victim, unlikely hero.
The thing in my hand after I wipe the blood on the floor, I hide from him. The floor is clean where I wiped the blood, turning to a smooth pale grey stone with crystal veins running through it. (marble? Never saw any like this!)
It was filthy when we came in but as action progresses beyond that moment the section of floor I wiped with blood spreads, as though it were a puddle of clean. I sense that it has limits. I think all three of us would have had to die for this to engulf the building. I think that when this finishes spreading we’ll have a consecrated circle ten to twelve feet across, not bad for a handful of blood.
I also retrieve his knife. It was black when he drew it; now it is so clear it’s hard to see. I don’t know if this is because it killed her or because of our blood or both.
An image comes to my mind of touching him, smearing the blood remaining on my hands across his wounds and healing them, of tiptoeing to kiss him. I turn around to find he has untied the victim and is cradling him in his arms. He looks at me as if he knows what I’m thinking, and he’s amused by it. There’s something else there, too - regret? Anger? I can’t tell. He turns away, headed for the stairs we came down. I look at my hands and my wounds are closed, the blood and the moment gone. I follow him out.
¬¬
Was there potential in that moment? Yes, but for what I don’t know. Could I have healed him, saved him, redeemed him, if I’d had the courage? Or would I just have fallen? And what did we accomplish in that room? I believe the victim is dead; he wasn’t bleeding any more. (Then again, neither was I.) HE seems unchanged; SHE’s gone, and who can say whether we redeemed her with her death and the manner of it or just banished her? There was no body; is she even dead? The room no longer “feels” evil and the knife has transformed, but into what? I have the object from the floor, but what good is it? WHAT is it? Did he tell me to clean up knowing I’d find it? Does he know or sense I have it? Does he even know it exists?
I think we are still adversaries but this venture changes some dynamic between us in some ambiguous way. Why take the body of the victim? Is there something I left behind in the room? I have the ambiguous object and the knife; seems like there should be two or three other things. The ropes the victim was tied with, maybe? Something leaning in a corner? Whatever it is, I don’t think I have it.
The victim - I don’t know. Loved her, perhaps bedded her, and now he’s dying.
Danief was holed up in a room, an apartment, or suite. At least part of the space he was using was mine, my bedroom. He was asleep and we came in. Sable started gathering up the papers from my bed. They looked like newspapers. She took them away to look for clues to what he was doing so we could fight him. I lay down on the bed and was taking things from under it, looking at them. One was a small sculpture, some kind of animal, possibly a tiny concrete origami crane, a là Ursula Vernon. One was a rectangular wicker box my mind ID’s as a picnic hamper. Oh, wait - the animal was an animated (plastic?) gryphon, we needed it. It has to fly out to get what we need to win, but we don’t know where it has to go. The box is some kind of a map; there’s a verse that tells how to read the map but I don’t understand it and now it’s gone from my mind. I know where to start, and the gryphon needed to cross some kind of square (iambic or ionic or something like that)and if it transversed (?) the distance upwards we’d get one kind of help, downwards another. But if it made the journey at all we’d get the help.
Danief was asleep or unconscious in the next room. I didn’t know he was awake until he spoke from the other room, asking me where the other person was, who came with me and took the papers. I tell him she’s sleeping. Edged banter ensues. He questions my explanation that I’ve come here from a desire to sleep in my own bed but acknowledges that I’ve slept in it with him before (although nothing in this exchange leads me to believe we are either lovers or friends). He comes into the room and is either scantily clad or naked (clad, I think. I don’t remember noticing genitalia.) He’s bleeding from dozens of cuts, on his arms, chest, and face. Some are only scratches but some are still oozing blood and seem very deep. He doesn’t seem to notice them.
We talk. I don’t remember what we said, either of us. He takes me through a doorway and down some stairs to where SHE is torturing someone.
“Would you save him?” she cries, “Help him die!”
I reach for the wound at his groin, the ruin of his manhood. My hands are covered in his blood, scalding hot and still flowing.
Danief pulls a black knife from somewhere, thrusts it in one of his own wounds, re-opening the wound and coating the knife with blood. He holds the knife out to me. I (know, believe) he wants me to pour the blood in my hands onto the knife, but I grasp the blade, and when he pulls it away it’s covered in my blood as well. He flings the knife, and it passes through her with a flash, landing on the floor beyond, now shining like light made into glass. She is gone like a soap bubble folding into the air, and like a soap bubble some rag of essence floats for a moment and falls.
He bounds across the intervening space and stands staring down at where it landed, “Clean that up” he snaps, and I follow him to see a tiny damp spot on the floor. With my bloody left hand I lay a handprint over it, wiping the blood in a counter-clockwise circle. When I lift my hand from the floor, there’s something ambiguous in it - a gem as clear as water or a coin-sized disk so dark it looks like a hole in my hand, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s both.
The blood, our mixed blood, has power - when my hand is cut I feel the burn of that power like whiskey up your nose. Part of the power comes from who we are but part comes from our number and part comes from the roles we play, innocent sacrifice, unwilling victim, unlikely hero.
The thing in my hand after I wipe the blood on the floor, I hide from him. The floor is clean where I wiped the blood, turning to a smooth pale grey stone with crystal veins running through it. (marble? Never saw any like this!)
It was filthy when we came in but as action progresses beyond that moment the section of floor I wiped with blood spreads, as though it were a puddle of clean. I sense that it has limits. I think all three of us would have had to die for this to engulf the building. I think that when this finishes spreading we’ll have a consecrated circle ten to twelve feet across, not bad for a handful of blood.
I also retrieve his knife. It was black when he drew it; now it is so clear it’s hard to see. I don’t know if this is because it killed her or because of our blood or both.
An image comes to my mind of touching him, smearing the blood remaining on my hands across his wounds and healing them, of tiptoeing to kiss him. I turn around to find he has untied the victim and is cradling him in his arms. He looks at me as if he knows what I’m thinking, and he’s amused by it. There’s something else there, too - regret? Anger? I can’t tell. He turns away, headed for the stairs we came down. I look at my hands and my wounds are closed, the blood and the moment gone. I follow him out.
¬¬
Was there potential in that moment? Yes, but for what I don’t know. Could I have healed him, saved him, redeemed him, if I’d had the courage? Or would I just have fallen? And what did we accomplish in that room? I believe the victim is dead; he wasn’t bleeding any more. (Then again, neither was I.) HE seems unchanged; SHE’s gone, and who can say whether we redeemed her with her death and the manner of it or just banished her? There was no body; is she even dead? The room no longer “feels” evil and the knife has transformed, but into what? I have the object from the floor, but what good is it? WHAT is it? Did he tell me to clean up knowing I’d find it? Does he know or sense I have it? Does he even know it exists?
I think we are still adversaries but this venture changes some dynamic between us in some ambiguous way. Why take the body of the victim? Is there something I left behind in the room? I have the ambiguous object and the knife; seems like there should be two or three other things. The ropes the victim was tied with, maybe? Something leaning in a corner? Whatever it is, I don’t think I have it.