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indent There were often times in which the sleep of no-dreaming held sway. Darkness, sweet, silent, and complete, ruled over all. Tonight, though, was no such night. He could not remember falling asleep, though it must have occurred sometime in the dark after he had sat outside and smoked in the starlight. His dreams were not things in which he often treads, for they were filled of terrible danger. Yet here it was that tonight he walked, moving through his dreams well aware he was dreaming. The phenomenon was not unknown, not a rarity, nothing unique.
indent The landscape has not changed. He is at the edge of the lake, aware of the snow but no longer feeling it. It is not quite out-of-body, this feeling, but it is close. Perhaps it is what being a ghost is like; and he has seen ghosts and knows they are real, even if he does not accept it. He knows that the secret darkness in his eyes is real but does not accept it either. Denial was the strongest of all the weapons he has wielded. It carried him from his home, across the sea, and back again.
indent None of that matters now. He shuts his eyes, breathes out, and waits. Something will come. It always does.
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He had never been particularly experienced with dreams. Unconsciousness was an uneasy empty void between episodes of cruel and tragic occurrences and rarely anything more. On those evenings when demons possessed his body and puppeted him away, he burrowed into a deep hole of nothingness and was safely isolated from everything -- all the memories and all the feelings and thoughts and other intangible things that nevertheless held him hostage. It was an ironic sanctuary of lies when the truth of the present was so much worse than the past he should just face.
Sleep now was as uneasy as ever though with a daughter nearby and an eerie absence in what had never been predictable. There were shadows in the night; the moon was full and bright, enormous in the black sky so the fresh snow glistened like a sheet of crystals on the ground. Everything looked so goddamn peaceful, but underneath everything was a laughing monster, ready to explode from the ground like a volcano. Or out of the lake like a Loch Ness monster. Laughing. Loch Ness. It was all the same.He could almost feel it trembling beneath his feet. You should stand back, he said quietly, his voice was crisp in the strangely clear night air. There was no fog tonight. Just snow and stars and the crushing moon.
Maybe this was the apocalypse. Again.
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indent It was noise that brought him to reason, noise that made him question the ground he was standing on. Had he been dreaming? Was this real? His eyes opened, both glowing in the darkness, both hiding a blind-demigod that had and still held his hand. Ahren was a puppet, with his faith carved on his chest and his curses carried in the blood. Only one was tangible—the silver emblem around his neck, even now shining like a new star.
indent “What are you doing?” He asked, his voice rough from years of abuse and smoke. Too many nights he had screamed himself hoarse, curse the sky above. The sunspots concerned him. He could not bring back those ruined moments in his memory, drowned in alcohol and drug use. Try as he might, he could never let go of those wounds. He could not fully hide those scars.
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Laruku had no idea who he was talking to. The other red-eyed man in the night could very well have been himself. This was all in his head anyway, right? But if that was really the case, then better to let him lie when the explosion came from the lake and when the waves and hurtling tsunamis came down to crush them. Better to let himself drown. Strangers in a strange land, exactly familiar, but infinitely foreign. All of the trees in their normal place, but taller or shorter, lighter or darker, different somehow. Wonderland had been a dream after all, so this was the place beyond the looking glass where flowers towered over him and pieces of mushrooms extended his neck so long that any passing airplane could slit his scarred up throat.
I'm not doing anything, he told himself, or the demon in the night, or whoever it was standing there with him. But you should stand back. There was more certainty in his voice than he possessed in his entire body; he was a man full of doubt and fears that he had never outgrown as a child even though he told himself that he had. Growing up to be someone he hated was one of those things, maybe. He couldn't remember or he was in denial, which remained with him no matter how much he honestly thought he accepted things. The moon was turning orange, but he hesitated to turn away from the lake. Embrace the madness and the end.
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indent There was hesitation to obey the warning was in part to his own doubt. This was a dream; he should have been able to control things, now that he was aware of it. But…but it wasn’t a dream, was it? Laruku was standing there talking to him, as solid and real as he ever was. He turned away, back to the lake. One moment later he had a cigarette in his hand, and the smoke was taking shape, wrapping around his head and trailing down his arm. The dragon was his father’s, an heirloom that had turned the color of dried blood. Translucent, it followed his motion as he finally retreated from the shore and towards his companion.
indent When they were side by side, Ahren finally spoke.
“This isn’t real,” he said finally, his right eye still glowing, hollow in the night. Perhaps that was Kaena’s mark. He didn’t even know anymore.
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Dreams. He didn't know what dreams were. Reality was a dismal place constructed and sometimes controlled by the monsters in his head, so was this really that different? The world was the same on both sides of the coin with the same ground and air, the same water in the lake, polluted by the bodies of dead children and the ghosts of people that should have never been a part of anything. So then all he had to say was, Nothing's real. And he smiled, faint and soft, half-sincere, but only because he wasn't sure what was and wasn't, or what his intentions were, or who he was. No fog tonight, but he was lost all the same.
His watched the smoke twist around the other like a snake, like a hangman's noose before it became a noose. Someone was laughing, but it wasn't him, and it wasn't just coming from his head this time. He could hear it echoing through the forest like a fucked up fire alarm. Evacuate the premises; shit's going down. The hybrid looked away from the lake and into the darkness of the forest. You're not real, he told his friend (really?), I'm not real. And that's not real. He gestured towards the hollow night. Maybe they weren't in either of their dreams or heads -- maybe it belonged to someone else entirely.
And such Alice had asked the King, is this your dream or mine?
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indent The laughter was so familiar. Ahren lifted his head and stared hard into the night. From around his shoulders the dragon rose, spread its smoke-colored wings wide and bared its teeth. Like a viper it turned from the forest and to Laruku, hissing before it retreated back over its owner’s shoulders. The laughter was that of a madman, a sick laughter. It drew him in, like some magnetizing force. One foot after the other Ahren went, the dragon vanishing as he flicked the cigarette into the air where it spun once, twice, and vanished.
indent At the edge of the wood, the blonde stopped. He turned back, looking towards the scarred figure across the clearing. “Are you coming?” The monster in the forest was his, after all.
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He knew what lay deeper in the forest even though he wasn't sure if he had been there before. It felt like he should have and he knew his memory was more haphazard than most; maybe this was really a reoccuring nightmare, but he didn't know until he woke up. Did he ever remember his dreams? He didn't recall. The world he awoke into wasn't any more real or imagined than this one though, so it didn't matter in the end, did it? Laruku shrugged and followed. Behind him, the water rose slowly from the lake, quietly, like someone was carefully pushing at the center of a strong sheet of cloth. When he forgot about it, the wave would crash down and sweep them deeper into the black and white hell of snow and dead trees.
Has your smoke always turned into dragons? he wondered, caught up with the other red-eyed man now. There were so many things he was oblivious to. And has there ever been a night as clear as this? No fog, no fog. That, more than anything else, disturbed him tonight. There was no shield to cover him from the eyes of the ghosts he had disappointed and the gods he didn't believe in.
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indent Ahren’s right eye remained hollow, blind, burning. He grinned viciously, off-white teeth glistening in the moonlight. He knew the rules of this game, and knew that they were infinite and worthless. Everything could change at the drop of a hat, nothing made sense, this was the shadow realm and they were merely pawns. Somewhere in that forest, above the laughter, below the trees, music was playing. He could barely hear it, but it was there. Around his neck the cursed necklace began to glow without giving off light, and had he been able to feel he might be aware it was burning hot.
indent“Yes,” he said shortly, grin fading, following a path that was not there.
“And I don’t know,” he added, looking up to his companion. Laruku’s scars were white in the starlight. One of the trees moved, a branch curling into a claw, a face twisting out of the wood. Ahren didn’t spare it a glance—he knew it was there. He knew what he was walking into.
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Three red eyes in the night, one blind, smoldering black like the woman who had given them both a litter and like the man that -- there were a thousand ways to finish that sentence, each as unpleasant and bittersweet as the next. A bad taste in his mouth and a taboo on his tongue; the waves rose higher behind him, but he wasn't looking anymore. The trees were like plastic cards in an endless deck -- tricks and traps, every last one of them and he drew the same hand over and over, a full house of tarots met the dawn with three dead bodies and two sobbing survivors.
The laughter was his own, even if it wasn't coming from his searing throat full of fire and brimstone. He didn't recognize the face in the wood, but that didn't matter. There were a lot of things that didn't have faces and it could belong to any one of them, or someone else's demons. Was the forest his? Or was it the lake? Or both and all and he and the blonde were the same person in the end when they'd both wake screaming into the night, cold and alone. He thought he spoke, but no words were there. He turned around and saw himself, blinked, and then was gone.
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indent Within that moment, Ahren’s eyes shut and reopened, whole and his own again. Their shared lover was a ghost, a demon, she was nothing here and so she was gone. He turned, suddenly aware that he was alone. This forest was deeper and darker then any men dared walk, and there was ancient evil here. In an instant his eyes sparked once and were contained, a smoldering ember glow that was as bright and deadly as the dawn. Below his feet, the earth was turning, but he didn’t feel it. His feet were beginning to loose their form, become transparent as the dragon had done.
indent Around his neck, the ring burned. The fourth player had not yet made his presence known.
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He was a demon, but merely a representation of everything wretched thing that had crossed the other's path? No, he was more than that, more, even, than everything that he had ever considered filthy and wrong, more than a personal monster that hid in a very specific closet. He was more than that, or could be. He was a thief, a liar, an angel in the fire, and had became a drug, a push that came to shove, to shove, to shove. The Cheshire grin faded in from the cracking wood and he stepped out from the solid mass as the other began to lose his grip on their current reality, just as Laruku had, for demons and their masterslaves could not be present at the same time, now could they?
But rough hands pulled the other man forward, Where're you banishing yourself to there, baby? Without the grin, he was the sad and lonely alpha; without it, he was a nothing and a nobody, a simpering coward underneath the coming waves. He would break free from it some day, crush the other between his fingers and take everything for his own. Or maybe he could possess another body after all. He laughed, the same laugh that had been echoing through the forest, This isn't a dream. This was just his world.
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indent Here came the third, a tomcat grin and yowl, all puffed up fur and teeth. The forest was still laughing, still breathing. Somewhere far behind them to the south a fire had started. It was small yet, but it would grow in time. It would crash together with that tide and they would destroy each other. Maybe that was all they needed. Maybe the end of the world was just another metaphor, like everything else they did.
indent It was the touch that caused a reaction. Ahren’s eyes, glowing in the dark, lost their pupils. Suddenly he was blind, but all seeing. His hands moved with the speed of a viper, striking out and casting away the hands on his body. Two steps back, the necklace was glowing, his hands were open and low, claws ready to strike and bring about the end of days. When he spoke, the voice was not his own. “Everything is a dream,” he said, taking another step to the side, as if he intended to circle and strike the grinning man down.
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He cackled madly as the other jumped back and tensed for a fight. Is it? he crooned in his buttered up voice as his wild grin glowed in the moonlight. The demon tossed his head back and his grin melted into a sneer. In the same breath, the ground beneath them began to shake and he shot up off the ground, five times his previous height and towering in the sky. From there, he could see that the rising waters had floated to a height even greater than that -- it encompassed the entire northern horizon so that it was no longer there, it teetored dangerously, ready to fall with the waters of a thousand planets, ready to crush them into a black hole.
He knelt down and made to grab the remaining red-eyed little man, voice booming loudly in the forest now, And is this you dreaming of me then, baby, or is it more complicated than that? Of course it was. Up in the sky, he had seen the fire too. This was bigger than the two of them, the four of them, the five and six, maybe. Maybe this was all the wretched goods and evils of a planet's entire life compacted into a second time, but it would be arrogant to think that, wouldn't it? This was the shadow place of their dreams and realities. This was where they would die.
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indent He could feel the ground shake, feel it change, and the demon was a giant, the demon had him in his hand. Ahren jerked once and found he could not break the crushing weight. And then, as the scarred demon spoke, something changed. When he looked up next, he was grinning, then he was laughing madly, laughing louder then ever, his head back and his dreadlocks spilling over his face. His head turned down, the blind eyes turned to the giant, and he could not remove that grin from his face. Slowly, his body began to vanish, one piece after another, feet and hands and arms and then all that was left was the tattoo on his chest, his eyes, the cursed necklace, and then they were gone as well.
indent The wind howled, the fire was spiraling into the sky, and suddenly the stars had shifted and changed. Two bright red-yellow burned a hole in the night and a figure without a body, something made of shadow and darkness that hid the stars, it moved in the sky like some great and ancient dragon. And the laughter, an ancient laughter older then either of them, continued. “It’s far bigger then you, Ryoujoku Ame,” the voice that was not his own said, coming from all directions at once.
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They were infinite. As beings, as creatures of thought, as insignificant specks looking up at the dazzling night sky, as ants crawling in the dirt beneath their trembling feet and falling into the tiny cracks left in between grains of sand. They were infinite like the abandoned highways that stretched on across the dying wastelands like blackened veins, carrying the ghosts of dust and smog to all the corners that man had touched with his withering fingers and at the end of these roads, there were heaps of bodies and skulls propped haphazardly on wooden rods, the edges of the planet, but even there, infinite. Their laughter was the same, full of madness and shadows. They were bigger than themselves was all because infinity was forever.
You too, darlin', he whispered into the roaring night full of fire and waves; the grin never left his face, but he was fading too, like the cat into the forest -- slowly and piece by piece, just like the other, until there was nothing left but the haunting rows of shining white teeth clamped together to form that wicked smile. You too. And there was the clash of thunder and a howling scream, a banshee and a warrior all at once as the sky split down the middle to reveal absolutely nothing. The tsunami was crashing down now, crushing tons of water to drown the spitting flames, or were there enough flames to boil all the oceans into the fog that had been missing all night?
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indent The giant faded, the sky was torn open, the stars fell, and the dragon (who was not a dragon) was gone. Ahren sat bolt upright, his eyes opening wide in the darkness. He could not see it, but the glow, the ember glow of a being whose name was blasphemy to speak, remained. Without thinking, he half-stumbled from his bed, moving away from this place, moving out and into the cold, empty night. He walked without knowing where he was going, but he had known all along.
indent At the shore of the lake, where the fog began to creep out and settle around his feet, he stopped. He struck a match, lit a cigarette, and took a deep breath. When he exhaled, there was no dragon. There was no sense of anything except the cold under his feet and the sound of wind through the trees.
indent And that filled him with quiet reason.
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It was cold underground, even if the hard dirt walls kept the winds away. But he was being smothered by a thousand worn blankets when he awoke, shuddering at the pressure pressing against the back of his head. Red eyes and a never-fading grin, well and alive in his mind, just as he had always known. His arms curled around himself even though they felt like they were burning. He opened his eyes because shadows lurked behind his eyelids and the quiet den offered him nothing but blackness. But it was easy to lose himself in that abyss too and so he forced himself to his feet, dragged himself silently above ground to meet the bitter and howling winds.
He wandered because it kept him awake, just like all those other endless nights that he had walked through because unconsciousness brought the demon to life. It was the same, even now, even if nothing seemed to have leaked out of his own mind. But there was a man at the lake, just as there had been before. So maybe this was still the same crazy mindfuck and he hadn't really broken free. There was no fog tonight and the sky was clear and full of stars. The hybrid shook his head and turned around without approaching. Reality and the dreams. It was all the same.
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