Aban's Accension

Chapter 18: The Dream II

Chapter 18: THE DREAM II

by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

The formless deep waits. She is dangling over it. She looks down; the tips of her toes are touching it, disappearing into it, yet she feels nothing. A flicking motion to her left grabs her attention away from her toes. She moves her eyeballs left and sees two squishy, ribbed-white bodies undulating towards her along the crests of black silk waves that swirl in rhythm with their movement. Their blurred triangular shapes swim in a straight line towards her, in front of her, the waves moving ahead of them, surrounding her. A second couple hoves into view. Two by two they come. Maggots. She kicks her mass-less feet, trying to rise, to get out of their way and out of the waves that hide the formless deep, but she's stuck, gripped by an unknown force and the niggling thought: does she really want to move? “Aren't they fascinating, these effervescent couples with their soft bodies and hypnotic movement,” a crepuscular wisp whispers into her ear. She stops struggling.

The soft white bodies have now formed a long line of pairs in front of her, the line separating the deep from the unseen fog-like space above them and her. The line of bodies stretches as far back as her eyes can see and keeps growing. Her eyes watch while her mind disengages. It is so easy to disengage, to see them as having nothing to do with her. They're just maggots swimming by. That void beneath her feet, the one sucking at her toes, does not exist.

They turn.

The front of the line is now way past her on her right, so when they turn, they fence her in on her front and right flanks. She tenses, but as her mind is about to re-engage, the end of the line appears, space opens up behind them. She relaxes. They can’t harm her.

Pause.

Another creature materializes. Long and slender and s-shaped, it too is white. But its ribs are black bands, and translucent spikes stick out of each rib in all directions, their tips quivering with drops of venom. She doesn't like that. It doesn't swim in a slow rhythm like the maggots, instead it has many, many tiny feet on the end of many, many tiny straight legs that hustle fast. Toward her. It keeps an even distance from the end of the last maggot, but its eyes, its entire being is focused on her. She shivers. She can no longer pretend that these creatures have nothing to do with her. She wiggles hard, harder. She thrashes, harder and harder, but her feet only treadmill the black silk. The tiny waves she’s creating attract the maggots’ attention. The millipede’s eyes gleam. Fear rises in her throat as the millipede draws near, so near she can see its grinning maw opening for her.

She wakes up.

The sheet beneath her is wet. Her teeth are chattering; her breathing is ragged. She sits up suddenly, hits the floor running, and races downstairs. She skids around the newel post, her right hand acting as a pivot, and stops. She pants, and dizziness draws her head down. Gaining her breath and standing up carefully, she pulls down her grey T-shirt that asks on the front “You want a scripture you can believe in?”, sort of aware that she’s wearing only purple boxers underneath. The back of her T-shirt answers, “Read your dog's eyes.”

Light flickers into the dark hall from the living room.

“Come in Aban,” El says to her out of the light.

Aban walks down the hallway and into the lit living room slowly. El is sitting on the floor in the lotus position in front of the low coffee table; a clay oil lamp sits on top of the table burning a flame that surrounds him with light, throwing the rest of the room in shadow. Abruptly, Aban feels the heat of the night. The oil fills the cloistered air with a sweet scent that sort of smells like the Balsam pines near her home. She lowers herself to the floor gingerly at the end of the coffee table. El doesn’t stir. They sit together in the quiet, eyes toward the steady flame, inhaling the intense fragrance, her T-shirt becoming a part of her skin.

“I had a bad dream,” Aban blurts out.

“Tell me about it,” El encourages.

“I can’t.”

“Telling out the bad makes it lose its intensity. You will not be so afraid Aban. I promise.”

“I...It...It was...” She hugs herself and drops her head. The skin under her chin and the skin of her neck soon cling together.

“You don’t need to be afraid Aban; you’re here with me. The nightmare cannot harm you in the telling.”

Aban shakes her head, her skin rubbing against itself.

“Aban, you must,” he urges.

“No!” she shoots up. “It’s too hot. How can you burn anything? It makes it hotter. It makes everything hotter!” She flees back into the darkness of her space.