Dreams and Magic

The night was hot, the air thick, still, and muggy with moisture, the kind of night most people close up their houses against the thick air, and hide in a bubble of air conditioned comfort.  The room, unfortunately, was not lucky enough to have that luxury.  The ancient, decrepit curtains hung limp and still in the window frames, daring the non-existent breeze to finish their transference from cloth to dust.  The breeze did not appear inclined to acquiesce.

Age and neglect had its claws deep in the room, almost daring the normal world to condemn it.   The ancient carpet bore witness to parties long past, flaunting countless patches of crusty, unidentifiable, blue-black, once-upon-a-time food stains.  Sprinkled liberally amongst the stains were unmistakable circular black burns, testament that those parties of long ago didn’t have enough ashtrays to go around, and that the participants of those parties didn’t have a care in the world about getting their cleaning deposit back.  Equally prevalent were bare patches where multitudes of feet had eroded the carpeting to the floorboards underneath.  The original color of this sad, time-tortured textile had been winnowed away by dirt and feet to the color of ashes.

            The walls actively rebelled against the pitted, stained, and faded wallpaper by shedding it as a snake discards a too small skin.  Whole sheets had fallen away to crouch on the carpeting, leaving gaping holes of age-yellowed wallboard interspersed with lines of wallpaper paste.

            A tiny table in the corner leaned drunkenly against the wall, threatening complete collapse if forced to hold anything on its chipped surface.  A single, sun-faded green-plastic lawn chair cowered next to the table, trying to appear valiant despite missing half its back.  A ramshackle dresser cowered on the opposite wall of the table, missing its drawers and leaning alarmingly on the three legs it had left.  A moth-eaten, faded blue and green striped mattress lay, corpse-like, in the center of the floor.       

            A single, empty, light socket swung from the ceiling on a frayed cord.  Dimples and water-stains in the surface of the ceiling bore witness to several leaks in the roof.

Kitchen?  Bathroom?  Even the most rudimentary of indoor plumbing?   Not a chance.

            The little one room cabin had been deserted for years, forgotten by its owners, and ignored by its distant neighbors. 

For the sole occupant, it was perfect.

            She lay on the mattress, shivering uncontrollably despite the heat in the room.  Neither awake nor truly asleep, her eyes were rolled back into her head so far only the whites showed.  She thrashed violently on the bare mattress, moaning and muttering in some strange language.  Now and then her arms stretched out, hands grasping some invisible object in front of her or drawing weird patterns in the air.  Her naked, uncovered body was skeletal, ribs and hips protruding from the sunken flesh.  Her skin was linen-white, the blue of her veins clear beneath the surface, her hair the pristine white of new-fallen snow.  A few drops of blood glistened, the shock red sharp against the washed-out pink of her lip.  She had bitten herself in her gyrations. 

            She thrashed, she snarled, she moaned.  She pawed the air relentlessly, and with a final, primal scream, she propelled herself from the mattress on the floor.

            Breathing heavily, she ran her hands through the white mane of her hair, blinking brilliant blue eyes furiously and shaking her head as she paced around the room.  She wiped the blood off her lips, and sighed deeply. 

It was the same dream.  It was always the same dream.

She shook her head again, wrapped her arms around her thin shoulders.  “It’s not enough,” she said in a soft, musical voice, to the disheveled room. “Where are you?  I know what you’ll do, but I can’t find you!” 

She framed something in her hands.  “Tease me all you will, damn you,” she snarled at the invisible object of her ire, “But I will find you!” 

She paced a few moments more, muttering in a strange, foreign tongue, continuing to shake and clutch at her head.  She railed at the water-stained ceiling, at the pitiful remains of furniture, at the sadly abused carpeting, cursing invisible objects for a few moments more, finally coming to a decision.  With a curt nod of her head, she didn’t walk so much as flowed across the floor, and stepped out into the hot, muggy night.

            As difficult as it is to believe, the exterior of the cabin was in worse shape then the sadly-abused interior.  Moonlight, being this magical substance that makes things seem more lovely, didn’t have a chance... the little cabin looked more decrepit in the nighttime then it did during the day.  A thick layer of dust, cobwebs and bug-corpses had replaced the glass in the windows, the roof sagged under the weight of several small trees growing on its surface, and the gutters had long ago leapt from the roof to lay in the waist-high grass, rusting in pieces.  Thick vines had long since declared the time-worn siding optimum trellis material, and in the ensuing years had completely engulfed the tiny structure in leaf, vine, and berry.  

She forced her way through the high grass, her destination a small stream at the extreme rear of the property.  Effortless, she transitioned between mauling the grasses to gliding soundlessly into the clear water.  She scooped handfuls of sand, rubbing them into her hair and her skin, scraping away the dirt and sweat of the night terrors which visited her, rinsing them away as she washed the sand from her porcelain skin. 

But that skin was not flawless.  Five marks marred the pure pearl perfection, strange whorls of patterned scar tissue at breastbone, right and left wrist, base of the throat, and the outside of the left ankle.  The shadows they threw writhed out of time with her breathing and her ministrations.  Satisfyingly clean again, she sat on the soft sand of the streambed, cross-legged right over left, and assumed a traditional meditation pose. 

The moon shoved aside a passing cloud, and kissed her white skin with its radiance.  Unlike its dismal performance with the cabin, the moonlight made her seem to glow, a naked figure carved of pure pearl, there in the crystalline stream on a hot and muggy night.  The wind decided to make an appearance and play with her long hair, and she sat, shining in the stream, a white statue, until the moon tired of the game and passed the baton of time to its partner, the sun.

            She allowed a small smile to lift the corners of her mouth as the dawn’s early light broke in the east, nodded her head, and struggled through the weeds to her little tumbledown hiding place.  She seemed drained, her head lolling to one side, her arms flopping uselessly, but the expression on her face was triumphant.  “Southwest,” she muttered to the weeds, “I have a direction.”

            The following night the cabin slept alone, abandoned once more.