A Kiss and a Key

King Peridor stepped out of the dream and closed the door behind him.

A thief he was, stealing from his own daughter’s mind. He ought to feel ashamed, but he didn’t. His parents, after all, had done the same to him.

He left her room and walked out into the garden. Everything stood silent, awaiting sunrise. This seemed like a good spot. He unbuttoned his coat pocket and removed his prize, a winged tiger six inches from snout to tail tip. “Fly!” he said, tossing the figurine into the air.

Someday she’ll understand, he thought as he watched the beast expand, snarl, then turn and flap away beyond the walls, never to return.

Lizette woke feeling as if she had somehow misplaced something of great value. At breakfast she popped grapes between her teeth and got scolded, just like usual. She ate too much bread and jam and not enough eggs and got scolded for that as well. But strangely these transgressions failed to fill her with the usual glee.

Her mother started to ask her what she’d dreamed, but her father interrupted. A look passed between them. Lizette sensed that a story was being told, but not to her. It started, like all stories, with ‘once upon a time.’ But Lizette suspected there would never be a ‘happily ever after.’

“You could have taken anything!” the queen hissed when they were alone. “The mermaid, the teapot, the raven knight.”

“No,” he said, “I couldn’t. The contract is clear. I had to honor it.”

He had told her the story long ago. She had listened, looking into his eyes. And yet she had still agreed to marry him. Did that make her a monster?

Every morning Lizette shared her dreams over the breakfast table, and the queen understood that one of them would be taken from her. But had she known it would be the one her daughter loved best?

Yes, if the truth were told, she had. It was in the contract.

Lizette found her mother in the sewing room. Questions roiled inside her. Why had her nights turned empty? Was it something she had done? Would her dreams ever come back?

“Mother?” she began.

“Yes, dear?”

But she couldn’t ask. An invisible line stood between them, an unraveled thread, never to be stitched together again. So another question came out instead.

“Can I have a new dress for the winter ball? My old ones are all so shabby.”

These are the kinds of conversations that passed between them, not a word about dreams, not that day or the next, nor that year, nor the year after.

“So,” said a voice, “you are to be married.”

“Am I?” said the woman. She looked around to see who had spoken and spotted through the trees a knight in armor, half hidden in shadow.

“That’s the rumor,” he said, his voice rough but not unkind.

Was she in fact getting married? She thought it over. It sounded right and yet she couldn’t picture the groom.

The figure stepped closer. He had the head of a bird with dark feathers and dark beak, and she recognized him at once, though she hadn’t seen him in many years. “Knight of Ravens!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been hiding all this time?”

He ignored her question, his dark eyes searching hers. “I always thought,” he said, “that you might marry me.”

His name was Harmen. Standing there, holding his hand as they said their vows, Lizette felt warm and happy all over. But as they kissed, she found her mind wandering. A tide seemed to pull her in a different direction.

That night, hungrily, he undressed her. But she pushed him away.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I’m just tired,” she said. “Tomorrow.”

Anger flashed across his face, but he let it go.

And truly she was tired. More tired than she could ever remember. She turned from him and closed her eyes. Almost at once, she heard the lap of waves.

The woman walked along the path until she came to the lagoon. Waves washed the rocks. Washing, always washing. Weren’t they clean by now?

A head appeared above the water, hair as dark as the depths, eyes bright. The woman waded in up to her knees. “Didn’t we used to play together?” she asked.

The mermaid slipped closer and took her hands, drawing her in. “Yes, we did. But we were younger then.”

They swam out to where the water was calm. “There’s something I need to tell you,” said the mermaid, but the woman knew what it was without needing to hear the words. She ran a hand through that dark hair, then kissed the mermaid like she’d never kissed anyone before or ever would again, the salt of her lips tasting as sweet to her as raw honey.

After her son’s sixth birthday, her father, King Peridor, summoned Lizette to his library. They sat in armchairs, surrounded by ancient tomes. Around his neck he wore a key on a silver chain.

“I should have told you sooner,” he said.

“What?”

“The Sultana of Dreams has many children,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “Some are kind, but some are gruesome nightmares. An ancestor of ours slew one of these.”

Lizette clutched the armrests of her chair. This was the tale she had needed to hear.

Slowly, the king removed the chain and placed it in her hands. “For that crime we must pay a high price, every generation.”

“I sat by my boy’s bedside, key in hand,” she said, “but I couldn’t open that door.”

“The sultana will not easily forgive such a transgression,” said the Knight of Ravens.

“I know,” answered the woman, “and that’s why I have to travel to the alcázar and renegotiate our contract.”

“It is a long way.”

“Yes,” she said, “but I have to go.”

The knight gazed at her with his dark raven eyes. “Fortunately,” he said, “you need not go alone.”

Dream Log

Dream Log – May 7

The sun is jelly-red & my body alights with the heat. I scoop out what I trust is sunscreen with cupped hands, trying to rub it into my arm-skin. I turn around into a room with two large windows. I can see stacks of furniture outside – from my childhood bedroom & my college dorm & my current apartment – swaying in the plangent wind. I try to lower the blinds but they snag, then get twisted & caught in a heap of lopsided mess. I continue lining my skin & wrapping myself with anything I can grab: blankets, towels, cake frosting, cling film. I build this cocoon, my temporary sepulchre, until I cannot see the windows & my mind fades like when the surgeon says to count backwards from 100. Soon it’s purple-black & I know that when I wake from my metamorphosis, the windows will be clear & the furniture will be gone & my consecrated undoing will be over.

Dream Log – August 1

Another Easter egg hunt. Surrounding us are a half-dozen veterinarians – in the trees, grass, shrubs. They tend gently to the sparrows & squirrels & chipmunks. I stand on the porch and throw eggs into the crowd; that’s what these Easter egg hunts entail lately. I’m dating a man. He’s beside me watching the children & eggs & creatures & vets. I ask a few questions, trying to gauge his name or job. I try to peer into his eyes or glance at his mouth but he’s too tall & now that I can’t see his face, I can’t even remember what it looks like.

Dream Log – August 16

I am chased by a tiger-lion morphed animal. A mane, lots of stripes, stalking, running. I slow the tiger-lion down, slip a silk-lead around its neck & tame it. In the morning I catch snakes & share my ice cream with him. My skin hardens to be an animal mother, I become webbed, scaled, thick & green. But my heart beats freely; my soul’s still human. We let the lion free in the yard but he becomes so sad that my children convince me to release him back into the savannah. Years pass: we dig irrigation ditches & plant & sleep & build museums for ourselves. We return to the savannah after a decade of parting with tiger-lion & I know it will be like that Youtube video where the lion remembers those old British men. But this time, my tiger-lion forgets us. I am clawed & my red-heart fades, my thick skin pierced through. My daughter startles me awake. She is sobbing & between heaves says, “Mama I don’t want you to be a watermelon anymore.”

Regrets of an Immortal

You have lived past your Sell Buy Date. There are consequences. You cannot remember everywhere you have been, or everyone. And you still haven’t decided whether you want to go or stay. After all this time the self is a problem you cannot solve.

You are 70. You are 140. You are 210. You are at least some multiple of 70, perhaps. You lost track a long time ago. You stopped counting when people stopped showing up for your birthdays. Maybe it’s a number you don’t really want to know.

Immortality was invented by the young because they were terrified of getting old. They were afraid of the wrinkles, the shrinkage, the loss of love, the daily anonymity. You, who were already old, had long been resigned to your condition. But somehow the treatments got out. Life almost eternal arrived in something you ate. It wasn’t something you would have ever asked for.

Just as it was when you were an infant, faces are often interchangeable. That woman on the street might have been your mother, that lady helping you up from the ground, your wife. Your daughter might be one of the hundreds pushing past you on the sidewalk, the ones who avoid looking at you, the ones who will not say hello and when confronted deny they ever knew you.

Everyone you see looks like someone who died.

All gone now. It’s the catch phrase of the day, of every day during your time of obsolescence. You are no longer able to conduct a decent conversation. You no longer understand most of their words. When did language get so far ahead of you that everything you hear sounds like gibberish?

The news is maddeningly predictable, and rarely is it worth living for. You forget what it was you once desired. You are weary of all your fresh starts. If there is a secret to life you haven’t yet found it.

You didn’t notice the changes in your body, then they arrived all at once. Your bones shrank and became hollow. On especially bad days they carry a mournful tune. Your skin either breaks or sags. No one wants to touch you anymore. Waves of deterioration come and go. Every time they recede they take away a little more of you.

Your hair thins, becomes transparent. Eventually it is like cobwebs veiling your scalp.

Instead of growing taller, you are growing shorter. If this keeps up you imagine you might become a child again, waiting for your parents to fix everything gone wrong.

Some days it seems you can see nothing, but somehow it’s the same as seeing everything. You can see the edges where water vapor dissolves in the sun-bright air.

The puddles where tiny fish grow legs and walk out onto dry land.

Shadows with no corresponding objects to have cast them.

A sudden downpour of mummified birds.

Bits of themselves people have left behind.

A man in a dark suit screaming at his hand.

You couldn’t stop yourself from retreating into solitude. A long life spent in isolation has made you strange. You are irredeemably awkward in a crowd. You never know what to say. You have become unable to ask for help even when you need it most.

The world is no longer the best place to live. It wears you down until nothing is left but a stain upon the pavement, a series of thoughts attached to nothing but the pain of knowing.

The vague line between the past and the present grows unstable. Memories detach themselves, then reattach one to the other in different orders. You still live in that vast house you were born in, the one with too many doors. The rooms are haunted by the things you’ve not yet done, the choices not made, and the risks not taken.

In the moments between moments, you are still a child. You still can’t sleep without a light on. You still listen for the unexplainable footsteps in the night.

There are always strangers in this house, sitting in your chair, making dinner, asking you how you’ve been, reminding you to take your pills, getting in your way. But the worst part is when they leave. And they’re always leaving. Who will stay with you until the very end?

Every few weeks you have to say goodbye to someone you’ve always known. There seems to be no reason for you to remain, and yet you do.

The phone rings all day. They’re trying to trick you into answering. Say the wrong thing and the van arrives. The driver and his henchmen muscle through your door. They take everything, and they say they will come back for you.

You think there may be people hiding in the bushes, waiting inside the shadows. You don’t want to venture out anymore. Every time you do you lose your way home.

You have always known there are dark forces in this world and now that you have lived long enough you have no choice but to face them.

The longer you live the more difficult you become. You regret it, and you’re always apologizing, but it cannot be helped. You can be cruel. You don’t want to be, but a long life will do that to you, with all its challenges, its drastic changes, its terrible grind. It’s the constant reminders of mortality which make you mean.

You live long enough to learn all the things you never wanted to know. Someday all this will end. Someday you will collapse into a pile of broken sticks and rubber bands. To come from nothing, but then to go to nothing? Reduced to nothing but a memory?

You understand that in the distance there is a room with a bed waiting for you. You don’t know yet how you will travel there, but you are certain you will eventually arrive.