The Dream

He had just awoke from a dream in which he had heard an untracable yet familiar voice. It was soft, and flowed song-like, resonating throughout the rest of his body after entering the faculty of sound. It was the voice of a face in the clouds that one is certain must be the apparition of an angel manifested through physics. The words had faded quickly, as in the next second after being witness to this angel, the cloud moves, distoring the face into that of a demon, if not abolishing it altogether. This was Nature’s way of aborting madness, that sanity may keep it’s reign in a mundane world.
Clear as day he had heard the voice of a woman, “To place human hands upon such timeless, tender skin, brighter than a sun that blinds the seer, yet leads the blind toward sight; to gently pull rough fingers through the comforting tangled tresses of the Night; to mount yourself willingly upon the pale horse, embarking on the equisite journey of The Beginning, you must be willing to breathe in the crystalline remnants of a pulverized heaven, to desire what you shall never obtain for yourself. You will find me by a black tree against a blazing sky, and before you I will appear for one eternity.”
He wondered in circles why a man like him would have such a dream. He was aging, hardly anything but a leather suit over a pile of orderly bones, protecting a mass of misfortune in the form of perfectly healthy organs. The amount of times he had hoped for a fatal diagnosis from his worst enemy, fondly regarded by him as “Doc”, were inumerable. He accepted life as suffering and often introduced himself facetiously as Jesus. People often gave him a sideways glance, laughed nervously and quietly assumed him a victim of dimentia. He was an accidental birth, admitting his lack-luster attempt at living to those around him who had wanted to help. The torment had happened slowly to those who loved him. Once warm to him, his relentless selfishness caused friends and family to fade into the cold boring shadows of objects lifeless as household furniture. They now resided in a forgotten darkness, made existent only by the sickly yellow light in his livable apartment. They were as good as dust, shedded cat claws and hitchhiking twigs he refused to sweep.
His only admitted claim to feeling any fondness for another human, was that of a girl that once lived three houses down from him. She was a grade above him, and seemed to house the wisdom of an old wort-cunning witch in the darling body of an animated porcelain doll. He was certain that she knew exactly how the universe functioned, this fact made obvious when her psychic magnetism caught eyes fixed on her luminescence like a growing plant to the sun. In these moments he would look away in humble fear that his darkness would shade her light. Admiring with desperation the perfection of her being, he had waited for her to pass his house daily. She was always adorned in the prettiest dress, accented with the most pristine beret, and walked with the grace of a soon-to-be goddess. When she stopped, she was always poised perfectly as an immaculately carved statue at sunset. He had always walked behind her in reverence, and found speech unworthy in her presence.
The days of childhood were without clocks, passing slowly with such activities as watching a catapillar on it’s travels from branch to leaf, that it may dine in preparation for it’s coming out party. Awakening one morning to find himself trapped in an ancient decaying body, his physical self revolting against him with sharp occasional pinches and persistant dull aches, was an event he could not explain. He blamed his teacher, Mrs. Godes, for teaching him how to read time at the age of seven. How long it was before that he had watched the little catapillar was information he couldn’t, nor wanted to summon. The pasttime of watching nature in it’s miniscule changes was always his favorite. Her small consecutives changes purposely muddled together like gestures of paint on canvas, created a picture so majestic that the unattentive would call it a “miracle.” It could have been a minute or ten, a half an hour or an hour.
Now when he was witness to a spider weaving its fine silky threads around an hapless little fly, he had felt the minutes wrap around him, one after the next, until he was trapped inside of an hour. He knew that he would soon be hearing his mother yell from afar, “Dinner!”