The End

You were made of gold,
wrapped in blankets made of steel and dreams.
Now you are cold.
Toxin seeps out of your splitting seams.
I sucked it out.
I drank as deeply as you bade.
Now I don't doubt,
it was a poison that you made.

It is the end
and I'm trying to remember
where I spent
my last 10 million heartbeats.
Don't pretend
that tomorrow is a promise.
I can't lend
my breath to you anymore.
 
When did I become
the mask you wear to hide your grin?
Well, was it fun?
Did you enjoy it as you broke me in?
You made me glow.
Our fire warmed your bed at night.
But fires grow
into a blaze I could not fight.

Your raging tides have rubbed me thin.
I cannot hold your madness in.
Soon you will be a memory.
I wish you health and agony.

It is the end
and I'm trying to forget
where I have spent
my last 10 million heartbeats.
Don't pretend
that tomorrow is a promise.
I won't lend
my breath to you anymore.

Nightmare Fandom

I was watching VHS tapes of shows that David Tennant had been in. My sister was there at first, but eventually she went to bed and I was left alone with the tapes. When I ran out of videos, I started to make up stories in my head about Tennant. I imagined if I were to run into him in an elevator, start talking, just get the chance to geek out with him. As I ruminated, I glanced out the window. Tennant stared back at me. I jumped, knocking over the remote, which accidentally turned the TV off. The Tennant through the window disappeared, and I realized he'd just been a reflection. I went back to my fantasies and eventually fell asleep.

I spent much of the next day lying about and continuing my mental movie, building a fictional friendship with an actor I'd never met. I asked my sister if she thought I was taking the fantasy too far, but she assured me that as long as I could tell real from imaginary, there wasn't anything to worry about.

Late that night, I got up from my bed to use the bathroom. As I walked down the hall, I caught a glimpse of someone standing in an open doorway. I froze. Before I could decide what to do, a passing car's high beams shined through the window, illuminating the doorway to reveal empty space. I continued to the bathroom. As the florescent lights flickered into life, I passed the mirror. For a moment, I could have sworn my reflection was replaced with someone else's. He did not look happy.

Unnerved, I did my business and hurried back to bed. I kept my eyes down while passing the doorway again, but I couldn't keep from glancing behind me before entering my room. A thin man strode down the hallway towards me. I rushed into my room, closed the door, and locked it. I took a breath, convincing myself that it was just shadows...and that the lock was secure.

"You shouldn't make up stories." I wheeled around to see David Tennant standing across from me, face grim. "They might not like the way you tell them."

Dream Engineering

I was having a fairly standard dream. Tyrion Lannister is on the run from some King's Guard jerks while his squire is disguised as a Vestal virgin, but the guards hear someone might be hiding in the virgins' ranks, so the priests line them up in short skirts so that a man with a cross literally built around his loins to prevent them from stirring or whatever is allowed to hobble past and guess if they're actually women by the sight of their legs, since no one else is allowed to see any more. Normal stuff, right?

The squire passes inspection (I think the cross guy let him pass because he took pity on him), and he sneaks off to try and find Tyrion who has become completely lost in a labyrinthine palace. Before he can find his master though, a stranger appears and pushes Tyrion through a secret door just before some guards come around the corner. This door, it turns out, leads to the secret sanctum of a steam-punk order that's been hiding from the rest of Westeros for decades.

The most prominent object in their collection of doodads is what I remember best, though alas not well enough to reconstruct. Imagine a loom whose pattern is "programmable". By tying the strings that raise the  heddles to various overhead gears powered by a crank, the order of  of their activation is determined. However, instead of the heddles lifting and lowering the warp threads, they shifted plates to create a track along which an arm traveled. Attached to the arm was a feather quill. In short, it was a purely mechanical handwriting printer.

After that, I kind of ignored the rest of the stuff with Tyrion. I'm sure the stranger introduced himself or something, but I was just staring at the gorgeous machine before me. The dream then shifted into the far future where the machine had been placed into a museum, and my sister promised to let me play with it for the rest of the day if I helped her give a tour to a group of rambunctious children.

I did my duty, but did I get to spend an afternoon programming the machine as promised? No! I got to turn the crank one measly time before some emergency with swords and cultural insensitivity got in the way.

Bloodbath (To the Tune of Moondance)

 Well it’s a marvelous night for a bloodbath

With the stars and the rage in your eyes

A fantabulous night to carve a path

Through undead as their screams fill the skies.

Oh all these idiot zombies are milling

Round our city with limbs still attached.

And I’m trying to waken that chilling

 Lust for blood that in you is unmatched.

And all the night’s magic seems to whisper and hum

And all the soft moonlight seems to shine off your gun.

Can I just make one more bloodbath with you, my love?

Can I just let loose all my wrath with a-you, my love?

Well I wanna go slay with you tonight

We can’t wait ‘til the morning has come.

And I know that the time is just right

And straight into the fray you will run.

And when you come my axe will be waiting

To make sure those that walkers stay down.

There and then all my dreams will come true, dear

There and then we will rescue the town.

And every time I end one you just tremble inside

And I know how much you hate them that you can’t hide

Can I just make one more bloodbath with you, my love?

Can I just let loose all my wrath with a-you, my love?

[original melody and lyrics by Van Morrison]

Dream Log 59: Alternate History

King Russel and Queen Elia of an unnamed land set off to tour the entirety of their kingdom, a journey held every three years to remind lords and peasants alike whom they served. Both royals sat a horse rather than take a palanquin. Honestly, the king would have preferred sitting in some shade and reviewing reports, but the queen refused to dismount. He could not concede his discomfort. Eventually they made camp beside a watch tower. The royals and their personal guards claimed the tower itself. A wild cat wandered in amidst the tents and soon had half the guards swearing fealty to His Fluffiness.

Meanwhile, a green hued child in little more than rags slipped through the shadows towards the tower. Her dirt crusted fingers and toes wormed into cracks in the wall, hoisting her upwards. In seconds, she'd clambered through a narrow window. Below her lay the king and queen's sleeping forms, each on opposite sides of the chamber. She crept towards the king. Crouching beside him, she unwound the bandage about her right foot revealing a cracked and oozing ulcer. The urchin squeezed a drop of pus onto the king. She then crept once more into the shadows.

Russel awoke to the buzzing of manure fatted flies. Shia had already left their pallet to patch the leaks their cottage roof had sprung the night before. He hauled himself up, grabbed a chunk of bread just soft enough to chew, and hobbled to his flock. By noon, Shia arrived with victuals.

"The king comes today," she announced. He drank from the flask she handed him. "His men will take our sheep, feast upon them, and praise our generosity while we starve."

"Would you rather they kill us for denying them their due?"

"I would rather you had made them ill as I suggested. No knight would eat a diseased lamb. We would loose fewer to illness and only the poorest rather than the best of them."

"I will not sicken my flock.."

"An yet you continue to sicken me." She grabbed the flask from his hands and marched off.

"Some things never change," said a voice to Russel's right. Turning, he saw a man wrapped in white cloth and leaning against a boulder.

"Who are you?"

"I am the angel Q, and I have come to save your from your pitiful existence."

"How can I know you speak the truth? Where are your wings?" Russel readied his staff.

"Oh fine, if you need a demonstration..." Q pointed to the nearest sheep and pointed upwards. The animal floated off the ground, squirming and baaing in protest. Russel's eyes widened. He then dropped to his knees before the celestial being.

"What does the lord require of me?"

"Oh, only that you fix the timeline, restoring yourself to the throne so that I can get out of this hellhole of a pocket reality. Just follow me and this should be simple." Before Russel could respond, Q had wrapped an arm around him and sent them flying through the air. "Now, where were you born?"

"Um...my mother bore me near the watch tower." No sooner had he spoken than Q altered course. They landed before the structure in seconds.

"Now then," Q muttered as he circled the tower base, "if future me in the past does as present me intends to do in the future, then the key to saving past us from our present predicament should present itself here."

"I...am not a learned man."

"Of course not, you're mortal. Hello!" he crouched before a stone marked with a strange symbol. Russel leaned forward as the angel shimmied the block loose. "What did I say? Here, I'll read it out to you."

The jynxiot will come with the new king. Don't look at the cat. He's a trap.

"What means this? Timelines? Cat traps? What do I have to do with any of this?"

"Oh, you're more boring than Picard. It's simple. You were king. A jyn...a witch cast a spell on you that made a new world where you were a poor shepherd. In the old world, you ceased to have ever existed. I happened to be traveling through time when it happened and got stuck in this new, fake, tiny world. You know it will only exist as long as you're alive? A mere 48 years! Lucky for us, the witch will show up when this world's king does. We just have to force her to break the spell and we'll be free to go our separate ways."

Russel knew more questions would yield no clearer answers. Instead, he agreed to meet the angel at this same place when the king had made camp. That evening, he set off while strangers slaughtered his sheep. He girded himself against their wails with thoughts of kingship. Entering the camp proved surprisingly easy. Most of its inhabitants had gathered in a ring to marvel at some spectacle or another. Shouts of "His Fluffiness" punctuated the air. When he reached the tower base, Q appeared beside him. The silence stretched into minutes, then to an hour when Q pointed a finger and dashed into the darkness. Following behind, Russel soon made out a shape in the shadows hovering a foot off the ground. The shape resolved into a green-skinned girl.

Q hissed in a language entirely foreign to Russel. The child hissed and spat back. After a few more retorts, the angel took hold of Russel and pushed him beside the floating figure. She unbound her left foot midair, exposing a white-pussed sore on one toe. Before Russel could resist, she flicked the pus upon his face. The world swam before his eyes. When the dizziness passed, he found himself within the tower and dressed in a fine cotton nightshirt. Q crouched beside him while the green girl skittered up a wall and vanished.

"If I were you," God's messenger snorted, "I'd work on my marriage. Wives with jynxiot friends can really ruin your day. If you'll excuse me, I have a message to carve into some stone some couple decades ago."