I needed a job. Someone suggested that I look for work as assistant to some high up businessman at a particular company. When I went to apply, the man failed to meet my expectations. He looked business like, but he spoke like a tactless hound dog.
"I need my assistants to follow me around, carry all my stuff, make calls, open doors for me, and give me blow jobs once a day."
"Yeah...I'm not giving anyone a blow job," I informed him. He decided the interview was over at that point, so he left the office to go home. I followed because that was the direction I had to go anyway. As we walked, a glance out the window revealed that thick storm clouds had completely filled the sky. Lightning flickered ominously. "Awesome," I breathed, "today isn't a total loss."
"What are you talking about?" the man demanded, "You actually like storms?"
"Of course! They're powerful and beautiful. They're the deadly big sisters of life giving rain. Isn't that incredible?"
He stared at me for a second, face inscrutable, before handing his suitcase to me. "You'll be my assistant. We can skip the sexual favors, but try to keep up with me." With that, he turned on his heal and swept down the hall to the elevator, me half jogging after him.
For a while, I simply carried his stuff and opened doors and waited for him to come out of meetings like I had expected to do. We became gradually more friendly and less formal with one another, though it was more a fatherly relationship than anything else. One day, as we were heading to his car, I noticed something on the ground of the parking garage right by the exit ramp. Without getting my employer's attention or permission, I hustled over to investigate. Lying there in a dirt stained blue dress, was an unconscious woman. I checked for a pulse and found one. She was breathing as well and had no visible injuries, but I could not for the life of me get her to wake up. I left her for a moment to call for help and to block a car from driving down the ramp. Eventually, a few other people came along and got her out of the path of cars and called 911. I hurried back to my businessman and hopped into my seat.
"And where were you?"
"A woman was passed out on the exit ramp in the way. I got some people to move her and wait for paramedics."
"Oh, well that's okay then."
We drove off, and through shenanigans that I cannot recall became embroiled in a religious extremist plot to blow up a train. At least, that is what we though they intended to do. The two of us were stuck on the train, waiting for the extremists to reach our car so that we could knock them unconscious. It did not work. They arrived, but when I went to hit them in the head with a mallet, they simply shrugged it off and set about packing boxes of food into the empty seats. The leader of the group, a middle eastern boy about 12 years old, asked that I come forward and learn his great purpose. He spoke in metaphors and meaningful looks, so I was never sure if I got his meaning or not. As far as I could tell, he believed that his father, who had recently gone missing, was God and that they could reestablish contact with him by going to a special location. I was familiar with his father, Ali Haddad, a man even smugger and more vague than his son.
I fell asleep on the train ride. The next thing I knew, we had reached the special, secluded location. The men and women were setting up the food, but I could not help noticing how little there seemed to be of it. It would last a day or two with so many people, and the boy-leader had no intentions of leaving the compound. Suspicion slithered through me. Curse you, Ali Haddad. Where are you? I though to myself.
I'm right here.
I nearly jumped out of my shoes. Had I imagined the voice that had just rumbled through my head? Or was something stranger going on? One possibility crossed my mind and turned my blood to ice; did the train crash after all? Was I already dead? I tried to dismiss the notion, but it was no mean feat.
I turned my attention back to the food. They had laid out a meal comprising dumplings wrapped in tacos, wasabi watermelon, and apples. I skipped the watermelon. When I got to my apple, it tasted somewhat off. Looking at the half eaten fruit, I could see rice sized insects burrowed in the apple flesh. A woman eating a ten pound apple called them armored caterpillars. I called them disgusting, threw the apple away from me, and insisted that the dream be something else. So it was.
The endless were dying, and it was okay. They accepted it. It had to happen. Death was the first one to go, but she was replaced quickly by a more classical death complete with hood and scythe. The new Death remarked, "It was a strange feeling to die. It usually works the other way around." Delirium died next, replaced by no one. Then went Desire, Despair, Destiny, Destruction. No one took their places. I went to Dream and asked him what was happening.
"Do not worry. What we represent will always live on, but humans do not need us anymore. They can cultivate their own desires and despairs, their own destiny and destruction, their own delirium and of course their own dreams. Death remains because humans have not yet outgrown her... or rather him now. Come," he gently commanded, rising to the size of a mountain, "It is my time."
He carried me in his palm to a patch of woods with trees as large as him. He pushed deeper into the forest, every step a little slower than the last. He finally reached a patch with five trees that, if you squinted, look almost like people. Here, he put me down. I could see then why his pace had slowed so much. Vines and roots had wrapped around his ankles, not violently, but firmly enough. The vines continued to rise. Dream's clothing disappeared under the foliage, or perhaps it became it. I could not tell. At last, Dream lifted his arms to the risen moon and surrendered himself. Millennia of grief and exhaustion fell away, replaced by pure peace before he turned to wood completely. That was the end of Dream.
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