IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD
...Z......z......Z.....
...z.....Z.....z.....
...Z......z.....Z......
Ashley,
Tell where are.
me you
I'm standing on the front porch of a house. I don't know where it is. When I try to look at the yard around the house my eyes don't let me. It's there, and I know it's there, but when I look my head bounces back. Like scrolling down when you're already at the bottom of the page. You get pushed back. I hear a knocking on the front door, but it's not me, it's coming from inside. "Hello?" I ask. "Is anybody there?" The door opens and I see a tall woman in a suit. Her face is thin and her eyes are precise in their direction. She ushers me in. When she moves it's as if she is stuck in slow motion yet she puts all her efforts into moving at normal speed. You know when you try to punch something in your dreams but your fist is resisted as if underwater? You try harder and harder. I get the feeling that she doesn't enjoy being here. We stand in the hall. It's Victorian in a sense, or Edwardian, I don't know the difference, but it's old. Everything is old. I reach out to touch a lampshade. The closer my hand gets the---oh wow---It gets older and dustier and cobwebs form instantly. The woman grabs my hand and stops me. "The closer you get, the faster time moves," she says. I have to shake that off. Next thing I know I hear this god awful pounding. Pounding, pounding away. All around the walls the ceiling the floor. As if there are hundreds trapped on all sides. "They're ready," she says. There is a stairway by the door. She leads me up. There is a whitewashed door up at the top. She opens it for me and says she'll wait here. I go in and it's...
What it?
is
It's furnished like an attic apartment but...out the windows I see...I think we're in the head of the Statue of Liberty. I've been in it before, I know what it looks like. The view and the windows are the same but it's like someone lives here. "Sit down," I hear from somewhere. There is a coffee table and a sofa. I sit. Suddenly dust begins to gather on the chairs opposite me. It piles up and shapes itself. From dust to bones to tendons to organs to muscles to skin to people. There are three of them. Two left or right, one dead center in front of me. The two don't really have faces. They are voids really. The one in the center has a blindfold on. She holds out her hands. "Closer," she says. He says. It says, I don't know. I lean in and....
Oh!
My vision is gone. Everything is black. The pounding comes in. Boom. Boom. Words appear in the blackness. Big bold white letters. "TUESDAY" Boom. "SEPTEMBER 1" Boom. "2009" Boom. There's a sound and my eyes slowly come back into focus. The room is empty again. I'm sitting here and I don't know what to do. I look back to the door through which I came in. There's the woman in the suit standing there waiting. She signals in her strange motion for me to go back down the stairs. I rise and ask her questions as we walk down. No answers though. We're back in the old house. She opens the door and says, "Goodbye now."
WAKE UP