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thedarksiren2It was a scene from my last trip to Italy, only it wasn't.
The story left off from yesterday, strange lands filled with amazing architecture, scheming men and brilliant colors. I slept atop a large pillar, a few miles high at the very least. I could hear their bickering, and sat up slowly, drowsily rubbing my eyes in the glare of a golden sun hitting my face from between the other marble structures rising around me.
Vito seemed to walk up out of thin air. "Umm, Dawn, these dude wanna sell you some crap. I dunno though...they seem kinda shady. Want me to take 'em out?"
I smiled at Vito, my dear friend, and reached over with a long, thin arm to touch the side of his jawline, one of my favorite features on him. My arm seemed to stretch forever, pale, elastic-like. My fingers were longer as well, and I stretched my view to a 3rd-person perspective to notice myself. My hair was wound up on top of my head in a gorgeous pile of dark tendrils, my face thinner, smile wider and whiter. In some lands I was thought to be a princess, but Vito and I, we knew better.
Still, these men wanted me to buy their goods, and began appearing all around me, floating just like Vito, who stood close by in case anything happened. Large pieces of beautiful cloth, curtains, tapestries, capes and sarongs. I had to be smart, smarmy even, and grabbed a piece that might have been a curtain but I wanted to wear it. The man argued with me, talking in Swahili - of course - and I looked up, dark eyebrows arched at his gall. Vito's arms crossed as he cleared his throat, and the man nervously looked to his left at my protective friend, apologized...
"Mi dispiace, mi amica."
"Prego," I replied. I then held up the piece, a shimmering fuchsia material with gold borders, and stood up to try it on. All the men's backs turned to me except for Vito. I stared at him for a moment, and he said, "What? I've seen ya nekkid before."
I rolled my eyes at him, swirled my right hand forefinger in the air, a motion for him to turn around, and he sighed heavily, crossed his arms and turned around, eying the others to be certain they weren't peaking.
As I stood on my pillar, ruins stretched out all around me in dim brown hues and grays, I remembered the troubles I've had with sarongs, wondered if this one would fit. I stood and looked down at my body - a long, distorted me standing miles high on a pillar too tall. I felt an overwhelming sadness, wondered if I would cry, but tried to ignore the feeling as I wrapped the fuchsia about my waste, ankles dusted in gold.
Every inch faded to gray as it touched my flesh, and my legs stuck out, the material simply not long enough to cover me. I frowned sadly, and the ruins began to fill with water. Vito turned just slightly to glance at me, asking, "Ya done yet, kid?" He had a cigarette in his left hand, which was resting on his right shoulder comfortably.
I smiled painfully, nodding and said, "It's perfect."
The men turned to gaseous swirls, and then to glistening dust that dissipated as if they were water. Vito turned around with the cigarette in his mouth and fixed my sarong, taking it off my wavy hips, flipping it around and tying it on me perfectly, all the while his brows bent determined over his eyes - he would make this work out for me, as he always does.
"There ya go, now wipe that shit off yer face," he said with a triumphant smile, reaching up with his construction-worker-rough fingers. "I told ya you'd like this place."
I stepped down and realized we were walking into an airport, but we were in the middle somewhere, a hallway, and there were moving sidewalks and escalators everywhere in Escher-like formations. I stepped down onto an escalator, barefoot and terrified. My hand had been in Vito's, strong and certain because my friend was with me. Now though, it rested weary on a black strip and the metal shards stuck out in sharp ferocity, waiting for my bare feet to dare step on them as they moved down, down, down. I stepped forward despite my fear, and accepted the metal through my flesh, screeching past my bones...
Robin sat at the end of one of the sidewalks in her flowery dress of orange and yellow and red, smiling her whitest smile, glistening green eyes and bright red hair. She stood when she saw me floating down the sidewalk, feet still crucified. She was comfort, and I needed it, so I lifted my feet to run. Slow-motion lift-flesh stuck, the metal turned to burgundy carpet, hid my blood, ate my pain, and I ran to her in the dimly-lit hallway.
"I'm so glad you came, " she smiled, putting out her hands to hold mine as I met her. I took her hands breathless, smiled and hugged her.
Hugs turn to steps forward, and I was in a pastry shop somewhere in the airport. Mel came around the corner, walked in and told me to eat a luscious piece of raspberry cheesecake.
"It's gooood," she said, smiling and excited. I thought about it, and was at the counter about to order something when we both glanced at one another and began running.
More escalators, turn me upside-down, inside-out. My body is a strange building of corridors and caverns. Two boys appeared before me and were riding down the escalator together. They had just arrived, and were about to exchange theiir money at the security gate. Kira was somewhere worried, wanting to count off heads like the leader she was. I couldn't move though - lines and order meant everything.
We walked slowly in the line, an older woman from Denmark or maybe Switzerland changing the coins we placed in green baskets and handed to her. One of the boys handed her a strange, elongated flat coppery piece. She shook her head, "I see they got ya already." He didn't understand. I thought of Leah, of the zoo and the animal-inlaid pennies we get everywhere. I asked the woman if I could exchange some money for that coin. She agreed, and I dug for thirty Euros for the twenty-yen piece, as I came to know it.
I had it in my hand, floating down an escalator, clouds and baby-blue all around me. There was an ancient Asian man with long whiskers and a stern brow. Even though the coin was copper and had a twenty written on it, I knew it was worth much much more, and that his robes were once vibrant, like my sarong. My skin was still ash-like, however, and when I stepped down off the escalator, Kira waiting expectantly, I held out my hand to give her the coin.
"You will appreciate this, and need it more than I do," I said. She seemed confused, but held out her hand to accept the coin. I stood on my toes and kissed her forehead, then walked to a door just behind her, stepping into my bedroom.
I had a small bed, my curtains the same shimmery fuchsia of my sarong, sending pink and gold light throughout my room. This was home, this was comfort, but my bed was up against a window, and the window had a large shelf that a cat might have appreciated - what a perfect spot to bask in the sun!
Just then, iLan climbed from within the curtains onto my bed, his tree tattoo seeming to grow off his back, gnarled branches alive and reaching in all directions, wavy and elegant, amazing grays and blacks against the violet sunrays behind him.
He looked at me, smiled, and asked me,"Well, when?"
"When what?" I asked, confused and laughing. I turned behind me, understanding he wanted to know what time it was. I leaned down, my lower body still on the bed but my upper body half-way to the floor, twisted and gnarled-me, reaching to touch the radio, thinking it would show me the time.
"You know that doesn't ever work," he smiled, his tree taking over the windows behind him, shutting out the light from them and entangled in the curtains. I looked over my shoulder, frustrated and put my finger to my lips.
"Shh," I demanded, turned back to the radio, numbers and digital words scrambling, making no sense. I brought one spidery leg forward, my left leg, contorted my body to stand and my fingers fumbled with the buttons. I began reaching into the small display, fingertips melding with the gray, touching other worlds. I dove forward, my body shrunk and bent, deep, deeper into the display until I saw nothing but the darkness.
I was suddenly flying, floating above distant lands, touching them with something that looked like a thermometer but was actually a time-mechanism. I would find the time this way, flying hard and determined. I felt a presence behind me, perhaps it was iLan, but he was a dark memory, a memory haunting me.
I touched a piece of land with the gage - blank. I kept flying, faster and faster, greens and browns streaking past me until the world was a blur of blue-green and white. I was in the arctic now, Aurora Borealis dancing beyond the horizon, purple-orange and red with golden touches. I wanted to kiss her, feel her in my bones, but I had to find the time.
I dipped the gage into the blurs below. "Ice-pocket, retry" it exclaimed aloud. I got frustrated, and tried again. I could hear the shadow coming, closer and closer, disbelief and discouragement. Fuck that, I could do this.
I reached my hands deep into a glacier, felt the cold eating me alive. Then something moved, and I saw the back of a baby humpback whale emerging gray-skinned and shimmery from the ice, a soft-fleshy fin whispering in the cold air. My fingertips could turn necrotic, freeze and fall off from the frostbite, but I touched a small part of heaven then, and I closed my eyes to absorb every second of the cold in my body. It ached and permeated my everything. I gasped, and my body lifted from the cold, lifted higher, higher...dark-indigo mass with twinkling lights above me.
I stood at the top of a water-slide, remembering my insanity, my dare. This was Niagara or some other insanely large waterfall, and despite the slides, no one was allowed beyond a certain point. When I realized I had not only gone past the barrier, I had dove down the slide, understood the distance between sanity and insanity (unsanity?), touched the untouchable, I turned to see the guard behind me, pissed off and waiting for me to get my ass back to safety. I gave birth to a crystallized icicle, my fingers changed from blistering black and blue to their warm peach goodness, and I stepped back over the red ropes to stand beside the guard.
We walked through the shopping area, people shopping, filling their consumer-urges. Mothers laughed at their children's ice-cream smiles, stop-motion shiny bags and garble-voiced announcers talking about sales. The guard asked me, "What would you say to a new date?" He knew something, I couldn't figure it out though.
I gave an answer, and became disoriented. Where was Gabe? I could feel him, sense him somewhere, his sadness, disappointment.
I said something to the guard, but my head was searching, telepathic and knowing...
"I knew it," said the guard. All women were the same, "so easy, so predictable."
I stood in the middle again, people blurred, sounds muffled. I turned around, ran, searched for the guard. I found him drinking old coffee in his little glass booth.
"I changed my mind. I was somewhere else," I said. He raised his eyebrow, took his feet down from the desktop to listen to me in his swiveling chair. I leaned through the window, elongated trunk twisted and assured he would know for certain. I whispered into his ear, my right hand cupping his left lobe carefully, like a mother caressing a child's face.
When I stood back up, outside the window, the booth, he raised his brows again, did a "whatever"-esque frown and reached for his mug.
He was a slime-ball, a distraction. I suddenly understood.
I had no time. I ran away from the booth, away from the people, the consumers and teenage food-courts. I turned a corner, stood for a moment, and saw Gabe walking out of a coffee shop with a chai in his shaky hands. He looked so alone, so sad and defeated.
I ran to him then, landed abruptly before him and almost spilled his chai. It was too hot, but he cupped the bottom of his tea-cup, felt the hot liquid in his palm. He stopped in his steps though, eyes down at his cup. I took the cup from him, his hands out as if he'd never let go. I blew gently on his fingers, held the cup in my left hand while taking his hands in my right. Luke-warm, I made everything luke-warm, and he drank the tea from his palms.
"I told you I'd be here," I said to him.
"I know, but you know," he replied.
I did know, understood everything, his doubt, my blindness. I blew on the teacup, handed it back, bubbles flowing from the bottom and surrounding us. His eyes finally lifted, gray-blue sucking up the tears he almost cried. I leaned close to him, my tongue reached out and drank the remainders of salty remnants straight from his lashes, a warm pink serpent emancipating life around us.
I took his left hand in my right, healing the blisters as we touched, both his and mine - black-blue, red-and-furious blending into symmetry. The cup was impertinent, may never have existed in the first place, and Aurora sighed as we kissed her simultaneously.
The story left off from yesterday, strange lands filled with amazing architecture, scheming men and brilliant colors. I slept atop a large pillar, a few miles high at the very least. I could hear their bickering, and sat up slowly, drowsily rubbing my eyes in the glare of a golden sun hitting my face from between the other marble structures rising around me.
Vito seemed to walk up out of thin air. "Umm, Dawn, these dude wanna sell you some crap. I dunno though...they seem kinda shady. Want me to take 'em out?"
I smiled at Vito, my dear friend, and reached over with a long, thin arm to touch the side of his jawline, one of my favorite features on him. My arm seemed to stretch forever, pale, elastic-like. My fingers were longer as well, and I stretched my view to a 3rd-person perspective to notice myself. My hair was wound up on top of my head in a gorgeous pile of dark tendrils, my face thinner, smile wider and whiter. In some lands I was thought to be a princess, but Vito and I, we knew better.
Still, these men wanted me to buy their goods, and began appearing all around me, floating just like Vito, who stood close by in case anything happened. Large pieces of beautiful cloth, curtains, tapestries, capes and sarongs. I had to be smart, smarmy even, and grabbed a piece that might have been a curtain but I wanted to wear it. The man argued with me, talking in Swahili - of course - and I looked up, dark eyebrows arched at his gall. Vito's arms crossed as he cleared his throat, and the man nervously looked to his left at my protective friend, apologized...
"Mi dispiace, mi amica."
"Prego," I replied. I then held up the piece, a shimmering fuchsia material with gold borders, and stood up to try it on. All the men's backs turned to me except for Vito. I stared at him for a moment, and he said, "What? I've seen ya nekkid before."
I rolled my eyes at him, swirled my right hand forefinger in the air, a motion for him to turn around, and he sighed heavily, crossed his arms and turned around, eying the others to be certain they weren't peaking.
As I stood on my pillar, ruins stretched out all around me in dim brown hues and grays, I remembered the troubles I've had with sarongs, wondered if this one would fit. I stood and looked down at my body - a long, distorted me standing miles high on a pillar too tall. I felt an overwhelming sadness, wondered if I would cry, but tried to ignore the feeling as I wrapped the fuchsia about my waste, ankles dusted in gold.
Every inch faded to gray as it touched my flesh, and my legs stuck out, the material simply not long enough to cover me. I frowned sadly, and the ruins began to fill with water. Vito turned just slightly to glance at me, asking, "Ya done yet, kid?" He had a cigarette in his left hand, which was resting on his right shoulder comfortably.
I smiled painfully, nodding and said, "It's perfect."
The men turned to gaseous swirls, and then to glistening dust that dissipated as if they were water. Vito turned around with the cigarette in his mouth and fixed my sarong, taking it off my wavy hips, flipping it around and tying it on me perfectly, all the while his brows bent determined over his eyes - he would make this work out for me, as he always does.
"There ya go, now wipe that shit off yer face," he said with a triumphant smile, reaching up with his construction-worker-rough fingers. "I told ya you'd like this place."
I stepped down and realized we were walking into an airport, but we were in the middle somewhere, a hallway, and there were moving sidewalks and escalators everywhere in Escher-like formations. I stepped down onto an escalator, barefoot and terrified. My hand had been in Vito's, strong and certain because my friend was with me. Now though, it rested weary on a black strip and the metal shards stuck out in sharp ferocity, waiting for my bare feet to dare step on them as they moved down, down, down. I stepped forward despite my fear, and accepted the metal through my flesh, screeching past my bones...
Robin sat at the end of one of the sidewalks in her flowery dress of orange and yellow and red, smiling her whitest smile, glistening green eyes and bright red hair. She stood when she saw me floating down the sidewalk, feet still crucified. She was comfort, and I needed it, so I lifted my feet to run. Slow-motion lift-flesh stuck, the metal turned to burgundy carpet, hid my blood, ate my pain, and I ran to her in the dimly-lit hallway.
"I'm so glad you came, " she smiled, putting out her hands to hold mine as I met her. I took her hands breathless, smiled and hugged her.
Hugs turn to steps forward, and I was in a pastry shop somewhere in the airport. Mel came around the corner, walked in and told me to eat a luscious piece of raspberry cheesecake.
"It's gooood," she said, smiling and excited. I thought about it, and was at the counter about to order something when we both glanced at one another and began running.
More escalators, turn me upside-down, inside-out. My body is a strange building of corridors and caverns. Two boys appeared before me and were riding down the escalator together. They had just arrived, and were about to exchange theiir money at the security gate. Kira was somewhere worried, wanting to count off heads like the leader she was. I couldn't move though - lines and order meant everything.
We walked slowly in the line, an older woman from Denmark or maybe Switzerland changing the coins we placed in green baskets and handed to her. One of the boys handed her a strange, elongated flat coppery piece. She shook her head, "I see they got ya already." He didn't understand. I thought of Leah, of the zoo and the animal-inlaid pennies we get everywhere. I asked the woman if I could exchange some money for that coin. She agreed, and I dug for thirty Euros for the twenty-yen piece, as I came to know it.
I had it in my hand, floating down an escalator, clouds and baby-blue all around me. There was an ancient Asian man with long whiskers and a stern brow. Even though the coin was copper and had a twenty written on it, I knew it was worth much much more, and that his robes were once vibrant, like my sarong. My skin was still ash-like, however, and when I stepped down off the escalator, Kira waiting expectantly, I held out my hand to give her the coin.
"You will appreciate this, and need it more than I do," I said. She seemed confused, but held out her hand to accept the coin. I stood on my toes and kissed her forehead, then walked to a door just behind her, stepping into my bedroom.
I had a small bed, my curtains the same shimmery fuchsia of my sarong, sending pink and gold light throughout my room. This was home, this was comfort, but my bed was up against a window, and the window had a large shelf that a cat might have appreciated - what a perfect spot to bask in the sun!
Just then, iLan climbed from within the curtains onto my bed, his tree tattoo seeming to grow off his back, gnarled branches alive and reaching in all directions, wavy and elegant, amazing grays and blacks against the violet sunrays behind him.
He looked at me, smiled, and asked me,"Well, when?"
"When what?" I asked, confused and laughing. I turned behind me, understanding he wanted to know what time it was. I leaned down, my lower body still on the bed but my upper body half-way to the floor, twisted and gnarled-me, reaching to touch the radio, thinking it would show me the time.
"You know that doesn't ever work," he smiled, his tree taking over the windows behind him, shutting out the light from them and entangled in the curtains. I looked over my shoulder, frustrated and put my finger to my lips.
"Shh," I demanded, turned back to the radio, numbers and digital words scrambling, making no sense. I brought one spidery leg forward, my left leg, contorted my body to stand and my fingers fumbled with the buttons. I began reaching into the small display, fingertips melding with the gray, touching other worlds. I dove forward, my body shrunk and bent, deep, deeper into the display until I saw nothing but the darkness.
I was suddenly flying, floating above distant lands, touching them with something that looked like a thermometer but was actually a time-mechanism. I would find the time this way, flying hard and determined. I felt a presence behind me, perhaps it was iLan, but he was a dark memory, a memory haunting me.
I touched a piece of land with the gage - blank. I kept flying, faster and faster, greens and browns streaking past me until the world was a blur of blue-green and white. I was in the arctic now, Aurora Borealis dancing beyond the horizon, purple-orange and red with golden touches. I wanted to kiss her, feel her in my bones, but I had to find the time.
I dipped the gage into the blurs below. "Ice-pocket, retry" it exclaimed aloud. I got frustrated, and tried again. I could hear the shadow coming, closer and closer, disbelief and discouragement. Fuck that, I could do this.
I reached my hands deep into a glacier, felt the cold eating me alive. Then something moved, and I saw the back of a baby humpback whale emerging gray-skinned and shimmery from the ice, a soft-fleshy fin whispering in the cold air. My fingertips could turn necrotic, freeze and fall off from the frostbite, but I touched a small part of heaven then, and I closed my eyes to absorb every second of the cold in my body. It ached and permeated my everything. I gasped, and my body lifted from the cold, lifted higher, higher...dark-indigo mass with twinkling lights above me.
I stood at the top of a water-slide, remembering my insanity, my dare. This was Niagara or some other insanely large waterfall, and despite the slides, no one was allowed beyond a certain point. When I realized I had not only gone past the barrier, I had dove down the slide, understood the distance between sanity and insanity (unsanity?), touched the untouchable, I turned to see the guard behind me, pissed off and waiting for me to get my ass back to safety. I gave birth to a crystallized icicle, my fingers changed from blistering black and blue to their warm peach goodness, and I stepped back over the red ropes to stand beside the guard.
We walked through the shopping area, people shopping, filling their consumer-urges. Mothers laughed at their children's ice-cream smiles, stop-motion shiny bags and garble-voiced announcers talking about sales. The guard asked me, "What would you say to a new date?" He knew something, I couldn't figure it out though.
I gave an answer, and became disoriented. Where was Gabe? I could feel him, sense him somewhere, his sadness, disappointment.
I said something to the guard, but my head was searching, telepathic and knowing...
"I knew it," said the guard. All women were the same, "so easy, so predictable."
I stood in the middle again, people blurred, sounds muffled. I turned around, ran, searched for the guard. I found him drinking old coffee in his little glass booth.
"I changed my mind. I was somewhere else," I said. He raised his eyebrow, took his feet down from the desktop to listen to me in his swiveling chair. I leaned through the window, elongated trunk twisted and assured he would know for certain. I whispered into his ear, my right hand cupping his left lobe carefully, like a mother caressing a child's face.
When I stood back up, outside the window, the booth, he raised his brows again, did a "whatever"-esque frown and reached for his mug.
He was a slime-ball, a distraction. I suddenly understood.
I had no time. I ran away from the booth, away from the people, the consumers and teenage food-courts. I turned a corner, stood for a moment, and saw Gabe walking out of a coffee shop with a chai in his shaky hands. He looked so alone, so sad and defeated.
I ran to him then, landed abruptly before him and almost spilled his chai. It was too hot, but he cupped the bottom of his tea-cup, felt the hot liquid in his palm. He stopped in his steps though, eyes down at his cup. I took the cup from him, his hands out as if he'd never let go. I blew gently on his fingers, held the cup in my left hand while taking his hands in my right. Luke-warm, I made everything luke-warm, and he drank the tea from his palms.
"I told you I'd be here," I said to him.
"I know, but you know," he replied.
I did know, understood everything, his doubt, my blindness. I blew on the teacup, handed it back, bubbles flowing from the bottom and surrounding us. His eyes finally lifted, gray-blue sucking up the tears he almost cried. I leaned close to him, my tongue reached out and drank the remainders of salty remnants straight from his lashes, a warm pink serpent emancipating life around us.
I took his left hand in my right, healing the blisters as we touched, both his and mine - black-blue, red-and-furious blending into symmetry. The cup was impertinent, may never have existed in the first place, and Aurora sighed as we kissed her simultaneously.
