thedarksiren2 | Dream # __

I was lying in a bedroom with a sliding glass door. I kept having memory flashbacks, conversations I suppose I'd had with my mother and father. They talked about Jim Love, about his father dying, about how he was family now, and I needed to treat family well.

I paced for a moment, then fwomped on the bed. As I looked out the glass door, it seemed to go straight into a garage instead of outside. Then I wondered if it was just a reflection, and decided I wanted to talk to someone and called

icariancypher.

He asked me what was up, so I kept trying to explain to him what was going on but could not. I'd start, sitting at first on my bed, noting how firm the mattress had become. Then I'd stan and tell him I had some things I needed to get off my chest. He would say, "OK, from the other end, and listen kindly, but then I would pace more, back and forth by the doors, looking out, wondering where the garage had come from.

Then my logic hit me - I don't live in this place, and I certainly don't have a sliding glass door. But it's my room...

No, it was the den from my childhood home. I looked at the reflection on the glass, and instead of seeing the garage, I saw a reflection of the Mt. Shasta mural on the wall behind me. I said to

icariancypher, "There is some really weird shit going on, man."

"Seems truth is like that," he replied from the other end of the phone.

I frowned at his response, not quite understanding, and decided to fwomp down on my bed, only it was now a waterbed, and it rippled for what seemed like an eternity underneath me. I decided to pull the sheets back, push my face against the plastic and just glare into the watery endlessness beneath. I told

icariancypher what I was doing, and that I thought I'd found Atlantis. I could see him smile at this comment, although he didn't say a word from the phone.

I stood up quickly, and asked him if he heard something. He got concerned, said, "No," and I told him I might be quiet for a moment. I opened the doors and walked out into the garage to a classic camero where there were kittens inside, playing and causing mischief. I took them out of the car, placed them in the house and

icariancypher asked me to come over for tea.

I said, "OK," walked through the glass doors, got my coat, walked through them to what would have been the garage, only now it was a patio, just outside a condo. It was a small patio, with an 8-foot wooden fence blocking the neighbors from seeing each other. The wood was a remarkable bright shade, and I commented on this as I walked up to the table where

icariancypher, his girlfriend Anna (I don't know who she really was, but that was her name and her identification here) and some other girl were sitting, the latter of whom was smoking a cigarette the length of a pencil. It smoked a strange sickly green color, and I frowned at it as I approached.

"Sit down," he said, gesturing with seemingly gigantic hands. I said, "Dali would be proud," and he replied, "He's a good papa like that."

I sat, hands folded neatly in my lap, The Shy consuming me. There was tea in a cute pot on the table, and I wanted to smell it because the smell of the green-smoking cigarettes was making me wretch.

icariancypher had poured himself and Anna a cup. The third girl just smoked intently, long, drawn-out inhalations and exhalations, green smoke permeating everything.

Just then, it was as if the scene moved on fast=forward, and the cigarette was out, and the sun beamed down at a good 85 degrees. I decided I should probably tell him what was bothering me.

"Do you remember that near-death experience I told you about?" I asked. He smirked a little, obviously perplexed. "No hon, can't say that I do."

I leaned in a bit, sitting directly across from him at the little round, black-iron table. The two women sat on either side of us, creating what felt like a line, a barrier in communication. I kept trying to explain it, but I didn't want them to know. They didn't know me, and I felt like a fool, grotesque, knowing that my near-death experience was as a result of my own stupidity and things I might have avoided if I'd given it half a thought. I almost said something about the LSD, my mouth open to do so.

icariancypher remained relaxed in his chair, a green-smoking cigarette now between his middle and ring fingers, resting with its smoke rising on the arm of his little white chair. The two girls leaned in with me, too eager, hungry, vultures...

"I'm sorry, I cannot talk about this with them here," I said. "No offense ladies, I just don't know you and don't feel like sharing my life story with strangers right now."

Anna smiled a sweet smile. The other girl kinda smiled with a snotty wrinkle of her nose, flicked some ash from her fingertips into an ashtray, and

icariancypher looked at me with great concern and intent.

"You've got your facts mixed up, you know," he said to me.

I looked at him curiously. "Excuse me?"

"Wrong room, Dawn. He's not there, and never was."

"But someone was, right?"

"Yes. You took care of him though."

The glass doors appeared to my right, Anna's back reflecting in them, then Pop in a rocking chair, which crumbled and splintered into dust before my eyes. His face a large, disgusting smile which faded as he decayed in the chair, with the chair, and turned to dust.

I saw Jim in a body shop somewhere, greasy and smelly, green smoke coming from long ashes he would surely dump into whoever's car he was working on.

And then I saw myself, getting up from the table, crying, and feeling incredibly alone.

I turned to face

icariancypher, who was now smiling, and sat forward, toward me. The girls were disappearing slowly, and he said, "You'll get it one day, don't worry. I have faith in you."