The Steep Sidewalk delivered me to The Theater of The Mind, in the same dream with which I parsed it.
The building as I approached was barely two stories, it’s bulk pressed tightly against the sidewalk, crowding away any other space that could be there. The edges and ediface calling back to the gaudy wonder of show buisness, with large yellow-bright bulbs ringing ivory signs with no words. The edges a scarlet red that bleeds into crushed velvet as one enters the wooden embrace.
So I walked, the red carpet a tongue that pulled me inwards with my own steps. The lights surrounding posters of things that showed nothing. Not void, not light, not dark, but nothing in its purest form. The doors were glass rimmed in brass, with a double bar shining and new to press against. Thus I entered The Theater of the Mind, I wanted to watch a movie so I went that path.
In another dream I went another way, becoming part of a play as the audience. Traipsing from the Latticeworks into the the theater by way of waking myself. Each layer simply providing a more elaborate cast of creatures to interact with. In that dream I held power, perhaps merely borrowed from the Latticeworks, it is such a fluid place. The theater is the same; a place where seeming is being, where attention is power. So there I could manifest what was needed, but each attempt pulled at the fabric of which the illusion was made. One can not simply break character time and again without ruining the audiences immersion. In the theater the audience and the characters were one and the same. So, when I speak of these things, know that I was there in the mind and body. That my body split and my memories twisted in the same path as theirs.
In this dream, I walked to the movies, for that is what I wanted to see. To be taken on a journey.
I settled into a seat in the back of a large theater, empty save for me (I always do enjoy watching a movie in a big theater all alone). The seats were comfortable, the walls covered in curtains, all painted in the charcoal white tones of darkness. The projector sputtered to life, and the previews began.
The first was an old fear, one that I had faced many times before.
The screen showed an ocean, a small craft supporting a man adrift. The sky a peculiar shade only seen on sunny days as a storm chases the sun to the horizon. The theater began to fill, the water spilling into the room in waves. So it was that I was taken to sea, that the waters chased me even here in the confines of my voyeuristic adventures in the stories of others.
The waters crashed and I choked on seawater, swimming as best I could with feat pushing off against seats, attempting to reach the higher ground at the back of the theater. There, between two rows of seats framed by black curtains, at the very rear I caught a breath. There, as I scrambled and retched, I found a mattress floating. Larger than it should be, more boyant than it should be, but just right for me to grasp and hope. I held tight, a small wooden sail erecting to steer me as the storm began in earnest.
I will not tarry here long, the beating I suffered at the hands of nature confined in the mind is nothing particularly special. The stormfront came and went, there were times I thought I’d drown, and there were times I felt the exhilaration as my makeshift vessel caught the waves and I soared. They simply were, and I did not die — but how I wish I had.
The trailer ended, I was back in my seat, dry and alive.
The next one began.
This is hard to describe, the memories and views occurred in a non-linear fashion with my own thoughts intruding into the fabric of this world as whispers of other perspectives cursed me. So I will describe this as I experienced it.
A white tiled room, the grout was dirty with blackness, the tiles cracked and browning in odd formations. There was but one door, dull metal and a small viewing window caged in steel. There was an examination bed, unused, a cabinet filled with medical equipment that was dated ion the 90’s and a tray displaying the most brutal of them. The floor had two sets of half-ring anchors with black iron chains leading upwards. There she was as I saw through her eyes and felt her skin. In a dirty white shift she was in a pillock, head held steady. By god it hurt. There was no human skull in that head, no. It was a bull’s skull.
Her skin had been pulled back, a dark surgery performed and her skull removed without killing her, in it’s place the skull of a bull traced in runes I dare not recall in detail. Then her skin was stitched around it, slowly, carefully grafting what was needed to cover every inch. Our nerves screamed in agony with every moment that passed, our soul wept in horror at the wrongness it felt. Repeated like a mantra she would ask, beg, rage, and cry; “Where is my skull?“.
Then the one who inflicted this eldritch capacity, she walked by the door. On the other side, a witch. One that spoke with gentle and kind tones to the parents, her parents. She tried to scream as they asked after their daughter mere meters away. Her voice would not come, her mouth and tongue pierced with metal that melded and melted on another’s whims. So their shadows retreated, her hope guttering as the pain grew more nuanced.
The witch, she was canny, and worse she was experienced. How I wished for death then.
A voice descended from a vent, a small boy. He talked to her, whispered of the witch and she found her voice again. He whispered of safety and hope, and oh god I saw that sweet light of release. She planned and he connived. What expectations that set, for a mere price of holding on, how was that so bad? For fielding the feverish infection crawling through the stitches and choking down the noxious slop to feed the bovine violation. I wonder, did some bull receive the same treatment? The loss of their horns, the reshaping of the seat of their mind. Did they comprehend it? Or were we merely the ones who lost in the maze of intent?
For that boy, he was nothing but a mirage. He had spoken to the girl before, he would speak to her again. Each time he would speak, comfort, plan, and, most importantly, he would fail. For the boy was the witches creature. She was experienced, this girl was not her first experiment of this nature. Somewhere entombed in tile were the bodies of those who had given up long ago. No, what this violation needed was to keep the girl hopeful so she would not succumb to despair before reaching the witches dark ends.
The girl did not know, the passage of thought and impulse was one way for me, I could absorb the thoughts of them all. The worry of her parents. The calculation of the witch. The emptiness of the boy. The suffering of the girl with the skull of a bull.
I awoke weeping, clutching my head, repeating again and again “I don’t know” to the question that had echoed in my brain for that endless trailer, “Where is my skull?“.