0105. Asleep
THIS IS GETTING VERY tiresome.
I can’t taste the inside of my mouth anymore, thank god. Stomach acid and ash. “Just leave me alone.”
You know I can’t do that.
You eventually materialize before me from the dark of my subconscious. For me this is a dream, and nothing that happens here is real in any way that matters. It’s real only in that I can’t avoid it. In that no matter what I do, I find my way back here, to you.
Do you really think you can escape this?
“Yes.” There has to be a way out. Every story has an ending. “I can. I will.”
Recognition of my surroundings, dream-distorted as they are, is gradually finding me, taking shape. I’m in a cave, there are paintings on the wall. A woman’s face is contorted, her lips drawn on in blood. Her eyes look terrified, like she’s seen a ghost. But her mouth is smiling.
I look down and it’s me, I’m the painter. I’m taking the paint from the cut in my leg, the gaping wound I swore was closed. Dr. Hodel checked it this morning, or whenever it was that I was last awake.
“Just leave me alone.” The rest of my paintings, if you can call them that, appear on the walls. An address. The code to a creaking old gate. A work schedule. A jogging route. The last six pictures on an Instagram grid. Dialogue styled as a script.
THE VICTIM
No, no … please!
A live studio audience laughs. This is a show about nothing.
“Stop,” I mutter.
Stop what? They’re your paintings.
“No, they’re not—”
You’re responsible for them. What’s the difference?
“I’m not—” I close my eyes but here, asleep, my eyes don’t close. I still see you. “I’m trying—”
The ritual is failing.
What will come of you if the ritual fails?
You look at me with eyes that are sickly blue-gray. Like looking in a mirror.
It is a mirror.
The pool of blood on the floor isn’t mine.
“I’m trying. I’m trying. But it keeps getting worse.
” My hand holds a knife. My hand holds a shovel.
My hand holds a broken lipstick in a gaudy, cherry red.
My hand holds a fistful of raven hair. My hand holds a knife.
My hand holds a life. My hand holds a phone that never works when I use it.
I call 911 but no one answers. The line never goes through.
I am not an it, you say in my voice. But it’s always my voice.
You don’t end. I don’t begin. The walls begin to rot. Black streaks lacerate my arms. My knees give way, plummeting the depth of a decomposing tomb.
Then someone yells cut, and the scene starts again.