Dream or Nightmare?

compound complex

I have reached a frontier dreamt about as a child -- the outer reaches of a vast realm under stars.

Though an imaginative and inquisitive lad, my forward-looking mind and open heart could never have conjured up this fabulous, this infinite unreality into which I have been catapulted. What may appear a distortion of my former reality I tentatively accept as a cosmic tableau that threatens both to fascinate and crush my frail, puny body and spirit. I am unable to comprehend what I gaze upon with frightened, delicious terror.

My recent escape from Lunaria was of sheer necessity: my people have been overtaken by a scorpion race of alien malefactors whose intent toward us was not one of beneficient intervention but that of conquest. If it were a matter of mere subjugation of a weaker and lesser race, we might have acquiesced, though begrudgingly. However, the terrifying reality enjoined upon us has been the conquerors' brusque insistence that their insatiable hungers be satisfied with our quailing flesh. These interlopers, these transgressors of the cruelest, most avaricious sort, have invaded our world.

My departure, alas, has taken place -- yes -- but solely in my mind. My soul, the Great Spirit willing, shall ascend into the reality of His celestial domain, where long-hoped-for dreams will come true and this nightmare will have ended. My existence as flesh and blood will soon end.

Damn . . . damn the Earthlings. . . .

tornapart

Coco.. you're such a deep thinker! Life is scary and the unknown even scarier. Continue believing in the dreams... let the nightmares pass...

Xanthippe

Qu'est - ce que c'est CoCo?

compound complex

Thank you, tornapart and Xanthippe, for your posts.

My forays into SF have been inspired by my childhood fascination with the same, particularly the flicks and television shows: The Twilight Zone, The Outer limits . . . It is totally within reason that the avaricious conquerors, in this instance, should be humans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIufLRpJYnI

correction: [. . .] whose intent toward us was not one of beneficient beneficent intervention but that of [. . .]

Xanthippe

That youtube is very funny CoCo! Well my daughter is a vegetarian so perhaps she knows something I don't about the future! I love Scifi by the way, Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, John Wyndham, Ursula K le Guin. Let your mind take flight.

tornapart

I used to love the twilight zone when I was young!

compound complex

Upon sleep's threshold, he casts a languid stare, while a blackened ceiling swirls in descending counterclockwise motion.

The seething darkened mass bides its time in an incremental downward slide toward the total obliteration of the bed's hapless victim. He feels no pain, though captive limbs and trunk are rendered motionless by puce-colored strangler vines come creeping insidiously through ancient, rotted floorboards. The atmosphere of the filthy chamber is heavy and suffocating. It presses down in manner oppressive upon a man already in the throes of gradually rising panic. Never ought he have allowed the pernicious allure of this bad house persuade him stay.

Unable to open his mouth -- whether to scream, to breathe, to pray -- the derelict manor's young lord is engulfed by regret and sorrow over matters left too long unattended, hence, unresolved. No other human is present to hear the pitiable young man's deathbed lament. Servants and family and friends knew when to leave . . .

So, too, God. . . .

compound complex

I pull away, turn on my heel and make for home. Escaping the glaring eye of the other, I realize, is only temporary. As I walk the last quarter mile toward home, there is my tormentor, staring me squarely in the face from on high. Twenty minutes earlier the dark entity was perched loftily upon a promontory, ensconced in that deadened wood. As I hasten anxiously homeward, I look only at my feet in order to avoid the persistent draw of the sinister landscape ahead on the ridge.

On my porch, I reach with a jerk for my key chain. I fumble as I look about to my right, to my left. Finally . . . latch key poised between thumb and index . . . insert . . . turn the key . . . knob. Ultimate relief, at last, as I enter the cool, dark of my abode. Collapsing upon my threadbare wingback, I try to blot out images that began surfacing in my pounding cranium when I was in its leering presence.

*************************************************************************

I have made repeated attempts to move on with my life since your flagrant decision to plague my every thought, my every move. I cannot move forward. A change of venue, that of diet, even new clothes have afforded me but a frivolous and temporary elevation of spirits. Accordingly, as I am thus paralyzed by a most profound sense of anguish, I lie in bed, starring at a black sky, and pine anew for what little contentment life once offered up. A mellow and simple contentment I owned before your decision to inhabit my home, my body, my spirit. Whenever will you cease following me about? You have gripped me by the nape of my neck and refuse to release me. My begging for mercy from a hunter lioness would prove an endeavor far more certain of success. You are a wily mistress, one whose cruel hold is that of iron. Between the mind's stabs at my heart and your refusal to disappear from my view, I am losing that steely mastery of self that has been pounded into my once unquestioning conscience.

In complete control of all that my eyes now behold, you pull me steadily backward into times past. Times that, I thought, were gone and forgotten. Nearly forgotten but for a brief remembrance triggered, in strange and bitter irony, by that most brief recollection of a fleeting joy. Sorrow forces upon me the certainty of her undeniable existence, her penetrating essence. You are she . . .

You have stolen my present, sabotaged my future, yet you say nothing.

myelaine

Set me as a seal upon your heart,

As a seal upon your arm;

For love is as strong as death,

Jealousy as severe as the grave;

Its flames are flames of fire,

A most vehement flame...

compound complex

Ah, yes, Myelaine -- a most vehement flame!

for you and yours.

CoCo

Dream or Nightmare?

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