Dream Diary #1...

It's late, and I should be leaving the office now, but I really don't want to try to write this at home, and I also really don't want to skip writing today.  Today was one of those busy days where you feel like you never get a chance to catch your breath, and this is really just the first opportunity I've had to write at all.  So, I'll try to be brief.

I had a strange and unsettling dream this morning.  A lot of it I don't remember, and a lot of it was fluff not worth remembering, but there was a core of something strange, and vivid, and unsettling enough that it's been on my mind off and on all day.

I remember that Dollface and I were staying in a hotel room somewhere, in some small town that was strange to us; we'd never been there before.  It was a cheap motor lodge kind of place.  I remember that she was asleep, and I was bored, and I decided to go check out this new town while we were here.  (Something that has happened in our waking life many times.)

It was the middle of the night, and I drove just down the street aways, until I came upon this strange strip mall.  It was all lit up like an amusement park.  But all the stores were wooden cabins, like you'd find at a campground.  Porches and screen doors; everything hung with strings of lights.  There were shoppers and kids and punks and stoners smoking joints and junkies looking for a fix.  And there were prostitutes, most of them looking like junkies or meth-heads, trolling for johns, so they could get their medicine.

I decided to try and find one I liked.

Definitely not something I have ever done before, in the dream or in real life, and I can't say exactly why I made that decision.  For some reason, I thought the best way to go about this was to sit down in the grass next to one of the porches of one of the stores/cabins.  So, I sat down there in the grass, and looked up at the stars.

It was then that I noticed that there were two moons in the sky.  Both waxing gibbous (a little more than a quarter-full, heading towards full) - mirror images - one slightly above and to the right of the other.  And there were these strange trails of the image of the moon, like a dragon of smoke in the sky below them.  In the dream, as I stared at this awesome and impossible sight, I remembered hearing about this rare lunar condition on the radio, and felt delighted that I'd actually had a chance to see it, since the radio had said it was not going to happen again in my lifetime.

A young girl walked over to me and asked if I was looking for some company.  I said I was.  So she sat down cross-legged in the grass in front of me.  She was wearing a thin white t-shirt, cut-off blue jean shorts, and low-top chuck taylors.  She was very thin.  Too thin for her clothes.  She looked very young, too.  Her skin was smooth and soft and pale.  Her dirty blonde hair cropped short in a sort-of bob.  She didn't look sick and used, like all the others.  In her face, she looked like she still had some baby-fat.  She probably could've passed for 15.  But I was going under the assumption that she was at least 18, because her arms and legs were covered in tattoos.

All of her tattoos were glyphs and symbols.  Sigils and hex-marks and other occult signs.  And Runes.  I could read them.  They were incantations.

"Those are runic incantations," I said to her, pointing to the string of runes on her shoulder.

"Uh, yes, they are," she replied, slightly taken aback.

"Oh, and that is a very powerful mark," I said, pointing to a runic sigil on her bicep that was written in a sort of runic "code."  The ancient runic sorcerers had used it after the christian conversions in order to keep their work hidden from the prying invaders, who had a nasty habit of burning sorcerers.

"Now, you don't look like the kind of person who can read runic incantations," she said, smiling.

"No, I guess not."

We sat in silence for a while, staring at each other.  I liked her.  It seemed like she liked me.  At least enough, anyways.

"What's it like?," I asked.

"Well, for the most part, I actually enjoy it.  Haven't gotten hurt yet.  And I'd be doing it anyways, but this way I get paid for it."  She looked down at her feet, started playing with the grass.  She looked like such a little girl.  "But, I don't really have much choice, do I?"

"Why do you do it?"

"Well, ya know, I got things I need, ya know?"  I nodded.  I did know about that kind of need.  I've felt it pulling down in my bones before, too.  Watched from outside myself as I did things I couldn't believe, just to make that ache go away.

I was beginning to feel that way about this beautiful, sad little girl in front of me, as a matter of fact.

"I know what that's like."

"Yeah, right," she said, and I could tell at that moment she thought I was an asshole.  Just another mark.  I realized what a stupid thing it was to have said.  What the fuck did I know about her life?  What the fuck did I really know about that kind of hunger?  I felt like a privileged rich kid telling a kid from the ghetto that I understood being poor.

I laid down on my back on the grass beside her, and looked up at the sky, with the twin moons, and the dragonsmoke trails of lunar dust.

"Look at that," I said, "Isn't that beautiful?  Won't happen again for a thousand years."

She looked up from the grass.  "Yeah, I guess it kinda is."  She laid down on her back next to me, and watched the sky.  We stayed like that for a while, in silence, at peace.  Until I felt her take my hand.

"What do you want?," she asked.

"How much?"

"Twenty, fifty, or a hundred, depending on what you want."

"I want it all."

"I know."