Munmun(80)

When you try to save yourself you hurt people, when you try to leave your prison you trample other people’s dreaming, you even bruised the girl who dreams the best of anyone.

Everyone’s fear is atleast a littlebit your fault, maybe a lot your fault, why should you keep living, what good does it do.

I realized I was hearing the voice of Ghost Grace, do you need to live so much that you’re okay with making the world worse.

Even here in Dreamworld my eyes got wet, my throat got thick.

Meanwhile the air around me began to thicken into walls, outside my cave the dreamers began to disappear.

More solodream entered my veins in Lifeanddeathworld, panicky bankers were drugging me. Flushing me from the dreamcity, back into my sleepcage.

Aloneness blanketed me, I ripped its strings halfheartedly but more blankets of solodream arrived, I stuck elbows and knees into them but they wrapped softly around me, into me, entered my eyes and throat, butt and guts, sticky like spiderwebs, loneliness gently wrapped my tiredout little body.

I fought until I couldn’t fight and then I let it hold me, wrap my skin, wrap my insides. It’s like a pulping, after a while you must give up, you have no choice.

The dream was almost over anyway, I just wanted to watch a few more minutes, peer through the threads of solodream, watch and hope the dreamers start to heal themselves without me.

I thought I heard my lungs breathe music.

Or maybe it’s not me singing, maybe that’s Kitty somewhere, remembering her song, forgetting me.

I couldn’t tell who it was, just felt sweet and peacefull.

Outside I thought Lossy Indica was forgetting me too, the dreamers were forgetting their berserk fears, the housefires I started were finally damped and dying.

“Thank you,” I thanked the world, “thank you, bytheway I mean it,” as the meds wore off and I woke up gasping and little again in the giant tub.





LIFEANDDEATHWORLD


But that changed everything, waking up tiny, weak, on fire with pain and sickness.





DREAMWORLD


Oh did that change everything, passedout briefly, bellowed flames and fumes into Dreamworld, roared boiling seawater, screamed broken rocks and fell back into Painworld.





LIFEANDDEATHWORLD


Goodbye dreamy druggy sadness, well hello there rage forever.

Hello heart racing like a rat’s, hello littlelungs flapping my ribs frantically, hello garbage in my guts and blood, toobig objects clanking around in there now.

I thrashed in the slippery grapebowl, this last uneaten grape was bloodymouthed and screaming.

“NO NO NO,” I bellowed, each word couldn’t even make it all the way out before I had to suck air back in.

The bankers asked over the pee ay if they could enter.

“NO,” I screamed, “NO, NO, NO.”

But the bankers hustled in.

“WARNER’S NOT DYING TODAY,” I shivered and sobbed.

The bankers cleaned me, robed me, muttered instructions to each other.

“WARNER’S NOT DYING TODAY, EVIL BANKERS,” I told them, coughing, vomming.

If you’ve never scaled your body down, I can never explain to you how freaking terrible it feels, you can never understand.

You’re getting pulped and drowned and starved and stuffed allatonce and there’s nothing you can do, no escape, it’s how you’ll feel forever.

Trembly, shivery, cantbreathe, canteat. Can’t calm down, can’t stay warm, puny, wobbly, weak.

Eyes can’t let in enough light, ears can’t let in enough sound, body vibrates outofcontrol with every hum and whir of voices, giants, machines, earthsounds.

Everything feels wrong on your fingers and attacks your skin, mouth has too much spit, insides feel beaten and bitten.

Worst is that it’s because someone took your body from you, someone else will swell their bones with your scalemuns, someone else will wear your fat and skin, oh I was mad, all mad and only mad, no room anywhere for sadness, I knew I would never not be angry again.

“EVIL FREAKING BANKERS,” I bellowed from the cart, bloodynosed, bloodyeyed, as they wheeled me to the littlevator. “EVIL.”

“We’re the only ones in the Yewess who can’t be evil, Warner,” soothed one banker finally. “We are tools of society, we swear a sacred oath to be purely instrumental. And good and evil are never in the tool, only in the person who—”

“TOOLS OF EVIL, EVIL FREAKING TOOLS,” I yelled, shut up peen banker, save your sermons for the Crisp New Church of Evil Jerks.

In the yawning waitingroom Puppyneck loomed fivetimes bigger than me, maybe I should have felt fear and dread and smallness, nope, all I felt was rage.

News on vidscreens babbled, tons of crashes on the roads this morning, more than usual, groggy drivers blame disturbances in Dreamworld, more news at eight, hey it’s eight now, okay great here’s that news.

“Time to go,” said Puppyneck, lowering a cage.

He said it and a plan bloomed in my bloodred brain, out of sheer rage, a giant clever perfect plan.

“Face,” I told him. “I dreamed a way to make us rich.”

He shook his head sadly, heard that one before.

“Listen to the plan first, then do what you want,” I said, not even panicky or desperate, totally matteroffact.