Fiction

The Dream
by Michael Amorel

I tasted her once. I knelt down before her spread legs and tasted her. I felt her fluids flow down my chin while her soft skin caressed my lips. I was reminded of warm spring rain, the way it coats my face and drips down my neck. I was in bliss.

She sat there looking at me, a slight smile on her perfect lips until it's lost in a spasm of pleasure. Her entire body palsied, her head lolling with lack of control. After her eyes finished rolling back, they focused on me again. Then she returned to her previous pose, the slight smile lightly quivering with expectation.

I was standing in the middle of a field. Across the green grass speckled with various brightly hued flowers were scattered a multitude of wild horses. Each was a perfect specimen, long of flank and well muscled. From a distance, the short hair that covered their bodies looked smooth and slick, the muscles powerfully rippling beneath. The plump roundness of the top of their hind legs attracted my eyes. The gentle curve reminded me of her bent over the edge of a bed, looking over her shoulder at me, waiting. A subtle, warm ache spread from my groin.

I was wandering through the field. It was much later, the misty darkness of evening just beginning. The horses lay about the grass in positions disharmonic with the fluid grace I had seen before. I could see their mouths in sardonic grimaces, bearing teeth and dripping bloody tendrils of flower-flaked drool. A distended belly erupted before me as if a scalpel traced some unseen seam from the inside, steaming entrails oozing onto the quickly dying grass. I watched the intestines slowly writhe like worms in the ruddy blood. Behind me, the sickeningly wet sound of others popping open drew my attention.

I tried to leave, the disruption of my desires driving me on. Waves of dead flesh flowed through my mind as I ran past. Dismembered limbs joined the eviscerated torsos, all leaking their vital fluid uselessly to the ground. Denser grew the carnage until I was surrounded by a sea of raw meat, shockingly white bones protruding as gravestone signs of previous connections.

As quick as I realized my predicament, the mounds of meat began to decompose, exuding an odor that instilled pure disbelief. I couldn't fathom why anyone would want to do such a thing to these beautiful creatures. The very fact that this random violence existed was contrary to my aesthetics. I could see no point to the destruction.

I sat down and cried cold tears. I longed to have the sight of the beautiful horses galloping with life instead of the blackening pools of rot they had become. The liquid pooled around my lap, seeping into my clothes. I felt the disgusting chill of unwanted liquid creep up my skin. The black morass grew deeper and I began to sink. I closed my eyes to hold back the tears, fearing that they would be polluted by the morbid flood around me. I was paralyzed as I felt the surface slowly rise over my legs, unable to come to grips with the reality of the situation. The edge between the life giving air and the remnants of horses cut up my body in its effort to consume me. As it reached my neck, I had trouble breathing, the pressure of the viscous liquid compressing my lungs. My paralysis continued as it flowed over my face, filling my nostrils with the stench of death. My eyelids fluttered in the moments before it completed its journey up my body. All I could see was the imagined screams of the horses in their final moments, their mouths impossibly wide, ripping the flesh of their cheeks. Then all was black.

I sat in the center of the sanctuary. The center room of the pyramid was filled with the empty pots that once held luscious plants. Crumbling pillars feebly stretched the shattered skeletons of their former glory in an attempt to support the collapsing roof. A dry pool I had seen filled with fish and lotus blossoms lay barren before me, begging for release from its loss. The dust and I had a cathexis while we sat in the silence of abandonment. A long time ago, she walked out of the secret door I could no longer find. I remember the back of her head, hair flowing like silk, as she uncaringly let it shut behind her. I could no longer feed the dust my tears. All I could do was sit.

I knew not what was real and what was dream. My experiences were images that flew across the screen of my closed eyes, madly rushing in some vain attempt to bring me out of my lonely predicament. I knew that the blossoming field and the flowing blood were both behind me. Worst of all, I knew also was she.

Yet, I know this isn't a dream, for I am still here. Alone.