Subjunctive

by Integral Archer

Chapter XXIII: Singular

In dreams, you can’t change.

In dreams, you’re forced to stand naked before your mind as it casts up its neglected facets around you.

When you’re awake, when those hidden facets slink away, you face the external world with everything in it that you may love or hate. When the external world grows dark, you drift off to sleep and in the dream world face everything that you’ve hidden away.

And in that dream world, the given concretes of the external world, which you so take for granted, become mud, clay, a tar that falls apart when you try to mold it into the shapes you know.

Except for this one constant: you can’t change.

If in this dream you find yourself the king of the unknown, the protector, the conqueror, the ruler and god, if you find that you can move by your own will, crush beneath your feet the impotent objectors, fly from one end of your domain to the other with thought alone—if you find this, you call it a good dream, and you forget your inability to change. In these good dreams, your true form, which you have to hide in the real world, becomes the face of power, force, ability, such that to change would be to throw it away, such that the ability to change in itself would be a disability. And you go about your night with the power to fulfill your lusts and whims without compunction or doubt. Just as a healthy creature is not consciously aware that he’s healthy as he lives, you don’t notice that you’re missing this crutch by which you live in the day.

But if in this dream you find yourself a victim to an unknowable power, the serf, the slave, the exploited and tormented, if you find that every tendon in your body screams with fear to run, to hide, to move, to take action to preserve yourself, but the more you try to take control the louder the threat becomes and the more your body appears to you emaciated and frail—if you find this, you call it a bad dream, a nightmare, and to compound this terror you realize that you had once been able to hide away, to change your face and evade your tormentors, but now there you are, exposed and in danger; and, for a brief moment, you experience what it is to be vulnerable as every other creature, compounding your terror till it reaches its climax—and then you awake, sweating and panting with exhaustion, test your magic, and then cry in relief, murmuring: “Finally . . . finally . . . I can change. . . . How horrible that would have been . . .”

*

I was running.

Black, jagged forms from nothing, of nothing, shot up around me. Now one to the left, now another to the right, more ahead, all tried to impede my flight. When I remembered that my leg and wing were injured, immediately the pain came back and I began to limp.

Where I was and where I was going, I didn’t know. But I felt it behind me. I dared not look back. The jagged masses crumbled around me as it pushed forward, as though they were incinerated by its breath—a hot fear that lapped against my neck, impressing an urgency. The pain in my leg and wing shot through me—and there came the entity once again, forbidding me to stop, pushing me on despite the agony and tears.

This continued a long while, unchanged in its course, only that the pain grew more trenchant, my path narrower, and my fear more pronounced. Though I used three different words to describe these variables—pain, path, fear—they were not different entities; in that world, they were three different manifestations of the same entity within me . . . and still I could not say what that was.

The path ran out; the jagged forms closed around me; my pain reached its maximum—all at once, all together. And then it was upon me, from behind, now from in front, as I tumbled over myself, and at last came to rest on my back.

Not knowing where it was, knowing only that it would strike, I threw my forelegs over my face as my final gesture.

When I dared to open my eyes, blackness covered my entire field of view—except for two sharp points of light that burned above me evenly spaced apart, looking at me, the only witnesses to my end. Independent in body yet together in meaning they glared. Their visceral fire lashed out at my mind, my eyes, and my body, exposing my nakedness, holding the softest and most vulnerable parts of me open to attack, to whatever was in the distance, imminent, balancing on the critical moment.

I was on the climax, having the horrible end of the dream pierce into me; yet there I remained, waiting for the end, praying to be released, but having the fear and the horror bear down on me, manifesting its presence in those blinding points of fire, which snuffed the rest of the sky in darkness. I opened my eyes as wide as I could: there was nothing but terror in my blind periphery, pressing on the surface of my skin, nothing but black all around, except those two points, two wronged ones, two wrathful avengers, all blazing in two small, dense, fervid spears above me.

Wake up! I screamed. Let me see the sky again!

But the world held. I was stuck in my nightmare. As this thought grasped its hold, the nightmare lost its murk and drew itself clearly around me: I felt the sweat on my back against the alien vegetation, heard my heart pounding in my ears, saw the two points scintillating now, as though emphasizing that this was my new existence in which to see, to touch, to die—a new state, the same as the old one, except in the old one the prevailing emotion was wonder; in this one, it was dread.

I shuddered, and lo! The air burst into glitter and dazzle, as the familiar massive expanse of the nighttime sky shifted back once more into its rightful place, as though pulling me from my terror world and welcoming me back with twinkles.

I had never been happier to see the stars. In their lambency, the memory of the dream world dissolved instantly and disappeared. It seemed to be the light of reason; coming down in purging torrents, it punctured the void, and not even a trace of the inconsequential nightmare remained. I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth bathe me. I tested my memory, trying to remember what I’d seen—and I smiled when, underneath that light, so bright that I could see it beneath my eyelids, I couldn’t recall even the slightest trace of that horror which had once appeared so threatening and real.

I brought my foreleg up to my face to wipe the sweat from my brow. And then, all at once, the sky disappeared again—and in its place were the two points of light, evenly spaced, glaring directly back at me. Instantly, the nightmare rushed back, along with the fear, the trepidation; I was once again at that climax, not knowing what had triggered it or how to end it.

It had escaped from the dream and taken form in the real world to torment me! With my foreleg across my eyes, my vision was black—except for those two points of light, two stars which pierced through a large pore in my foreleg, staring at me despite my attempts to block them out. In me, there was an uncontrollable nightmare, which had stripped my facade without my knowing or consent!

The pegasus’s soft breathing came to me from a few meters away. At the moment, her head was turned aside, in an undisturbed sleep. To her, this night was like any other, and she slumbered on without the knowledge that her assailant lay in plain view not a few paces from her, terrified of her, of himself.

I gasped, horrified lest she see me, and shifted back into my unicorn form as soon as I could.

In the darkness, I couldn’t see if the color of my ersatz fur was the same as it had been on the previous day. With wide eyes, I stared at my hooves, waiting for the light to come back, dreading to see it emerge through my skin.

Comments

[The Amateur]

Wow.

I am truly awestruck by this chapter. This may be the finest work of prose put so far in this story. Once one takes the time to really examine the text, one can see a blend of different masteries: mastery of language, mastery of structure and presentation, mastery of the senses.

It all comes together to create the perspective of a being in a world apart. One character, two foils, two worlds. Brilliant.