Cell + 6
Last night I had a dream of seeming significance, but I have no feeling as to why. It’s as if facts I’ve not learned dance and pulse in my head casting their scriptures off in carelessness, living vicariously in the waves their crashing sends.
My head pulls in so many directions at once. I’m simply waiting for the spray of small maroon geysers to erupt from my temples along cracks that must soon give way. So many voices, and I’ve no idea which ones to trust.
My dream, as I remember it, refuses to hide. Even as I found myself once again tied to a cold bed bathed in a field of warm white light this morning, and felt the prick of something like a bee sting high on my forearm, the dream’s topography mapped itself on the back of my eyes.
I’ve charted its grounds again and again since I’ve been back in my cell, and perhaps it is only my ignorance which forfeits my understanding.
Anyway, I’ll do my best to lay the dream here for later interpretation.
It begins in a place I don’t recall, and can’t outline, but what I saw is all that is of importance. At least, I think that’s the case. I want to say it was in the middle of a field of tall tan grass swaying under the fingers of an overcast sky dragging hands of warm air. The sky was that of a harsh winter storm, but the air was warm and without precipitation.
Feeling the grass slide over my pant legs or fold beneath my weight, I waded forward to a waist high circle of gray stone. Once upon it, I peered down into the hollow center of a well.
Far beneath where my feet held the floor of my dream, light flickered like a phantom moonlit candle. Many shades of gray caressed and spun over each other just beneath the surface of what had to be ancient holy water.
From this twirling mesh of shimmering gray came the haunting white of a beautiful woman’s face. Her hair floated on the currents in the water before her face, and I realized the water was slowly rising, bringing her closer.
There was nothing to be afraid of. Yet, fear rose in me, matching the growing height of the water inch for inch. I wanted to turn and run, to fly up and through the clouds and feel the wonderful heat of the sun blister me as I soared into its flames, burning me beyond ash, leaving no residue of my existence.
I wanted nothing more than to turn my head away. As often is the case, what I wanted was of little regard. Instead, I watched the water rise and the woman beneath its churning surface come closer.
As she came, her features blinked in and out of focus. White folds of waving fabric sank from her shoulders into the darkness below. There was no malice in her eyes, and no ferocity to her gestures. My heart sped and pumped the fear throughout my being, like a fever of rolling razorblades, leaving my insides, my self, shred and bleeding in agony.
The well, now only feet from filled, began to shake and without order, my body took one step back. Just as I did, water jumped from the opening towards the sky. The woman rode the blast to its peak and then burst free of the falling water. Her arms lifted from her sides. White cloth trailed her ascent, and then she was coming down to me, leaving the fabric to twist up behind her.
She was angelic, godlike. She was a living representation of some Roman goddess I could not name.
There was still nothing menacing about her, other than the overall situation of her arrival. Again, I tried to move, to run, but my body was disconnected from my will, leaving me sitting, waiting to be crushed as she fell towards me.
Just as we were about to make contact, my eyes closed in the dream. When I opened them again, I was again standing beside the well, peering in. Far beneath, I could see the shimmer of the water’s surface, and nothing else.
Taking a step back, I realized the structure of the well had changed. Where there was only the circle of the well’s rim, there was more. A wooden arch now rose over the well’s stone mouth. There was an arm to the right of the wood frame, connected by a pulley and rope, where a bucket should hang, directly over the well’s open mouth, there hung a rusted sign.
I read the words, and directly after, woke up.
Four words, by my own lack of knowledge, they are a mystery to me, but something about them calls the fear within me.
It read:
Veritas on the Horizon.
Who or what is Veritas, and why am I afraid of it?
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