Somewhere in the distance the desert fell into a forest and all the trees were on fire. The flames sang like a rising boy’s choir. Each foot step played a melody of woman’s cry of pleasure mixed with young boys praise to god. As Anne walked forward the flames died down with smoke that stank of burnt flesh. Like cheap Halloween costumes discarded before use, sheets were strewn cast aways' on every branch. They sizzled and caught back into flames. Each time they burnt anew a young boys voice called out to angels. But in this place they cannot tread.
“Dreamer often lie but do dreams ever tell the truth?” Anne asked
Her voice answered.
“Dreamers are the only truth.”
Anne’s bare feet felt the change from warm desert to wet ash. Her feet stepping cautious cat’s paws over the bones of another animal’s kill.
Crack.
A downy boy screams a gospel.
“Do you remember that game when you throw sticks then pounce to pick them off the ground?”
Her echoed replied, “Is London Bridge still falling then?”
“I remember paying the toll but I don’t think I got my stamp.”
Her echo called out again, “Oh, your mark is deeper then that.”
A drizzle of rain spat down putting all the little boys songs to bed. Smoke rose grasping at notes that wouldn’t be reached. Anne tried to shoo them away but these burnt souls and their dirty fingers poked and stuck in her eyes. Her body covered in their ashes. She could taste their hands in her mouth and when she swallowed they reached down her throat. Although breathing in a dream may be an illusion, the lack of air burst stars in her eyes.
“I can’t breathe”
Her voice coyly answered, “You are dreams and all dreams can die.”
The smoke that found its way to smothering turned solid. Anne lay on a large overstuffed bed covered in a drowning of pillows. Gauze drapes fell from every post finding their way into her hair and holding onto wrists as she tried to brush them away. Gauze shrank itself into doves with dirty wings and bloody beaks. The caws covered the canopy. No coos came from their stained mouths, only backwards whispers. Anne tried to form sentences out of their nonsense. Dreams have their own logic. Foot steps began but their beginnings and ends could not be untied. She felt him but could not see him through the cacophony of wings. Decaying powder and the blush of a dead man’s pallor was the sweet scent in the air. She heard him lower his hat and give it one tap, dusting off the collection of many years stillness. The birds all flew in tangled circles then toward him. Anne raised her face to see his face. Caught somewhere in this murder of white crows, he was gone. She felt his smile like a shiver on the skin. Goosebumps rose and screamed her body from this sleep.
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