SPIDER DREAMS: Chapter 10 Fish’s Monologue

ghostfish (60)in #fiction • 6 years ago (edited)

Overlooking a vast green meadow of hills rolling endlessly in all directions. Looming high overhead, far east, a dark and black cloud floats across the horizon. Blue brilliance fills the otherwise empty dome sky. A sharp breeze catches me from behind rustling my shirt and blowing my curly blond hair all across my face. It feels good. I feel free. There must be a storm approaching.

All the grass bends in the wind’s current. A few small black birds lift into flight chirping and floating through the breeze in deep swoops and dips. They fly to the single leafless tree seated at the top of a hill like a dark knight, barren and outstretching its arms as the protector and keeper over this endless blue valley. The tree trunk twists, spiraling into the bitter harsh winds. Two large black arms reach out on opposite sides sheltering the ring of children.
They link hands circling beneath the knotted black tree, circling and circling, singing and playing under the tree’s branches. They sing and they sway laughing:

Huffity, puff, well-stone round,
If you are lost;
you’ll never be found,

Huffity, puff, lift up your chin,
And lace up your shoes,
with a shiny gold pin,

When we are ready, you will begin,
Huffity, puffity, puff, sin, sin, sin.

Footnote:
“Huffity, Puffity, Ringstone Round” is an English nursery rhyme thought to be sung by children playing around megalithic stone circles such as Stonehenge.
https://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=802

A giant white dandelion pollen the size of my head floats past, hanging from its string like a parachute for a seed. A seed I could eat for a meal. The birds take flight again disappearing into the setting sun.

All the children are holding onto a rope, thick and twined. I am three hills away, yet they have not noticed me. They begin to unwind from around the rooted barren tree still dancing and singing in harmony with each other. One of the tallest boys in blue overalls claims the role of the leader and pulls the group along with the rope.

They skip along in a line hand in hand linked and twined, a dance of laughter and fun. They look like a train leading around the grassy knolls digging through waist deep bright green blades of grass.

They see me and approach. They are still singing ascending up the hill towards where I stand.

What’s its Name?
What’s its name?
MaryJane?

Who has the number number?
Who has the number number?
Sea salt and stoned slumber.

Where is your home?
Where is your home?
Aqua green foam.

Down her lane?
Down her lane?
On sugar cane.

What’s its Name?
What’s its name?
MaryJane?

At whose address?
At whose address?
Please do confess.

We’ll be at the shop?
We’ll be at the shop?
With no teardrop.

What’s its Name?
What’s its name?
MaryJane?

Footnote:
“What’s Your Name Mary Jane” English nursery rhyme dating to early 1900’s.
https://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=796

The storm creeps in from far off spanning its dark fingers towards us. The children begin to loop around me locking me in their circle and linking hands. They skip around me clockwise still laughing carelessly and enjoying themselves. A smile forces its way across my face. I feel joy. Then a laugh forms deep in my gut. It hits me hard and forces its way out. I cannot stop laughing and grip my stomach so I can hold everything in and make sure it all comes out of my mouth. The children continue dancing around me singing;

Oranges and lemons
ring the bells of St. Clement’s.

You owe me five farthings
ring the bells of St. Martin’s.

When will you pay me?
Ring the bells of St. Baileys.

When I get rich?
Ring the bells of Shoreditch.

When will that be?
Ring the bells of Stepney.

I’m sure I don’t know.
Rings the great bell of Bow.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed.
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

Chop, chop, chop! The last man’s dead!

Footnote:
“Oranges and Lemons” A traditional English nursery rhyme dating back to 1840.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oranges_and_Lemons

Subtle bells ring in the near distance chiming like a church song. They thunder and gong deep and crisp growing louder. They begin to sound like trumpets bellowing blowing horrid anger screaming, screaming roaring like the storm approaching. Lightning begins to dance in crackling flickers sharp and bright. Echoing drums of thunder follow rushing over the hills. The sky turns deep violet black and sick. I need to find shelter. Rain races towards me. I see it as a thin white wall moving slowly towards me.

Wide-eyed and innocent the children stop dancing around me and stare in sadness. They are dressed in early 1900’s clothing. Little pristine white bows tie up the girl’s hair and the boys have knee high knickers on with high-laced tan leather boots. Their bibs and overalls are clean as new.

They break arms and the leader retains his place taking the group away in single file. The last little girl reaches out to me with a pretty white-laced fingerless gloved hand. I gentle grab it feeling a strong tingle jolt through my wrist up my arm and wiggle down my spine. Excitement and fear race through me. She smiled and I notice a hint of malice in that sweet grin.

A strong chill is forming and the wind whirls around us rippling our clothes in desperate need. Lightning flickers wildly, illuminating dark skies in yellow electricity.

The children descend the hill and up the next as I’m unconsciously pulled along without thought or care still smiling. We reach the top of another hill skipping along merrily amongst the storm blowing as the rain hits us. They continue to sing and I join in hypnotized. Somehow I know the words.

Let the wind and the rain and the hail blow high
And the snow come tumblin’ from the sky
She’s as sweet as apple pie
And she’ll get her own lad by and by.
When she gets a lad of her own
She won’t tell her ma when she gets home
Let them all come as they will,
For it’s Mr. Mooney she loves still.

I’ll tell me ma, when I go home,
The boys won’t leave the girls alone.
They pull my hair, they stole my comb,
And that’s alright till I go home.
She is handsome, she is pretty,
She’s the belle of Belfast city,
She is courtin’, one, two, three,
Please won’t you tell me who is she?

Footnote:
“Belle of Belfast City” Irish origins
https://genius.com/The-irish-rovers-belle-of-belfast-city-lyrics

At the top of the third hill I see a large red brick mansion with white trim and window shutters quaintly nestled into the deep valley. A large wooden porch wraps around the structure like a mother’s embrace. The building is three stories tall with dark lurking windows and two massive grand pillars stretching from top to bottom. Three narrow stone chimneys protrude from the roof like fork prongs. The house is calling me, beckoning me to enter her. I wonder who lives here?

The chain of linking children are heading directly towards the house and leading me to her. Down the hill we run unlinking hands and racing with the unstoppable force of gravity. The front door looks to be open. Air pants out my lungs in forceful gushes. I feel like I’m going to explode.

I stop. I stagger. Winded I enter the house cautiously turning the cold brass handle. There are no lights on inside. It is dim, dusty and through a haze of hard wood floor I can see dark marble decoration weaving in frozen liquid down a hallway. Exquisite railings line the walls and trim the twisting staircase before me. Red violet carpet drapes down the stairs. Massive chrome mirrors in silver frames line the ten-foot walls around me. My image is repeated over and over again confirming my existence.

The children have disappeared racing up the staircase. Their voices echo out and into nothingness. I see no footprints of their muddy shoes in the quiet eternal dust that coats everything. Nobody has been in this house for decades. I am confused and begin strolling down the hallway smiling at all my reflections. The heels of my boots click against the checkered yellow and violet tile flooring. Big rich crimson felt curtains hang over massive Victorian windows. Each window looks into a different world, into a different direction, into a different life, a different choice, another dimension.

At the end of the hall, a door, deep in green shadow waits with emerald stones ingrained in the Roman arches. Everything is made of silver now tarnishing black. I push the handle down with my thumb and lean into the massive door with a shoulder. It is heavy and doesn’t want to move. I give it a couple slams with all my weight and it slower creaks ajar. Bright light pierces through and I force the door the rest of the way open.

Dust unsettles and a black crow flies in an open window two stories high above me. Silk white curtains flutter in a silent breeze. A chill of death looms in this vast open room. It is an ancient library or study of some sort. Rows and rows upon shelf, upon shelf of bound books climb to the ceiling some fifty feet above me. In the center of the room below a silver chandelier sits a desk.

Outside lightning flickers and turns the skies black. Thunder follows and stirs the perched black birds above. The wicked storm has arrived. Rain pelts down on the window in a thick moisture drooling down the glass hungry.

Another crow flies in the open window screaming about madness. It lands on the golden oak desk in the center of the room. Somehow over the years age and dust have avoided touching this desk. As I approach, the crow flies off landing somewhere high above me on the endless bookshelf which must contain all the wisdom in the world. Books and books and books, more books then a person could read in a lifetime stacked up so high as if one were pulled out they all might fall.

The crow is still mad and caws.

There is an open book on the desk. The breeze seeping in the broken window flips through its pages searching from the right passage. I watch and the wind dies down revealing a blank white page. I stare. Slowly something begins to form across the white canvas page. It is a word merging out of as ink leaks through the paper from the other side. Five big thick letters form across the pages.

‘EXIST’

I flip through the book. Every page says the same thing. Exist, exist, exist. I grab a book from off the shelf and open it. The same thing on every page, exist, exist, exit written in small repeated font spread across each otherwise blank sheet of paper. I grab another book, the next and another, they all the same thing.

The crow above is cackling loudly. It heckles at me laughing, flapping its black wings about and fluffing its chest feathers.
A stone fireplace across the room suddenly ignites. Who puts a fireplace in a library? It is only asking for disaster. The flames crackle orange splendor warming the chill in the room. Hesitantly I walk over. Each step absorbed beneath me in fright.

When I reach the fireplace I grab the poker stick. The crows above me have multiplied. Dozens and dozens sit perched like stone buttresses and statues. They line the walls and shelves like gargoyles still and dark cawing, gawking in laughter I can’t understand. I feel their eyes watching, wanting, piercing into my soul and feeding off my fear. I wave the iron poker at them. It doesn’t do any good.

The ceiling mural begins to shift and come alive. Little naked cupids and cute animals move into motion. One of the cupids shoots an arrow piercing a crow. It falls to my feet bleeding and twitching. I kick it into the fireplace and starving flames burst into blue. Smoke fills the room.

Then it is quiet.

The crows have all silenced themselves.

The cupids have stopped moving.

And when the smoke finally settles to more dust, the fireplace has shifted, opening it self up. Where the chimney chute used to be is now a narrow door. Another door. I open it revealing yet another pathway. I walk in. The door closes and everything is dark, silent, empty. I stand there waiting not quite sure what to do. The door I just came through is no longer behind me. I stand waiting.

My pupils readjust themselves. Solid forms and objects begin to emerge from nowhere. Dark damp tree branches overhead cut up the space to a night sky. A sliver of moon wanes high in the air almost unnoticeable. Autumn drunkenly fills my nostrils. I hear a river trickling below and all around. Sunset has just passed and a loom of orange purple still touches the horizon in a slice of magnificent light. I am standing above the canopies of a lush forest. Wet warm breeze sweeping in. A river bubbles under neither me swiftly flowing towards a new sunrise. I am on a bridge.

Glowing embers of new day are rising yet it won’t. It is like this always, caught between night and day. Not yet day nor ever really night.

Cold solid dirt moistens my bare feet. It is as if the path has been beaten down by hundreds of passing feet. There is a stone ledge on both sides of me that lead to a half twisting gray stone stairway. It winds downward towards the Earth. At the end, at the bottom of the step is a well. I walk to it.

A quiet simple trickle spouts out of the stonewall and fountains in the wishing well pond. I kneel down beside the rim and splash my face with water. It is clear, crisp and refreshing. This is a sacred place.

Water drops drip off the tip of my nose. I watch them fall returning to the pond, the once true source where they will disappear forever. There are no two water droplets that will ever consist of the same atoms. My smiling reflection ripples back up at me. I see something green moving somewhere deep below. It is coming to the surface.

“Hello,” says the fish.

“Hi.” I say thinking it odd. “How do you do?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“Doing much better why thank you.”

The fish smiles a scaly grin. “I bet you’re wondering how a fish can talk.”

I scratch my head. “Something like that.”

“We fish don’t tend to speak at all. Especially the washfobs. Down here below the surface we believe that these sounds and words that people all speak are futile. They bare weight and reduce our worlds to small symbols of meaning limiting the mind’s ability to expand. Words are limitations and we below the surface don’t agree with such nonsense. That is why we remain silent most of the time, but as it is here I am speaking with a human no less. I thought perhaps it would be in the best interest of both parties at this point to try and share in each other’s understanding. You are by all means in the sacred grounds. It is a surprise you’ve found this area. We haven’t had a human visitor in eons.”

“Limitations?” I ask. “What are you talking about?”

“Limitations to the conventional knowledge of any given reality. That is, the spoken word restricts the view of knowledge the speaker can understand. These representations of our selves and the world we live in is defined and determined by the simple limitation of words, signs, sounds and symbols. It is social agreement to use a universal code of communication by creating a language on predetermined classifications and the valuation of actions. Words need to stick and recycle with each generation to mold and fit within the already constituted structure and definitions set forth. Along with this includes rules and laws. Just by speaking we already have narrowed our infinite interpretations and appreciations to a simple view.”

“Each and every entity or organism will experience life in a completely different way.” The fish does a back flip in the calm pond and pops its head back out. “This is as ridiculous as defining something by what it is not.” It spits water like a fountain. “We down below the surface appreciate all these different premises of thought and methods of thinking. It is, to say, we each hold our own melody and together form an orchestra in a school. Each view and thought becomes a different note in a grand harmony.”

“Oh,” I said.

“These words hold limitation. They have the ability to communicate between those who share similar experiences. They parallel each other’s identity and never get to know that there is something else, something different out there.” Said the fish to me. “But then perhaps I am not even here talking with you. Because then I would be a hypocrite and you are just hallucinating me.”

“But, perhaps I am not even here talking with you.” I found myself saying out loud to my reflection in an empty well.

“What? What do you mean?”

Who said that?

“There you go again.”

“Go again? With what?” my voice echoes off.

“Speaking.”

"Speaking?"

“Yes, using words.”

“But, I can see you. You can see me, and I’m sitting here on the edge of this well and Mr. Fish is swimming around in the water. You have been talking to me. Remember we are sharing each other’s understanding?” I said to myself.

“That’s just it,” demanded the fish popping its head under the surface, spinning around and coming back up. “Your very existence depends upon belief, what you see and what you think.”

“What?”

“This whole world, what you are perceiving is all inside your head. You are as real as I make you to be and the reciprocal holds true as well. I may be a figment of my own imagination but now you are too. And I’m choosing to believe that you are here right now and that I can talk with you, but be real, why would a fish ever speak to a human. We have better things to do with our time. Humans are dumb and full of narrow selves. They are so full of hostility towards the external world that not many creatures care for them at all. People think it is only themselves that exist contained within their skin. But in truth there is no separation. All events and things are one continuation. How can humans be separate and above what they are a part of? Just as I swim around and need water to survive what do you think you humans swim around in? Emptiness or your group mentality? You all drift in separation all high and mighty like you don’t need the trees, the air, the wind, the soil, or the planet. You treat the true nature of things like a fish or wild animal, all wiggly and swimming around needing to be controlled, contained, contaminated, and killed. You throw a net over everything trying to catch it, have it, possess it. Domination has controlled the human world and if they do not return to a spiritual level they will extinct themselves. It’s about time to stop dividing everything and start connecting the interweaving fabric that holds us all together. The energy that ripples through the universe is the same as what you are breathing, shitting, bleeding, and eating.”

A little fountain of water trickles from the stone-wall. It splashes behind the fish and wrinkles my reflection.

“So you see, my point being, you can not know yourself unless you know me and everything else around. It’s an interdependent system. By bouncing yourself off other’s you create your own identity, your existence, your ego and nature of being. You are not only a bag of bones contained in skin decomposing any more then I am a scaly slimy aqua breathing catfish. We are identical with the entire universe flowing through the eternal. Its sad that our identities depend on others and are continually constructed by make belief manifested systems of behaviors that are trained and forced upon the youth. It’s all one big game circling to occupy space and time. At this point in time, my air breathing friend, all you humans are losing. And you don’t even know it. You don’t even know that you’re just playing the dice to die.”

“How are we losing?”

“There are three simple laws of manifestation. Simply put, your thoughts are what you are and what you live. There is divinity that flows through you. It flows through everything. The idea of a high and almighty ‘God” father in charge of it all removes self-responsibility. It plays off the monarchical ideal, king and male superiority that there is a king who controls and regulates everything. It is comforting not to have to take personal responsibility for choices. If that were the case ‘El God’ would have stepped in along time ago and changed a few things here to balance his creation back out. But the truth of the matter is, we have chosen everything around us and how it is. We choose to be just the way things are. You are evolving consciousness and intelligence. We are creation in realization but under the control and influence of very very powerful images. The cross, the throne, the crown, government, the dollar, they are all forms for power, the endless thirst for control.”

“You must understand my dry skinned friend, the rulers are the biggest criminals of them all and they are winning. They are on top of the game because everyone believes whatever they are saying. Only an idiot would listen to their ruler, king, or president. The person on top is not out for the good of all peoples, their country or any such thing. They are out for their own personal agenda, profit, wants, needs and desires. They care about themselves first just like everyone else. They continually rob from ‘their people’ the ones they rule over and then justify it with lies. It’s all a simple trick. A very sneaky trick, slimier then I am. The trick of the trickiest. You see rulers have fooled everyone at the game and now control the rules and they bend them to their benefit. Anyone who contests these rulers gets thrown into prison or such equal punishment because they don’t have the power or strength to charge the rules. Anyone who wants to play has to play by ‘their’ rules or else. It’s a dirty game of cheat your neighbor out of their home and land. So whoever controls the images and media fed to the population controls their minds and thoughts. Thus is determined the general opinion over a community, country, tribe, township, government, family.”

“There are no nouns in reality. Everything is flowing like a school of fish, with language, division, measurement, and dissection, the populated and forsaken world is categorized and limited.”

“What needs to be done?” I ask the fish.

“Turn the mind inside out. Dissolve the problems that oppress people. All the sufferings and perishing is in vain while other forces benefit. Break all absolutes. Laws and principles are securities. Grow awareness; dissolve the absence of clarity and the difference of cultural premises. To know what is, is to know what is not. Enter the irrational mind, return to simplicity. Blow bubbles in your milk and tie your shoes laces after taking your shoes off. You see my nearsighted friend, all these things, all these activities; habits and daily actions create identity of nonsense. All of it, everything, it is all nonsense, and ridiculous behavior. People go places, do things, with redundancy thinking they are achieving something, thinking and believing they are accomplishing greatness, rewards, gold, riches, but really their truly is nothing that needs to be or can be achieved. There is no end goal. The greatest accomplishment that there could be is to exist, being born and appreciating that which is ‘alive’, that which we are a part of. It is a superficial construction of false and corrupt kingdom-ships ruling, controlling, and stealing the life of each person they own by occupying their precious life and time so the general population cannot reach any level of ‘real’ realization and liberation.”

“The true struggle at hand is the battle of thought and wills, mind control and personal deliberate creation.”

“Appreciate what being alive is, endless, vast and eternal everything and all around. Without the ‘word’ there is no influence.”

The fish dove down and back up to the surface. “Now it is time for you to clean yourself from this falseness, this illusion veiled before your eyes. In this pond you must wash yourself. For you may think you have greatness but you are just a body born and dying filled with the universal energy trying to free itself. Greatness is an illusion. And for now I must go, for if I do not, you will try and eat me. That is how it is and that is how it goes.”

Dipping my open palms into the cold still waters the fish dove down deep into the blackness of the well vanishing before me in one last flint of silver. Bubbles rose to the surface tickling my fingers and I splashed the clean water against my face feeling the crisp chill reviving my senses. Crystal water drops fell from my chin. Such energy in motion, I thought.

My feet moved beneath me. The ground wiggled. Worms, hundreds and millions of worms crawling across the ground, crawling over each other in an orgy of putrefaction. Staggering back I couldn’t get off them. Then I bumped into the gates.
Two tall iron gates stood before me in a gray stone wall as if touching the sky. A language I’ve never seen before, images of webs and wombs, spiders and faces inscribed across its solid surface. I pushed with all my weight and the one door slowly nudged open…

The sky is violet,
The ground green,
The trees are metallic silver,
The river is deep blue,
The seagulls cry flying overhead.

Into the Sacred Ground
Three women wait,
One of white,
One of black,
The other of red.

They greet me and lead me,

The lady in red takes my hand.
She directs me to the stone altar.
I have no choice.
I lay on a blanket of thick felt
Under a lunar night
Of a pale moon
With dancing candles,
Floating smoke,
And growing black vines.
They move across the ground.

The lady in white holds my left arm.
The lady in black holds my right.
A silver dagger drags across my chest.
I feel pain.
Bright red blood pools down my ribs.
It is warm.

The lady in red breathes smoke.
She approaches placing her delicate warm hands against my face.
Her lips touch mine.
Her tongue inside my mouth.
She inhales my breath.

A thin yellow snake crawls out my throat.