SPIDER DREAMS: Chapter Three & Four

 Chapter 3: Aquatic Orange Petals

A fly comes buzzing over and lands on my clean, polished white coffee cup. It looks up at me and begins to speak. I understand its foreign tongue. I can read the fly’s thoughts, or is it the fly who is reading mine? Perhaps it is the fly dictating to me what I am actually saying?

 Content for mature audiences. NC17

“So I drink this cup and wait?”

“What is this shit? It’s fucking horrible. Damn man, sprinkle some sugar in your tea.”

“The exotic undomesticated flower of some lost island?”

“My limbs are weakening and numb but my mechanical eyes still work.”

“I can see down the throat of the beast!”

“Oh God! Watch out for the abdomen!”

The fly nibbles at the few remaining breadcrumbs and crackers on my plate. Then licks some salt off the cheese and flies away. I hope his legs start working better.

Dewy morning sunrises along deserted shores belong to fragile night. Voices scream in dawn. They yell through sky. Souls are searching for souls tortured in hell.

I have found the documents; they were in my brief case. How could I have left them behind? Foolish nonsense, it must be the fly’s juice on my sandwich.

Poison.

And the son impales the father with all the mercy left in the world. There is no room left in the universe for a God.

Reality has nothing to do with reason.

 Chapter 4:  Coffee Conversation Take One

“So last night I has this dream, right?” His voice, a low muted hum in my ear, kind of like a mosquito who needs to whisper a secret.

It’s early morning, sometime between lunch and breakfast in a semi-busy local family diner. Buzzing chatter muffles through the static of transparent audio space. I’ve been watching the light shift across the peeling beige café wallpaper. Years of cigarette smoke saturate the once beautiful pristine white of the floral pattern into a delicate umber yellow that can’t be appreciated in the non-smoking section. It is a much brighter foreign friendlier atmosphere over on the other side of the diner.

A larger lady sits across the aisle and two tables down from me hunched over a heaping plate of steaming bacon and eggs. I watched as she piled spoon after spoonful of sludge onto her plate from the undercooked day old Sunday buffet. Now she sits using her fingers to gorge the shit into her gaping mouth. A glistening shine of oil perspires and glimmers a streak of sunlight across her skin. I have no appetite and my coffee is bitter, burnt black dirt. It is barely keeping my biomechanisms alive.

“Hey man, hello? Are you even listening?” his dull murmuring voice asks.

She digs her head into the food devouring it like squealing pig.

“Hey! Hello? Have you even heard a fucking world I’ve said?”

A low buzz vibrates in my head. Her fingers turn into hooves and her blond hair curls up tight reveling pointed ears. I am going crazy.

“Hey, Hey, Vincent! Earth to Vincent? Is anybody home?” He slaps a love tap across my face and he begins to come into focus like a blurred black and white photograph. “Hey buddy, I’ve been talking to you and you can do is there drooling like a puppet with wax filled eyes.” I ignore his comment.

She slurps a string of sausage into her gaping orifice and looks up drooling. We make eye contact. I am frightened and lighting jolts me back into the seat. A cold shiver wiggles down my spine and shudders in my mind. Visions of an endless abyss cold and voidless cavity, I want to vomit.

“Nice to have you back pal.” Said Lance, a good friend of mine sitting across the table.

“Sorry man, rough night last night.” I say. “An old friend stopped by unexpectedly and paid a little visit. Ended up staying up all night.” I coughed in my sleeve and rubbed my nose. “Now, what were you talking about? Sorry I sort of zoned out.”

“I said I had this intense dream last night.”

I scratched the itch on my head. “Yeah, what happened?” I asked.

“First I was fleeing from somewhere and then I realized I was actually trying to get somewhere. I climbed down a hole in the ground. It looked like a culvert or manhole and suddenly I was real deep inside the Queen’s lair. I could hear footprints shuffling about like an army approaching. Alarms and sirens started to go off and scream. I had a short dull knife gripped in my right hand. I realized my mission was to kill the Queen of the hive. It was my purpose. I had to cut her head off. Then as thousands of soldiers poured in through the damp dark tunnel ahead I woke up sweating in bed. I tossed and turned unable to fall back to sleep and just watched the ceiling fan overhead spin.”

“Sounds intense,” I remarked lifting my coffee cup and noticing my body still had motor skills. “Sounds like a dream you get from watching too much television at three in the morning.” I smile and my dry white lip cracks open. I lick the warm blood and taste its sweetness. I must smell very badly.

“What do you make of it?” Lance asked shoveling spoon after spoonful of noodles into his mouth. “Think it has any meaning?” He said with a noodle dangled from his bottom lip. He sucked it up sharply with a quick gaze across the room.

“Yeah man, sure. Certainly, I… I think it has a lot of meaning. I mean if I were you, I’d take it pretty seriously.” I took another long cold sip of the worst coffee on the planet and set the cup gently back down in the exact spot I picked it up from. A thin tan coffee stain has dried on the speckle-designed table. The cup settles quietly knowing its place in the booth. All theatrical stages are set with precision and purpose like a big budget movie with all the objects in the scenery having definite meaning.

“Maybe it stands for your sexual frustrations leaking their way out from your subconscious over-friendly mind. You obviously are in some confusion or fluster to run from an enemy, perhaps the Queen represents your girlfriend. You seek her and need her but also want to escape or kill her. In both cases you’re trapped and caught in her lair. You want to be there, but yet you also want to defeat her. Which isn’t necessarily a bad place to be, but with only a short dull blade that obliviously represents your manhood, you don’t have much to defend yourself with or please her with, for that matter. So I’d sharpen that knife or run like hell.” I said standing up. “I’ll be right back man. I need to find the restroom. I feel like splitting at the seams and vomiting.”

The gluttonous lady across the room no longer resembles anything human. In her indulgence she morphed into a brute and ugly boar deep in lustful ritual. I want to vomit. The floor begins to move and the wallpaper peels back exposing worms and snakes. They’re spilling onto the floor and crawling across the intricate carpet. Behind the front desk the hostess is getting the quick ‘in and out’ by her manager. Guests keep entering the establishment without noticing as she continually greets them. An espresso machine squeals nearby in an irritating pitch that boils my brain like frying bacon. And where are the bathrooms?

“Damn it! Where are the fucking bathrooms in this place?” I shout and everyone stops and looks at me. The cute hostess glances over as she buttons her short blue shirt. She points to a sign shaped like a hand directing the way the restrooms.

“Thank you,” I manage to say but it’s too late. A silky white glob erupts from my mouth and covers an innocent frail old lady who has entered the front doors. She stands there shaking in a thin clear layer of my candy-coat vomit. A sweetness looms in the air decorated with the sound of Sunday church bells outside. Karma has a funny way about itself. The elderly and sinful after-church buffet brunch rush has begun. It’s a usual thing in this town.

“Sorry Mum,” I said. “I didn’t see you there. I must be coming down with something.” I turned to the hostess and wiped my mouth on her skirt. I pull a cigarette from my open pack, light it casually and return to my table in the diner. I feel a lot better now.

“Is there a line between self consciousness and self awareness?” I ask Lance as I sit down. “I’ve been dissecting myself lately because I haven’t attracted anyone of interest. Maybe I need to show more effort towards the game, but it’s a task for the indecisive to decide who they want to be based off the memories of who they thought they were.”

I take a long sip of stale now cold coffee. Lance sits there staring off into the distance with a spoon full of gravy almost to his mouth.

“Do we fake responsibility believing it is destiny?”

My food arrives. It looks delicious. I’m a big fan of eggs benedict. It’s hard to make bad eggs benedict no matter what type of restaurant it is. But never trust the cooks. The people who prepare the food at these type of establishments are not the type of people that should be around small children. They do terrible things in their free time and horrible things while at work. They do not wash their hands and they all use the same single small unclean toilet in back. They chain smoke cigarettes and tell each other dirty jokes in the musty break room. They have no work ethic and care nothing about the customers they will never see or meet. They do their routine task of cooking and serving repetitively day after day after day.

Lance eats his food fast chewing like a starving bum letting a string of melted cheese dangle like a thread from his lower lip. I can see gears turn in his head and smoke trickle out his ear. He swallows.

“We cannot take responsibility for every eroded rock and drowning mammal on the planet can we?” he says. “If we try to think about it too hard we might just explode. Maybe the issue at hand involves pleasure. Maybe the act of taking responsibility allows one to enjoy life more.”

“Only if it were to improve our standard of living.” I said using the blunt end of my toast to burst the my yolk. Yellow goo melts across the plate.

“But what is the use of a great standard of living if we’re always worried about paying for things and being responsible?”
I take a bite of my breakfast. The very act of chewing feels satisfying. It could be cowhide for all I care at this moment. I’m starving. “So, what’s the difference between awareness and consciousness?” I ask.

“I don’t know man. Maybe the two concepts blur together in some sort of ‘knowing thy self’ sort of shit.” He began waving his fork about as if conducting an orchestra. “A constant search within the self while in contrasts always ‘being’ and dwelling in the ‘now’ of this experience. An existence within some constituted and constructed benevolent reality. Physics is all fucked up man. The question between the two ideas amounts to nothing but a thin line of placement within a world where everything evolves around ‘Thy Holy Self’. Look at me, this is who I am and my brand new shoes. I am glorious and God in the flesh. This is my piece of heaven.” He took another large mouthful of scrambled eggs and chewed.

I sipped my coffee. The waitress came around and refilled my cup with a pretty red-lipped smile.

“Are you going to the mall by chance today?” Lance asks. “I’ve got to get my crazy girlfriend a birthday gift.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” I said.

“Damn, I could really use a ride. Mind dropping me off after we’re done eating?”

“Not a problem man. What are you going to get her?”

“Ah, I don’t know. Maybe a new watch or a DVD.”

“A true romantic.”

We sat in silence eating.

“Do you think the self created person chooses their own decisions?” I ask.

“I don’t know man. All I do know is those who don’t choose to change remain the same. Habits and routines determine daily life and at any moment a person can choose to change them. We are able in a sense to decide from a palette of past selves to create our future self. Identity is merely a reflection of how we want to be and how we present ourselves to others in contrast to how they interpret us.”

“If no one else was around would you still be you?” I ask.

“No,” he said. “I am only because you want to see me this way.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“I don’t know man. Lay off. It’s too early in the day for this type of shit and I don’t want to take responsibility for every thought and action that goes through my head. I’d rather not think about it and pass it off on someone else. This responsibility bull shit is a real drag and a burden to the greater standard of being alive.”

“Sorry dude.”

“Don’t worry about it man.” He continues eating. “The true burden of being alive is that is costs too damn much. We are born without a known reason and from this birth we are bombarded with choices and influences that create who we are. We are forced to choose one direction over another guided by factors. One of these greatest factors in all our lives is income. The greatest means with no end that controls us all by using obligation.”

I suddenly began feeling small and gazed at the inverted reflection of my face on the back the spoon. I thought there was no spoon.

“Responsibility saturates our species when it desires control. Hierarchies are erected and the manifestation becomes distorted by those who have the power and influence over others.” Lance lifts his plate and begins licking it. “Yummy. I like this place. We should come here more often.”

I smiled. “Yeah, it’s pretty good food.” I lit another cigarette. "The coffee is shit."

“Sometimes it feels bleak and impossible like the world is coated in drab walls gray and useless. Especially in this dead and uneventful town where nothing ever happens and the days become banal. Everyone is a drowning man, but I do tell you friend, every action has an echo and there are sweet melodies still playing. All a person has to do is know how to listen. The average nobody easily overlooks such beauty and details, but we are thoughts vibrating a will of manifestation and experience. Each one of us is doing this conscious or not as a sort of pitch or note in a vast and endless song. Everyone of us is a tone of memories filling the void of the imaginary and saturating the walls of time and space.” He set his plate back down. “So in hopes for another day, may the rain fall and wet the all too dry and cracked soil of this gray town. Let the water wash away fear and bring new life.” He stands up. “Let’s get the hell out of here man. The bill is on me.” He pulls out a dark brown leather wallet plump with green bills. He pulls out a twenty and a ten leaving them on the table. “You just hang in there buddy in that nostalgic suicidal sort of way you got going on and things will turn around for ya. We are all nomadic creatures by nature. Wanting to be free, wander and adventure is humanistic and to feel imprisoned by this lack of choice makes complete sense. Life can be a prison or a liberation.”

I wipe the corners of my mouth gently with a white folded paper napkin.

“We must leave our old selves behind. We must become anew!” He is nearly shouting. “This is our time now to be alive and celebrate. This is our journey ahead. It is a spiritual quest the human race faces. The physical world has been over abused, hyper extended and damaged without repair. Mother Earth has been ripped open by the gun, by the man and by our cancer. What has it amounted to: fast food joints on every corner, gas devouring cars, the rich getting richer, corporations controlling governments, and bad fucking coffee? Is this any type of lifestyle to sustain? The true crime at hand here friend,” he said as we started making our way towards the exit, “is the deception we have led ourselves to believe. The real horror of reality is the lies we tell ourselves and believe. The sad truth at hand is how much our perception of the objective and subjective have been altered.”

He opens the door for me and we step outside to the parking lot. Sunlight blinds my eyes forcing me to squint. I momentarily forgot where I parked my car and stand stunned like a deer in headlights fiddling with the keys in my pocket. I put my dark sunglasses on.

“It’s like going to the mailbox looking for our promised letter sent by God. But once we get to our mailbox holding our big golden key of importance we suddenly realize we’re evicted.”

I find my rusty old reliant and unlock it. “Come on man. I’ll give ya a ride to the mall. I could use some social observation.” He gets in calmly and I’m glad he has found his little piece of heaven to call his own pre-enlightenment, but sometimes he doesn’t know when to shut up.

I light a cigarette turn up the radio and drive.

Copyright © 2018, Charles Denton
All rights reserved - No part of this story can be used without written consent.