Brandon Freels
YOU AND US
I was walking down a wooden staircase that randomly changed length and width. It was painted a bright white, and spanned over a void full of unfinished architectural structures, as if overlooking some large construction site. There was no railing on the staircase and I was afraid of slipping off the side.
While walking down the stairs I noticed the shape of your naked body within the steps. Your body grew from the stairs, and levitated out of the wood. It lifted upward and rotated until you were standing parallel to me. You were stiff and quite like a statue. I was carrying your purse and inside I found a piece of hot metal, which I waved in front of your face. This action animated you, as if it was some kind of key, and I followed you as you began walking up the stairs.
The staircase grew narrower the higher we got, and came to an end at a plateau that was overcome with a storm of snow and wind. This plateau was connected to a very large mountain that I assumed was somewhere in Germany, and the snow and wind made it difficult to see and walk. Where the stairs met the plateau there began a silver path, which we promptly began following until it eventually forked in two. One fork went downward to a small village that seemed untouched by the storm, while the other appeared to go up the mountain. You refused to walk any further, and without you I was unable to make a decision. Filled with anxiety, I ran into a large patch of trees, and began shouting the name of another lover, someone from my past.
But when I entered the woods my perspective changed, and suddenly I was you standing silently at the fork in the path. Something was circling us in the distance: a young girl with blonde hair. She moved quickly, so quickly it appeared as if she were flying. It was impossible to see her face, and I could only see her hair as it streaked behind her, and the bottoms of her youthful naked feet, which seemed to barely touch the ground. She began shooting arrows into our body until finally, covered in arrows and blood, we collapsed on the path. As we sat helplessly suffering, she briskly ran up to our body and with some kind of large dagger began viciously stabbing us.
COUNTER-DREAMS
I wake up on the floor next to the bed, covered in bruises. One of your fingernails is stuck in my back. The flesh around the nail is swelling. Life isn’t the same when you’re gone. I take a knife and cut a large gash in one of my arms, starting at the inside of the elbow and down to the palm of the hand. Within the flesh I can see the body of a salmon. I pull the fish from my arm. It’s slick and hard to grasp. The fish slips out and dangles from my arm, a thin piece of muscle connects it to me like an umbilical cord.
I wake up partially clothed in the bathtub. A nude man stands next to the tub. He’s staring at the wall. A hairless wiggling tail sneaks out of his ass, followed by two small feet. Finally, the back of an animal’s torso works it’s way out of his ass. I get down on my knees behind him and watch. The creature coming out of his ass appears to be a possum, but different. It has somehow been lodged inside of his body. I take hold of the legs and try to pull it out, but his asshole tightens every time I yank on the animal. I decide to give the animal a hard pull, and when I do the man’s sphincter tightens so much that it splits the animal in half, with the bloody back half of the creature dropping to the floor.
I wake up on the kitchen floor and you’re burning your hand on one of the stovetops. Your skin morphs into one giant crust that covers your entire body. Your hair and nails fall off. Only your eyes and lips are intact. You lie down on a cookie sheet and appear to sleep. A year passes and I use a tire iron and a hammer to break open the crust. I chip it off, like someone peeling a hardboiled egg. Beneath the crust you’ve become a radiant glass creature, yet full of blood and shit. I put my face to the stovetop, but only my eyes and lips burn.
I wake up in a living room, chained to the floor. The room is empty, except for a white couch covered with brown smears. A woman in a rubber bodysuit, with only her cunt exposed, enters the room. She squats above me as a spray of piss spits out over my face. I try to turn my head away. It tastes like saltwater. I pull on the chains, but she smacks me. Her hands are covered in rubber. They are like the hands of a very large man. Her ass moves down to my belly and begins excreting a large rank mass of shit. It is very warm, and when the excretion is done she begins smearing it over my body with her ass, rolling it back and forth.
I wake up covered in dirt. I’m wrapped in a fur coat. My feet are swollen. I’m frightened. An old woman is looming over me. Her face is like a bear’s, but with its nose cut off. I have no arms or head. She puts me in a wheelbarrow, and, suddenly, I am falling down a cliff, knocking against the side of an endless cliff.