A dream I had once before

I had a dream that I felt I had before. There was the darkness I’d been submerged in, and a distant light that started in slow that grew ever faster until it hit me and surrounded all that I was.

I woke up with a gasp, like the moisture in my mouth finally descended into my lungs. The feeling of sway and float was all I could feel. I looked around, but my eyes must have failed me. Everything seemed wrong. Upside down. With what oxygen I could push through my blood, it found its home at the crown of my head, confirming my suspicions. I looked down, or up, at my feet and saw through the undarkened half of my vision that I was snagged by the ankle, tied up by the hammock I seemed to be in. With what strength I could muster, I reached up and felt the greater pressure weigh down the closer I got to the knot, and the piercing feeling of a pinch in the line dig deeper. I winced as I freed myself from the knot with a tug and pull. I hit the floor beneath me with a harsh thud that knocked the wind from my lungs and sent my mind in spin, reeling from getting air back in my lungs to the rude puncture through my ankle. Crawling around and calling out, trying to grab onto breath or use what was left to get help.

But I was alone. I knew I was alone.

I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, giving myself shape before trying to find my legs. Pins and needles everywhere. From the back of my head the feeling ran down like sand. When I could finally feel my toes, I made my way forward. It was the only direction I knew.

The door was ajar and adraft, I only needed to push it open. Suddenly, there were noises and I knew I wasn’t alone. I might as well have been. The room was full of people, if you could call them that. I’m not sure anyone would’ve been convinced of personhood. A car full of people, rows of seats narrowly stacked facing one another, and an aisle full of bodies. Nobody knew who they were, where they were, or what they were. Some stood in the doorway of where I came in from, frozen where they were like I had. Some stared at me in desperation, some merely glanced, others were like stone. As I pushed through, some tried to communicate, only squawking and trying to give the guttural noises shape. Some tried to hold onto me, lean into me, as others wanted to but were afraid to act. Some rocked back and forth at the ends of seats or standing in place, trying to form a single word. A name, a question, a prayer. Some were more successful than others, but everyone seemed to speak a different language as the disconnect was ever present. Some paced around back and forth, limping slightly from the rude awakening they must have shared with me. They tried to get their bearings but only did so from the safety of their line, back and forth, back and forth, mumbling to themselves. The rest were seated. Some were crying, for lack of words or self or out of lament for the being they were taken from. Some were feeling around, rubbing the grain of the wood, the flaking paint from the iron of their seat, the lining of their pockets, even just themselves to remind them that they were.

Only one was different.

She. She was sitting alone near the window of the car, staring out at the passing blur of the night. For some reason, I got stuck on her. For some reason, she looked familiar. She must have seen me through the reflection of the glass, as I was staring at her face from the reflection of it, as she turned around and looked into me softly. I wanted to ask if I could sit with her, but neither of us had the words for pleasantries and somehow we knew each other’s thoughts. She motioned to the empty seat with her gaze and, carefully, I sat beside her for a moment. I wanted to say something. Anything and everything. The air just got stuck. All that was left was to look at her, her right profile, as she stared out into the night. I got caught up in it too. I didn’t know where we were, where we were going, or even if we were, but somehow, I was content with it all.

Until a noise from the front broke the monotony of silence. A call.

We both looked forward, but only I got stuck as she was unbothered to hold her gaze or her interest on anything but what was outside. I don’t know why I was so stuck, but something in me told me to listen. Something inside me told me to follow. So I made my way up to the door ahead that was just as blocked by apprehensive bodies as the one behind and I was allowed to pass. I made it to the door, reaching for the handle, when it swung open and someone had goaded me to enter. The face was more expectant than welcoming.

I made my way in and the door was shut behind me, a harsh lock slid into place. I looked back and had seen that same towering figure that let me in, somehow larger now, block the door behind me. I figured the only way to go was the only direction I knew. As I went on, the seats had been ripped up and put into sections, each facing forward. The sections were filled to the brim with people that faced forward. Some looked out the window. One looked at me as I went along. They spoke in soft murmurs at first, with open hands wafting all around, leading the view to the windows and to the back of the car, then the next section ahead. Then came the next sections that spoke in sharp barks and pointed hands, directing the flow of traffic towards the front and to the overhead storage. The people from there went on to pull out all the bags from storage, gather round, and break them open. All the contents exchanged hands until the bag ran scarce when the hands that once accepted had taken. The rest seemed to be crates of food and provisions that went moving forward like supplies on the backs of ants. It was hard to find my window to enter the traffic empty handed. When I did, I was met with scornful looks from those carrying burdens on their back. They made their way, step by step, person by person, to the swinging door that let one person out on a swing, and one person in on the other. The smell of fires and competing scents of food and perspiration had grown more pungent the closer I got to the door.

The next room was much louder. You couldn’t hear yourself think and if you did, it probably would’ve been an echo of what you heard. People were clumped here and there, gathering in sections, stopping abruptly at the stalls that had formed in front of the windows. The rest of the traffic moved like machinery. The people yelling sounded like steam whistles. Sights and sounds invaded every corner, colors and substance exchanged hands that reached out empty and came back filled. Everyone bumped into one another, but nobody seemed to mind just how harsh the nudge or the bump. Any abrasion was merely a reminder of oneself, not the persistence of other bodies. The world was contained in this one room and to each one’s person. There was everybody, but nobody else.

Then, I bumped into a man with his hands in his pockets. He seemed much older, and in some strange way, even more indifferent to the existence of other people. He made his way for the back. He was the only one headed that way. I looked back only to find he had done the same, briefly yet synchronized. I couldn’t help but watch him as he went, as the crowd around him swallowed him up.

I wanted to know where he came from.

I made my way forward and the door ahead was even more bottlenecked. Only one person was allowed in at a time it seemed. Some got discouraged and pushed backwards through the crowd, to remain in the bazaar behind, and some got belligerent, pushing and shoving and throwing fists to hold their place at the front. Through the ebb and flow and violence that ensued that distracted one another, I waded knee level through the bodies and made it to the door. I gripped the handle that immediately fought me, and pushed hard against the door that would only budge between thrusts. I had to slam against it hard and persistent to find a crack wide enough for me to squeeze through. When I did, I had duck immediately before standing to evade the broad swing that made straight for my face. The wild eyed and gritted face made a lunge for me before abruptly returning back to the door, pressing his body against it with all his weight and gripping the door handle with all his strength. No other context was needed to know he cursed me on the way in. The room was small, only a narrow hallway to the right and blocks of rooms to the left, their doors swung open and only further blocking the hallway. I made my way to the hallway, approaching the open door. The doorway was blockaded and a group of people sat on the floor of the room, cooking from a small stove out of a tin can, all of them tired looking and soiled. They were defensive only for a moment, the room looking up at me, but only just for a moment as they didn’t have the energy to care. The seats on either side of them were occupied by people who slept on top of and beside one another. I started to hear sweet sounds coming from the other side of the door, so I turned and closed the door. The people behind the door immediately flowed by me, more sweet smelling and finely dressed. The next room to the left had been more aesthetic. There was music being played from a small stringed instrument and people talking with one another, laughing. The seats had been remade to seat people who were eating foods that looked more like art than sustenance. The seats across sat people as spectators, who watched the people dining and sketched, painted, and whittled in wood their figures. The spaces above had been made into rows of hammocks like those I recall falling out from. The room supported more than it originally looked like it could, but all the same it was people besides and stacked on top of one another. Then with a bang and a thud, the music and life inside came to a jarring stop, the occupants all looking towards the wall of the next room, but only briefly before starting up again. Something in me had told me not to move to the next room. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw the chains that held the door swung open, stretching from wall to wall around the corner to block anyone from slipping in or out. They were sharpened and makeshift, cutting into my fingers as I pulled on them, so I pushed on the door and they slunk away enough for me to shimmy through. There was a new smell, a different kind of fire and smoke. There was a smell of iron and sawdust and detritus. People were exchanging roars in different forms and fighting one another. Bodies had piled up in the hallway, barriers fortified by sharpened seat slats had been formed in the doorway, and two rooms had become one as a wave of people had poured over the seat on the right, now a wall and the space between a trench, only to fall on sharpened iron rods, made from the armrests and bench supports. The bodies let out a cry only to fall away lifeless at the feet of the people who would just as soon hop over that same wall and do the same. The horrors I saw in just those few seconds screamed from the back of my mind and pulled at the center of my being to run. Run. Just as my burst started, the door in front of me had swung open. The one in front of me had hesitated for a moment like I did, but only briefly.

We both only knew one direction. We were both in the way of it. One of us was going to get where we were going. Only one.

The fight started standing, then took to the ground, with one on top of the other. Fists flew, bone struck flesh, there was a pain but I hadn’t felt it. All the blood I had, fighting to stay where it was, was sent into every fiber of every muscle against all the being that was in front of me, then beneath me, under my hands, into his flesh. A snap gave way and sent a shock through my heart. I looked down at eyes that looked at me, into me, past me, and into nothing. I got up and in a panic I burst through the bodies that fought one another, bodies that wanted to advance, bodies that wanted to retreat, and bodies that were meant to sleep. I made it to the clearing of the doorway. The door was a different color, a different texture, a deeper rouge than that of blood. The handle was ornate, comfortable in the hand. I wanted to swing the door open to escape the hell I’d been through but the resistance on the other side had slowed whatever force I put behind it.

The room was low lit, almost dark. Almost. A sweet and sickly smoke filled the room and mixed the low music that accented the jeers and howls and laughter. I spilled in, still dazed by the room before, gasping for air but having to filter it through the smoke dried me out. I looked around for any water, and found a series of fine glasses, filled to the brim with water. I made headfirst for them and drank a full glass down before I felt the heat of the drink. It wasn’t water. There was only a momentary feeling of relief, the dry quenched but replaced with a new dry. The tension that resided in my bones had somewhat lifted. So I drank another glass down. No matter how much I drank, the thirst was still there waiting at the bottom of the glass. I stopped before it got any worse. My head in a spin, I turned around and saw only the subtle outlines of spectators at the distant tables, the sparse light overhead cut out the people standing on pedestals across from them. They were drinking from a vessel they poured over themselves like a bath, the liquid running off their unclothed skin. The light above only shone the shape of what they were, but no face to regard who they were. With outstretched hands, they reached out. With drink, with smoke, with open hands, they offered, and the crowd came pouring in from the dark. A gust of faceless forms, reaching out for what was offered, I realized nothing was being sold. People were selling themselves. With what little everything that I could see, I couldn’t tell who was selling and who was buying. I looked around and saw the faint outlines of smiles at the front, and the looks of quiet panic show as I scanned further back. I pushed through the hands that caressed and pulled, trying to take me into their web, and made for the next door. The music grew more discordant and moans turned to groans the further I went. I looked around in the small clearing towards the edges and saw pairs of men and women hold onto each other tightly as the tide of hands tried to coax them into the dark. The closer I got to the door, the deeper I went into the crowd, the smell of sweet smoke gave way to billowing smolder of a fire. I made my way to the door as soon as I felt the adhesion of the crowd let go. The black smoke was pouring from the bottom of the door and as I gripped the handle, I felt the immediate cold of heat burn deep into my hand. Absorbing the pain until I felt nothing else, I turned the knob hard and threw myself in the room.

Drowning in flames and engulfed in hot smoke, my eyes singed. The heat filled every cavity of my clothes like I had none on. There were a series of people hugging the back wall, indecisive on where to go. The smoke had a way of blinding you and concealing any way out.They reached out with their hands and their cries, pleading for help or a way out. I couldn’t see them, I could only feel them, their anguish like a whistle in the wood that crackled in the fire. The others in the distance, merely shadows until I approached, had rocked back and forth, some crying helplessly, some laughing madly. The further I went, there were some who sat indifferently, knowing this was all. This was the end. I walked ahead, knowing no other direction. I nearly tripped on my way, bodies starting to scatter the ground. I heard a hair-bending noise trill back and forth in rhythm. Someone cast a sharp bow against melting strings, orchestrating a discordant soundtrack for the chaos. A song for the mad. The room was on fire, but not a single one could find a way out, they just sat. They knew the fire was coming for them, but they just waited. I kept going forward. I was burning already so, like a moth to flame, I went.

The orange of the room had hardened to a glorious white, cooled by the wind outside that nearly pushed me over. Despite being so close to the flame, the cold chilled me to the bone. I looked around at the open space, the wind drying my eyes more efficiently than the smoke had, and saw nothing but passing dark. Everywhere I looked, left, right, up, void. I made it to the very front, rubbing my eyes to conjure tears. There was machinery working around the glowing star in the hearth. Handles and gear work had spot welded in place. I looked around for any telling sign of a brake, a stop to all of this, when I saw him. A large man, larger than I had seen on my way up, maybe ever, dead on the ground. He was half cremated, falling away to ash and dust. The only one who set it in motion, the only one to stop it, any hope of it ending, died with him. I looked up in horror at my realization, only to make another one. I looked above him, at a blank space where the controls were pressed into a metal plate. A message was scrawled into it with what looked like fingernails.

The only way out is off.

All the blood that ran in me went cold. All the air that filled me was sucked out. Any feeling I had anywhere had left me. I had only one direction to go, a feeling that tugged at the center of my throat and choked me.

Back. Back away. Back away as far as you can go.

So I did. I backed away, back through the smoke and those who wallowed in it. I couldn’t scream loud enough and I didn’t have the words for a sermon. All I had was one word that my mind hung on to.

Nothing! Nothing!

I called out, and I saw the figures pause in the smoke, their gaze deep. Animals frozen in fear. Only to immediately erupt louder than before. Their movement, more animated and erratic, was their only response. It was all they had. It was all they were. I waved the smoke away, crazed to find the way out. Eventually, I went the only way that I knew, only this time I had to fight that despair of going backwards. I walked straight forward and hit a wall. I reached around until I felt the protrusion of the handle. It should’ve burned me, but there was nothing left to burn.

I made my way through the lounge. The fear of the couples had evaporated for a moment and the men stood to attention. They watched as I shoved my scarred hands into my pockets and made my way through the hands that merely brushed me. They smelled the smoke on my clothes, they felt the heat coming from my skin, could sense the indifference that blazed brightly underneath. There was no sensation to prey upon. It had been burned out of me.

I made my way through the next door without hesitance. I maintained my pace with my gaze focused only forward. I walked over the bodies that stacked against the door, littering the floor. The war had persisted, but did so around me. Breaking through another wall, the factions took possessions and prizes, asserted positions of pecking order. The only hierarchy now was exploiter and exploited. There was nothing left of the second room, nothing recognizable. Just a shadow of sophistication. It looked like the first room, now bridged with all the others. Everyone huddled there, in far corners, with wounded and near dead on the floor in the center. Their heads bowed down and stared into the ground, deep enough to burrow to the center of the world. They didn’t look up as I walked by, and I didn’t either.

The next door had pulsed as I approached it, the vibration of the madding crowd resonated against me. It was the only thing that gave me shape. It was the same thing that hollowed me. I passed through the crowd, hands still in my pockets, widening my arms with elbows out to create space. The crowd had grown louder and more dire, their wants turning to needs, so much so that they organically parted for me. They were pressed hard against the booth counters. I looked around at the changes in their faces, their anxieties written plainly across them. More apparent to me this go around. I bumped hard into someone who was making their way forward. The only one going forward. I couldn’t help but look back. He did too. He looked familiar but so different that I couldn’t quite make out why. So I kept going, feeling him watch me go by.

If I had to figure it out, so would he.

I made my way through the second room to find the seats gathered together, no longer segmented. There were two at the front that stood hard and wide. They spoke with hard and rigid movement and did so at the same time, regimented. Nobody was looking out the window. Everybody was facing forward. Only one watched me as I went, doing so with their eyes. As I passed, the neighboring bodies seized him, cast him out of the seat, and piled on top of him. They beat him into the ground and minimized him to nothing with their heat and violence. I kept walking on.

I made it to the first car. The sight was the same. People were still aimless, but somehow found the words to describe their circumstance. With all the words they’d managed, they still found no answers as to who, where, and what. They might as well have been babbling. They were better off spinning in circles, seeing as they were still pacing them. They all felt and spoke and toiled but there was no solace.

Then I saw her. A little more aged, a little more tired. I stopped. I hesitated. I wanted to call out. I wanted to reach for her, knowing I wouldn’t be able to feel her more than what I felt just from seeing her. I had no words for the feeling. I had no words to keep her from finally looking down from the window, getting up from her seat and making her way back to the first room. I tried to make my way to her when the drones of the room had flocked to me, seeking answers to questions they didn’t have. They needed an objective, a direction, a savior. I came from where they came from and hadn’t the answers. I came from where they came from and ended up right back. I came from where they came from and came back empty. I pushed through them, barreling over them. In the stumble, they lost what words they had, what energy they had, what hope they had, and they wept. They went back to not knowing, not even contemplating the who, where, and what. All that was left for them was wondering on when it would be all over.

I stormed for the door that sealed shut the minute I got to it. She was just behind the door. If only I could get it open. I pried and pried, tugging and pushing with brute force until I heard a breaking of the latch and the snap of the frame that kept the door from opening wrong. I went through the door and immediately fell to my knees, tripping. My foot caught one of the many apples that spilled out on the floor. When I got up, I was struck to the core.

I was staring back at a face, upside down and asleep. I got up to find more bodies hung upside down. They were bound by netting, hooked at the feet by a syringe attached to a feeding tube. They were scattered about, intermingling with the large cuts of meat that were hanging and bound in the same nature. I weaved my way through the bodies and the meat, through the product, to make it to the door at the very back. It got colder the further back I went, my excitement was apparent to me by the large stream of breath that I had to fight through like smoke. I made it to the door at the back, lit by a pulsing blue light. It was frozen over. The swing bar that sealed it shut seemed to be frozen in place for some time. I wanted to look around the room to make sure I hadn’t lost her amongst the product, but the feeling tugging at my center pulled me from behind the door. There were two handles that poked out from the bar. A good upper lift would free the seal. With all that I was, all that was left, I gripped both handles and pushed up hard. The ice had melted and frozen to my callous and scarred hands, sealing them where they were. No going back. I took a moment, gathered all my strength and all my being, all that I am or ever was, and cast it away into the bar. The bar broke loose and so did my hands, the icicles that gathered under the grips cutting deep into my wrists on the way up. The warmth of the blood ran down my arms and trickled down my hands. I just had to get the door open. I just had to find her. The door was sucked open by the outside. The blue light inside clashed hard against the red light of the outside.

Nothing. That’s all there was for miles around. Just a dark much deeper than black. A cold vacuum of air too thick to be called wind. I hesitated. There was a moment of conflict that pitted every fiber of my being against every fiber of what I wasn’t that lived underneath. There was no tug anymore. No guiding principle. Apart from one.

The only way out is off.

So out into the cold night, I leapt.

I thought I would fall forever, but was suddenly proven wrong. My body tumbling, this way and that way. I spilled out until every part of me ached. When I finally stopped, I could hardly carry my own weight. I looked back at the red light that pulsed in the distance and faded away softly. I called out with only noise, hoping she’d hear. Even I couldn’t hear. Nothing came out into the nothing. I scanned around before starting to go the only way I knew. I made a step and felt my foot start to sink. I made another and knew it was so. I trudged through the mire that slowly ate me up. I swam around in it, fighting the rising tide that fed its murk into my mouth and lungs. Then I grew too tired to do anything but let the swamp liquify me, bury me. All that was left was to stare out into the darkness.

Then a light sparked out into the distance. It started in slow and started to grow ever faster.

I held my breath and remembered my dream.