Two Worlds

My first clue is the sound of the ocean, swoosh,crash, swoosh in steady time; distant cries of seagulls swirling around overhead like the last dizzy notes of of a song just ended and already half-forgotten. Now I smell the salt water. Some part of me feels a cool breeze mixed with a steady warmth of sun.
Ears. Good.
Nose . Good.
Skin. Check.
After a darkness of indeterminate length, I grow eyes.
I use my new eyes to look around.

Alright. It's not the wide, flat beach I was expecting, but that's fine. I'm at the top of a very tall, rocky cliff. There's no sand, just rocks and some scrub brush growing in the scant soil trapped between stones. In front and far below, I see a cove maybe a half-mile across and a like distance in, scooped out of the craggy coast like the side pocket on an enormous billiard table; beyond that lies a vast, dark ocean.

Cut into the stone to my left is the first in what I know to be a long set of stairs, a cutback trail leading down to a small but wonderfully secluded beach of pure white sand ringed with monolithic stones. You can't see it from here, but it's there. Take my word for it. I've been here before-lots of times.

There's usually someone here to meet me. Someone I know, someone from TV, a stranger- could be anybody, really. Not this visit. This isn't a big deal though, I know my way around pretty well by now. I decide to head down to the beach. I left something there the last time I was here and I'd like to check on it.

I almost trip over my fucking cat. What's she doing here?

"Gittaway!" I command the chubby orange beast underfoot, stepping on it's tail. I'm barefoot.

"Fuck off", says my cat.
This is not as strange as it sounds. In this place, almost everything- animal, vegetable, mineral- can talk if you stop to listen long enough, and if my cat could speak in places away from here I'm certain "fuck off" would be one of her pet sayings.

"Jeez, sorry. I didn't see you. Don't you know there's a cliff here?"

She licks a paw and wipes the top of her head. I wonder if she's going to reply. Doesn't seem likely, so I start down the path.

"Follow me if you want" I call back over my shoulder.

"Hold up. I know a short-cut".

I wait as the cat saunters over .
We descend without talking for some time. Going down is easy- it looks scary, but it's really more like an escalator or conveyer belt. You move even if you don't walk, but you can stop if you want to. It's cool.
We descend until the cat says wait -she walks over to a large blue rectangular stone set into the grey cliffside. She walks into it and disappears . I hear a muffled sound from behind the stone. Meow?

I follow. The stone has no substance- it's just shadowlightness; serving to conceal a dimly glowing green tunnel leading almost straight down. Gravity here is unpredictable but it's always harmless, so I jump in. Whee!

I land gently on familiar white sand. Nearby , the cat sits next to a number of carefully arranged coin-sized stones. The roundish pebbles spell out a name.
The cat idly swats at a vowel without actually hitting it.

"C'mere," she says. I go.

"See these pebbles? Remember putting them here?"

"Uh, yeah. I do."

I'm blushing. The last time I was here, it was with a young woman I met once in New Orleans .I can't recall her name . That beach visit wasn't exactly a sexual situation, it was more like a therapy session. She listened to my melancholy song of longing for a while and then she advised me to spell a certain name on the beach. That would be all I needed- the rest was fate. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but right now it's pretty embarrassing to think about.

"I can't believe you were dumb enough to do that" says the cat, who has suddenly become New Orleans Girl. NOG is a stunning mulatto woman with carefully unkempt knotty dreadlocks and mocha skin so perfect it looks airbrushed. She has the same impossible witching eyes that she had when we met in 1980-something. Her left eye is deep blue, her right is dark green. There's not much difference visible unless you stare into them. Then you see it. She is two worlds.

I am a little bit afraid of NOG, but I don't have time to think about her now.Three shiny green submarines have broken the surface of our little inlet and they seem to be heading this way. They look like giant floating kazoos until they get closer.
I see that they are some sort of finless fish; gleaming, tapered cigar-shaped bodies visible above the water, each with one hemispherical eye pointed skyward like the canopy of an old jet plane. It's very difficult to look at the eyes.
Their giant, iridescent scales change color from blue to green and back as I watch them. They are some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
The creatures stop a mere 20 feet from shore. They aren't as large as I thought, but they're still impressive.

"What are they?", I ask NOG.

"Two of them are you, one of them is not."

"How can I tell which is which?"

She gestures at the name on the sand.
Oh. I get it.

I grab a few rocks from a middle letter. They're a lot heavier than they look. I throw one at the leftmost creature. The stone barely goes four feet. I keep trying, switching targets and throwing so hard it hurts, but I can barely reach the water, much less the glimmering beings on it.

Finally I only have one stone left. It was the first stone in the first letter of the name- now it's just a single pebble. It's part of nothing. I throw it away.

It hits the center animal directly in it's eye and the world explodes and goes dark forever. A short forever.

I grow eyes. With my new eyes I look into the oldest eyes anyone can ever see.

One blue, one green.

Reunion at Vampire Beach

So I'm sitting on a bale of hay near the summit of a tall grassy hill. It's warm and bright and the day will be good because what else can it be? I've been here before- once every six months or so, according to a recently unearthed mental note- and this is a good place, despite it's somewhat eccentric population.

In front of me, the hillside descends steeply, abruptly cliff-like for fifty yards or more, before gradually becoming a wide, sandy beach covered with a shifting mass of blurry people . At the bottom there's an large open stage, (although it's tiny from this vantage) backed what I used to think was the Pacific Ocean. This visit, I somehow know it's really just a hundred miles of unbroken water and then lots of nothing. Maybe a waterfall, but who cares?

It's a Flat Earth, I know that much, but I'm not overly concerned about falling off of it.

There's going to be a good show today; I've seen it before- on this very same day but in a different dream- but I can never remember who's playing.

Overhead floats a block-long dirigible in the shape of a cartoon pig. I wonder if this is a Pink Floyd concert from the Animals tour. I hope so. That was a damn good show, or so I was told.

Whoever is playing, I must be Hot Shit to get seats this good.

"You must be Hot Shit", says a familiar blond vampire using a fake British accent, "to get seats this good."

Damn. It's Spike from the old Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. He's reclining on a chaise lounge and drinking out of a brown bag. What's he doing here? I think I remember what happens next, but I'm distracted as a group of happy but featureless people walk by. One of them is calling my name but I don't know the voice and in a moment it is gone.
Maybe next time, I think.
I will be coming back, after all. I know that.

There's lot of people down there, but there's plenty of room up here.
I hear a cough beside me. Right.

"Well," I finally reply, turning to Spike,"It is my subconscious. I don't remember inviting you 'round".

Oh shit. I'm speaking in a cheesy Brit accent too. I hope I stop.

He doesn't seem to notice or care.

"Fancy a snort, mate?", asks Spike.

"No, thanks. Trying t' quit."

"Suit yerself", he says, swilling away, "y'wanna know something? Just between us?"

"What's that?"

He wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his trench coat, muffling his reply.

"Beg pardon?"

"It's all bullshit", he repeats, clearly this time.

"Bullshit?"

"Yeah. This bloody vampire crap and all the muddleheaded idiots who get all gooey reading Anne Rice and sleeping in coffins and the like. You won't see me sleeping in a coffin, nooo...not enough wiggle room ,ya know", he finishes by nudging me and winking.

"Spike", I ask, pointing upward at the blazing sun, "shouldn't you be on fire or something? You know, the sun, you being a vampire and all that."

"I told you it was all crap. Here hold this a sec' if y' would," he says, removing his coat and handing it to me.

"I'll show you."

With one hand, he grabs his forehead, his other hand clamps on his chin. He removes his face. It's just a mask.
Underneath, he's the guy who played Jesus in Mel Gibson's S&M torture movie.
He's wearing what looks like a diaper. It's not especially clean.

The bottle is gone.

Too bad for that, I think, suddenly ready to start drinking again.

"Excuse me", asks the imitation Christ,"but which way to the stage? I seem to be having a spot of trouble seeing."

He's got blood in his eyes from the crown of thorns he's wearing. Given the sunny weather, a ball cap would be more practical and a lot less painful.

I notice that the trench coat I'm holding for Jesus/Spike has changed into a clump of tissue paper.
There's a sticky wet spot on it. I don't think it's snot.
Gross.
I get ready to throw away the sticky mess when I remember the bloody-faced Jesus.
I'm not a believer, but I'm not a monster.
I'm not gonna let this poor dude wander around a dangerous cliffside half-blind ; son of God or not, he might fall and get seriously hurt.

I find a dry section of the kleenex ball and wipe his eyes clear.

"Thanks, man", says Jesus as he heads downhill toward the crowd and the stage.

"No prob."

I'm left holding a nasty kleenex that's soggy with the blood and jizz of Christ.

I am going to make a fucking fortune on eBay, I think to myself.

A few minutes go by and Jesus returns, this time heading uphill.
"Forgot something", he mutters.

A moment later he passes again, downhill, only this time he's got a wooden cross on his back. It looks as if he's fake-staggering under it's weight, like it's a Styrofoam prop.

At least no one's whipping him, although he's gathering a crowd as he heads downhill. Someone presses something to his mouth, but from here I can't tell what it is.
It might be a sponge, or maybe a pretzel. The soft kind that's good with mustard.

A woman's voice calls my name. I turn.
It's Willow, also from the Buffy show.



"Hey. I've been saving a seat for you" she tells me , patting the empty side of her hay bale.

"That's hay alright", I quip stupidly, sitting down.

"Every one's here", Willow informs me, gesturing with her arm. Sure enough, the whole Buffy cast is scattered throughout the crowd, along with every character on every TV show I've ever watched, including Ultraman-the real Ultraman- and Joe, the fugitive German Shepherd from the short-lived Run, Joe, Run Saturday morning TV show.

Willow passes me a perfect joint. Oh, yeah-that's the Pacific down there alright, I think as I briefly vanish into a sweetly skunky haze. As my headrush subsides, I wonder who's playing on the stage below us.

I ask Willow.

"I dunno. I was hoping you were."

"Really? I was hoping you were- that musical episode was funny as hell."

"Ooo...look!" She grabs my arm. I feel an intense tingle of pleasure from this contact. I like Willow and I'm glad she likes me.

Down by the stage, a group of people are dancing around a large bonfire. As we watch them dance, a wall of fog begins rolling in. The dancer's shadows get larger and more distinct against the mist as the fogbank thickens; in moments we are encircled by swaying, weightless giants.

I have never felt more safe in my life.

We are protected by beauty and power.

Willow says, "wow".

I agree.