Stirfry Neon

The need for coffee and the pound of rain were the twin rhythms running my heart at the moment…throbbing, pounding rhythms of ruin. Ruin, rain, lost, lace, Mace, pace, make, race, trace, place…my place, word association game over, draw conclusions at will, but my place was the only solution to the coffee dilemma…I had some stashed in case of a dark night like this, somewhere, I think. And I might remember if I had some…well, enough coffee talk because right about now, you’re wondering why you stopped by.

It’s the same reason I did. You want to know what happened to Mace. I do. And I intend to find out…no lady lost on my watch. But first, we have to get through this. It’s a bond moment, where we start to trust each other, a little faith that there’s a bit of knowing laughter and you’ve been here too. And there’s a way out. And we’ll find it.  Stay tuned.

Okay, I slept, nodded off, bounced my chin off my chest, succumbed to the rhythmic lull of a milder universe than the one I currently exist in. Okay, maybe I needed to. And okay, maybe I should try to meet up with sleep more often. And maybe, just maybe, you’ve mentioned this once or twice in my hearing. Well, don’t waste your time. I’ll do what I always do with good advice from practical people: shrug it off. Shrug it off like the warm cozy blanket keeping me warm in the cold clammy dungeon air of the dream corridor. Yes, I’ve walked here before, the raw semi consciousness that we all share in the dream state. We could meet, but I don’t think you’re ready for this particular passage. The torches spit in the gusts, the two foot long rat tortoises hiss as they slowly slither (dreamscape, people, I mentioned you don’t want to visit). The cold seeps off the dank stone walls covered in a glowing golden bioluminescence that makes you itch rather than giving off any kind of comforting warmth. There were scraping noises, a distant scream and the continued hissing/slithering of various native species. And there was a corner coming up.

I turned it.

I’d turned it before, in another dream, a darker one, where I’d been alone. Now I had the feeling I was on my way to a meeting, one I’d been moving towards for a long time, with someone I knew but suddenly couldn’t remember. Then I saw her. And she screamed.

No, I screamed…or she looked behind me, into my apartment and screamed out a warning as my door crashed down and something pulled at my sleeve. Detachable doors and detachable sleeves; I learned about them the hard way, early in this business of sudden dangers and swift retreat. Don’t give your opponent anything they can hold onto. Make sure you can slide away. I rolled, leaving my jacket in the Minotaur’s hands. His shaking, shovel like hands that ripped through the fabric as I raced to the fire escape.

“Where is she?” A bellow, of fury and fervor.

But I was slipping out, sliding down, slithering far far away from the red raging angles of a corner I had no intention of being backed into. He could try to follow, but I was dropping into my corners, my alleys, my streets. This was my maze and his confusion.  And I knew something else. There’d been a whisper, before it rose to a scream. The perfect lips had pursed, the amethyst eye had narrowed, and Mace had sent me to my next test and perhaps my only doom.

“Sisters.”

Meet the fam. We all have nights like this. I always have nights like this. And still no coffee with a night so young it should be carded and a problem so old it was probably the original tragedy (or at least ten of them.) The Minatour bellowed behind me and whispers of doom pulled me into dreams. I turned the corner at top speed as the dark laughed aloud.