Mememe

“Watch out, watch out.” You mumbled and waved your hand frantically as Cori was about to leave the kitchen with a kettle of boiling water.

“Woah, careful there.” He backed against the kitchen door, lifting the kettle away from your path.

“I had enough of this sink!!!” You shouted as soon as you spat all the toothpaste foam into the sink. “We need to fix it, today! I am tired of having to use the kitchen sink every time I brush my teeth and use the toilet!”

“I hear you, baby.” Cori sat in front the table, polishing his glasses with his shirt, then lifted it towards the morning light to check if it was still smudged. “But first, come sit. I made breakfast.”

———-

The two of you sat on the floor mat in the bathroom, watching a YouTube video titled “How to unclog a sink in ten minutes” on your iPhone, which was propped against a bottle of hand wash.

Cori pushed his glasses higher up his nose, squinting at the screen.

You side eyed him. “Are you struggling to see?”

“No?”

“I literally saw you squinting your eyes.”

“Okay, come on. Your phone screen is way too small. How can anyone read these labels from here?”

“Me! I can! I have been telling you, you need to go to the opticians! Get new glasses, these ones are clearly not good enough for you anymore.”

“Nah. No way. Optometrists can fuck right off.”

“Hey.” You nudged him with your elbow. It seemed Cori had two enemies in this world, dentists and optometrists, he had a profound hatred for them which you had no idea why, and he never cared to explain.

The afternoon light streamed through the bathroom window, filtered through the cheap stained glass film you bought online, which worked surprisingly well, it cast vibrant and dreamy colours over the whole bathroom, and across Cori’s face.

“This is kind of romantic,” you smiled.

“Only you would find unclogging a sink romantic.” He looked down the disassembled U-pipe, sleeves rolled up as he stuck his fingers into the pipe, trying to dislodge whatever was stuck in there.

“Everything is romantic when doing it with you.” You bumped your shoulder against his.

A crisp, metallic trill cut through the house.

“I will go get it!” You scrambled to your feet.

The door opened to reveal your landlord.

“Hi, Mr Dream!” You hadn’t expected to see him today, and the sight of him caught you off guard. He was dressed impeccably, in a black blazer over a black shirt. His face, so perfectly chiseled it look like it was carved from marble, like he had stepped straight out of a Renaissance painting. Godly. Other worldly. You didn’t remember him being this handsome, this tall, this, powerfully, cosmically beautiful.

“Good afternoon.“ He nodded his head.

“Did you, did you come to check on the sink? We are actually fixing it now!”

“My apologies, I have dropped my mobile device in a pond the other day, and have yet to acquire another means of communication. I am aware of the message you had sent two weeks ago.”

Ah that explains it, him ghosting you, ignoring the “Pls send someone to look at the sink ASAP.” and “any updates?” messages.

You didn’t ask why he was speaking like he was from another century, you were feeling quite flustered in his presence, you hoped you weren’t blushing.

“Please come in!” You stood aside, welcoming him into your home.

The place seemed to hum in his presence, like he owned the very fabric of this reality. Which you suppose, he did, in a way, he did own the property.

The house was surprisingly cheap for its location, and your landlord Mr Dream didn’t care if you delayed the rent payment by a month or two. You had discovered this when you and Cori had gotten spectacularly drunk at the New Inn-the pub you worked at for about two weeks now. Your boss, Hob Gadling, had been so generous and kind to you he said you could drink whatever was on the shelf. You took that literally and dragged Cori behind the bar after the pub had closed, both of you so plastered you had completely forgotten about the rent that was due on that very day.

“I wish… I wish the Corinthian was here.” You slurred as the two of you stumbled out of the pub’s back door.

“Same. The Corinthian is great… the Corinthian would love this.” Cori replied.

The two of you didn’t realise the rent payment was missed until the following month.

“I thought you paid it!”

“No you always handled it. I thought you did!”

When you sent a lengthy, apologetic message to Mr Dream promising it wouldn’t happen again, he simply replied with a thumbs up emoji days afterwards.

Dream took in the surroundings now, water colour paintings of ravens framed on the wall, the granny square crochet blanket draped across the couch with a raven crochet plushie perched on the arm rest.

There was clearly a theme in this flat. Cori had painted the ravens (he had moved on to painting more of you now), and you crafted the blanket and the plushie. The two of you had developed a particular fondness for the creature after watching a documentary on ravens one Sunday night. You even joined a local bird watching group together, and other members would always come up to you two to ask whether the black bird they saw was a raven or a crow. It was painfully obvious, raven and crows were clearly different. You didn’t understand why everyone found it so difficult to distinguish between the two.

You led Dream to the bathroom. Cori was washing his hand already and to your surprise, the sink was draining at a normal speed.

“Hey. Dream. Long time to see.” Cori looked at the both of you through the mirror on the cabinet. “Found the culprit, a plastic bird figurine. Don’t know how that got stuck in there.”

Dream’s gaze lingered on the figurine, the small toy raven that was now sitting on edge of the bath tub.

“I see the matter is settled then.“ His words carried weight to them, like words settling into place as the typewriter struck the paper. He looked at you, studied you, like he was memorising your features. For a moment, you felt like your heart stopped beating. A sudden overwhelming sadness washed over you, you had no idea why. “You have both handled this very well.”

“I shall take my leave of you now. Good day.” A ghost of a smile, then he turned towards the door.

————-

As soon as Mr Dream stepped out of your door, the house started to shake violently.

“What… what is happening?” You grabbed onto the door frame, “Is this an earthquake? Oh god Cori we have to run! Now-“ You turned to grab his hand, but before you could reach him, everything melted before you.

You screamed and tried to grab Cori’s hand, only for him to dissolve into mist.

You thought maybe you had been crushed to death. Nothing made sense. Everything felt disorienting. You thought your mind must be playing tricks on you, creating an illusion to make the transition to death less scary.

But when you opened your eyes, You found yourself in a room instead, with shifting galaxies and a throne atop the marble stairs. This must be heaven. The after life. You thought desperately. It wasn’t what you expected, but at least you weren’t in hell.

You looked at the throne and your landlord, Mr Dream was sitting on it, instead of his dark blazer he was wearing a long velvety coat.

“Mr Dream? Have you died too?” You asked. He must have been crushed outside in the corridor from the earthquake. How unfortunate, but at least he died in style.

A sharp headache. Then suddenly two realities and your memories collided together, reorganising themselves.

Wait, no. That was not Mr Dream, not your landlord who didn’t care about your rent. He was, he was Dream of the Endless, the king of Dreams and nightmares, your king.

You started to remember. Your confession of love to Dream. Your time as his raven and your transition into a human. The pain, the desperate plea for him not to send you away.

The throne room felt suffocating as you entered, like the heartbeat of the dreaming itself was slowing and threatening to stop. Like an invisible, thin black veil was draping over everything, making it difficult to breathe.

Your eyes looked up at the throne as you approached, but he was not there. Instead, you found him sitting on the marble steps, his head turned towards his empty throne, seemingly absorbed in the slow moving galaxies behind it. His long black coat sparkled with nested stars, the fabric pooling around his feet, draping over the steps. He looked, so…small? Vulnerable, like he was about to dissolve into the shadows he was sitting in.

“My Lord…” You whispered, your heart was breaking at this sight. Oh, how you wanted to perch on his shoulders again, nestle your raven head at the crook of his neck, feel his warmth against your feathers and the steady rhythm of his breathing. For a moment you wished you were a raven again, not confined by the appropriateness and boundaries of human touch.

He turned his head towards you, starlight glimmered in his dark eyes.

“How have you been faring?” His voice was low, a rumble, the sound rippling through the beams of moon light that illuminated the room.

You wanted to answer his question with a million of your own.

How have you been faring? Why do you look so broken? Is there truly nothing we could do? Nothing would happen to you right, have you got it all under control? Right? Please tell me you got it all under control? Please?

“Very well. I have started to adapt to this form and taken a liking to it.” You inclined your head slightly. “I am very grateful for the transformation, Lord Morpheus.”

“It seems that Lucienne has also educated you in proper courtesies.” There was a ghost of a smile on his lips. He was surprised at how polite you were being, he had expected more complaints, more protests and demands that only you would dare voice to him.

“Yes, Lucienne had been very thorough. She gave me books to read on proper etiquettes of a dream, and taught me something about respect and boundaries in the presence of their sovereign.”

“There is no need for such formalities between you and I.”

Oh.

One corner of your mouth curved up, it was very hard to hold back a smile when he spoke to you like this.

So you settled beside him on the steps, lifting a corner of the fabric of his jacket to drape it over your knee. The fabric was cool to touch, and you could feel the sparkling stars nested in his coat, buzzing under your fingertips.

“The waking world is so vibrant, and everything is so different experiencing it in human form!” You began, your shoulders occasionally brushing his as you spoke. “The Corinthian insisted on driving us everywhere but he wouldn’t let me give driving a go, which was incredibly rude of him, and can you believe it-we got our very first parking ticket! To be honest, it wasn’t very surprising as he did not care about any parking restrictions, or any traffic regulations in that regard.” You stopped to judge Morpheus’ reaction, he had no intention of stopping you, but instead was watching you with nothing but patience, as if you were reciting Shakespeare rather than blabbering on about random, mundane, human things.

So you carried on, “...then we found Loki in the hotel room, who impersonated you, which was very believable. But then the Corinthian immediately knew it wasn’t you, there was a fight, Corinthian pushed Loki into the ground and as always, devoured his eyes, which was a hard watch, I just, I can’t ever get used to watching him eat eyes like that-” You continued describing your journey in detail, then stopped to take a breath, “that was pretty much everything.”

“I see you have enjoyed your time there.” He watched as you fiddled with the hem of his coat, but made no comment.

“Loved it!” You beamed.

“How would you like…to live there?” He asked, his question coming out with a deliberate slowness.

You paused as you carefully considered his question.

“Hmm, I supposed I could. There are quite a lot of things to do and plenty of food choices, but Lucienne, Mervyn and you-” You stopped, “You want me to live in the waking world?”

He was quiet for a long moment.

“The Dreaming is no longer safe.”

The words struck you physically. Has it finally come to that?

“It is in your best interest to take shelter in the waking world, until it is safe for you to return.” His voice was strained, “I have made arrangements and spoken with my friend Hob Gadling who could assist you.”

“And when would that be, when would it be safe for me to return?”

He studied your face for a few moments. When he finally spoke, his voice was less than a whisper.

“After my death.”

Your stomach twisted.

“No!” The word tore from your throat. You stood up, the sudden movement making the entire room spin around you. Your pulse hammered against your temples as you shook your head frantically.

“I don’t want that, I don’t want to leave.” If you die, let me die with you.

He remained seated, but you could feel his jaw tense and his shoulders had gone rigid.

In the silence you began to understand - the transformation, the mission to the waking world with the Corinthian, the distance he had been keeping between you.

He had been saying goodbye to you, for weeks.

Pain flickered across his features. The lines under his eyes seemed to deepen.

“The Kindly Ones are coming,” his voice taking on a dangerous edge, one that he used with others, but never with you, “if you stay here, I cannot guarantee your safety.”

“I don’t care about my safety! My place is here, within the dreaming! You cannot-” Your voice breaking on the last word. “You cannot just send me into the waking world! I won’t go. I won’t leave you.”

He looked down on the marble floor, and the throne room was quiet beside the sound of your shallow breathing.

When he finally looked up at you, there was an exhaustion and defeat in his eyes you had never seen before.

“Was this not always your desire?” His voice was softer now, “To walk the waking world? To live among humans?”

At one point, that was true. You had asked the Corinthian to share his tales of the waking world, to share his views on humanity, despite him having the darkest views you still found it fascinating. The times you perched on the window sill of Dream’s library, pressing your beak into the stained glass windows, watching the dreams of grand ballroom dancing in the gardens and human celebrations. And you watched as your Lord Morpheus befriended Hob Gadling, eavesdropping on their conversations from on the wooden ceiling beam in the pub. You had wondered what it would be like to live in the waking world, yes.

You had wondered many things. You were a raven born from a dream, and had only been a raven for the entirety of your existence. That made you wonder what it would be like to live as other beings, as you saw the endless possibilities in the dreaming, endless creations and lives created by Morpheus.

You used to have dreams that Morpheus was a raven too. The two of you explored the forest together, your talons leaving prints in the white snow. Before you were distracted by a piece of moss and started skipping in an entire different direction, only to return moments later to proudly present the treasure you had found.

Sometimes you dreamt you were tortoises, you walked behind him and nudged his shell impatiently. Complaining about how slow he was walking, not realising you couldn’t walk much faster yourself. He would stop his track completely, just to annoy you, and your head bumped into his back with a quiet thud.

You had many dreams like this, existing in different forms, always beside him. But you never dreamt yourself in human form. Maybe a part of you understood the danger of that. If you had a pair of hands, you couldn’t resist touching him, if you had a mouth then you could not resist trying to kiss him, even in your wildest imagination, just incase he was watching.

You had wanted to live in the waking world, before-before you understood what it meant to love him, how warmth emanated from your soul at the sight of him, how your body tingled hearing his voice; before you realised that no realms, no world, no matter how vibrant, how divine, could compare to the realm where he existed.

A noticeable pause. As he studied you behind his glasses.

“You are hungry.” He repeated, the words came out slow. As if he wasn’t really grasping the concept of you being able to feel hunger.

“Yes. And I would very much like a poppy seed muffin right now.” You tugged on the seatbelt to allow yourself to face him directly on your side.

“Dreams don’t get hungry..”

“Well, this one does.” You shot back, giving him a sharp glance. “And who made that rule anyway, don’t you snack on eyeballs all the time?”

He was about to explain how that was completely different. Then his thoughts veered, into the familiar sensation of soft, fresh eyeballs between the sharp edge of his teeth, the rich memories and rush of emotions that would come with it as he pierces the aqueous humour. The delicious, thick liquid would flood his mouth eyes. Sweet.

The bastard who beeped at him at the last traffic light would probably have the most delicious eyeballs. The Corinthian swallowed and ran his tongue over his teeth. It had been so long, too long.

So there you were, queuing behind a line of people in a cafe. It was cute, with a chalk scribbled menu on a black board, and an assortment of baked goods under glass domes, like gigantic snow globes.

You looked slightly out of place with the Corinthian in the cafe. To start with, he was wearing his sunglasses inside, but the sky outside was so dull that it would almost make it difficult to see with those glasses on, so he didn’t have the excuse of forgetting to take them off. Secondly, you had chosen about five different things containing nuts and seeds, the maple and pecan danish, the poppyseed muffin, the banana cashew cake, and two different kind of seed covered cookies, all wrapped in a brown bag that had already started to grease when you settled down onto the metal rounded chairs. It was like you hadn’t eaten for days and just decided to buy all the food from the first shop you went into.

It was your first time in a cafe in this form, of course you had to try all the different kinds. Who knew when you would be allowed to go to the waking world again?

And thirdly, just how charmingly handsome the Corinthian was. A man with a laptop kept glancing over, his gaze lasting a bit too long, and the barista whose eyes seemed to light up as she took in his face. Even the elderly woman in front of the que turned twice to steal looks at him. You side eyed the Corinthian to see if he noticed. He turned and just gave you a smug look. You rolled your eyes, of course he was used to this.

You noticed him chatting with the laptop guy as he waited for his coffee. The stranger clearly looked excited, animated. You narrowed your eyes, trying to make out what they were saying but couldn’t, so you returned your attention back to your pastries.

“Are you happy now?” The Corinthian asked when he settled down onto the chair across you.

You nodded, and pressed a cashew cookie into his palm.

“Payment for your excellent chauffeur service.”

He accepted it, but tucked it into his blazer pocket rather than eat it.

When you both stepped out the cafe, his car got a parking fine tucked under the windshield wiper. You were examining the fine when Corinthian crossed the street towards the butchers.

“Hey! Where are you going?” You hurried after him, clutching your pastry bags.

“To get a snack.”

The butchers smelled of warm blood. Behind the assortments of meat stood a bearded man wearing a blood stained apron, he was cleaning his hands with a pink cloth.

“Afternoon.” The Corinthian said with that charming smile of his. “I don’t suppose you have any fresh eye balls? Preferably sheep or cow?”

You watched the confused expression on the butcher's face, mixed with a bit of disgust.

“Biology lesson.” He added smoothly. “I teach anatomy.”

Oh.

Well, that lie was true to some extent, you thought. If anyone was an expert in eyeball anatomy, it would be him. You weren’t sure if he would be a good teacher though…

“Ah!” The butcher nodded his head. “We don’t usually sell these to customers, usually just chuck them in the waste bin. We have got some at the back now if you want to have a look. Just through that door there.” He pointed towards the back door which was lit up by purple fluorescent light above it.

“Perfect.”

You trailed behind the Corinthian. The hallway smelled progressively worse with each step. The back alley was crowded with industrial sized bins, which was an assault to your human senses.

Instead of animal eyes however, you found a woman whose body was charred and twisted, lying a bit further up the alley.

You stumbled backwards, almost tripping over an overfilled bin bag.

“Oh.” The Corinthian tilted his head, and moved closer to examine the corpse. “This is much better.”

Before you could process what was happening, he had already plucked out the eyeballs of the now very dead woman, popped them into his mouth-eyes and let out a satisfied sigh, his sunglasses resting on the top of his head.

Little drops of watery blood dripped from the corner of his mouth eyes, and the soft wet sounds that accompanied as he munched on the eyeballs had caused you to turn away from him.

Your transformation had done something to him, something he couldn’t quite name. He should hate you, still be angry at how you had snitched on him for his actions in Berlin. How your little raven eyes widened and flew straight back to your master. The suffocating darkness that came afterwards, eighty years in the black box before he was remade into the version he was now. He was angry, he had plenty of time to be. He had spent countless nights (or days? He could not tell, he had no concept of time in the darkness) imagining his knives plunging into the soft wetness of your little raven eyes, imagining the taste of them on his tongue. Followed up by darker fantasies of what he would do to your creator, an exquisite and well deserved revenge for the humiliation and pain he had endured.

He wasn’t angry anymore. He understood what he did not, after the waves of anger had washed over him. You were made to be Dream’s eyes, just as he was made to be humanity's darkest mirror. When he fulfilled his purpose too well, he was punished for it. When he became the thing Dream had created him to be, he was reduced to sand, called a disappointment. Punished for being exactly what he was made to be. He wouldn’t do the same to you. You were merely serving your purpose, just like he was.

He had watched you before approaching the shipwreck. Observed you from the shadows as you made yourself comfortable on the boat. The way you grinned at finally successfully lighting a cigarette, the way you frustratingly pushed your locks of hair away, not knowing what to do with them. You looked so…loved, and you were oblivious to it. He could see it in every line of your new form, the way your features echo Dream’s, the dream dust clinging to you like a halo, like the fingerprints on a clay vase that bore the marks of its creator. You wore Dream’s love like a crown and you didn’t even know it.

The Corinthian realised that the Dream King had changed, he was now capable of softness, tenderness and forgiveness. The Corinthian was seeing living proof of it in you. Your creator could have destroyed you for your little rebellions, but he did not. Instead, he gave you a gift. A new form, a chance to be something that maybe deep down you had always wanted to be. The Corinthian had seen the way Dream looked at you, with that soft and affectionate glance, allowing you to voice your little complaints. He remembered when Dream used to look at him that way. In the first moments of his creation, when he was called a masterpiece instead of a disappointment. Pride filled his empty mouth-eyes then.

Why couldn’t Dream have shown him such mercy? Such…love?

His hand tightened around the handle of his knife. Hurting you would be so easy, it would feel good to carve up something that Dream had spent so long shaping, forming. It would anger him, of course, might earn another few decades in the black box, but for a brief moment he would get to see that pain of Dream’s face to see his little precious raven wounded again. The urge to destroy you was fighting with his urge to cherish, nurture and protect you. To trace your Dream-touched face with gentle fingers, to understand what it feels like to be cherished and loved by Dream of the Endless.