rev·er·ie

He has made it his task to reconstruct, stitch anew, string by string, knot by knot: a new quilt of a memory.

For eleven months he makes a prison, tries to keep her in the shafts of his mind simply to keep her living -- the same way evidence keeps a crime alive. He creates from the moment they part; he knows there are details escaping between the spaces of his fingers every passing minute. (The crinkle of her nose, the dots lining her left shoulder bone. The floral scent she left behind in every space she existed in, the light she bled into him through the cracks of his skin, touching of void rooms he did not know he had kept closed for thus long.

Her touch, and how it made even his metallic skin tender, malleable to her very fingertips.) 

He keeps all these details scribed in a library he makes of in the house in his dreamscape. Each book writes of a different fragment of her, yet he knows he’ll never reach the whole. This is now the only way he knows to love, trapping her singularities in a room. Devouring every detail. There comes a day when the space fills up with too many books, and he still does not have the whole to fill it all.

He becomes a small writer lost in a library too vast for him, overwhelmed by all the books he has still yet not written, and never will write, in how time has thieved of his memory.

The twelfth month, although the room of use no longer, he keeps the space. He does not tell or show Aria, and instead, scribes of all the remaining books to complete the empty shelves. He becomes a writer still lost in a place too vast for him, now a poet reunited with his greatest muse, a dreamer met with the most real dream of them all:

It’s somewhat peculiar the way the mind works. With all of its complex weaving and various strands, each connecting to some other temptation or another that are nearly as delicate as a spider’s web. And more peculiar still is how difficult it is to pull away from the lull of turbulent dreams.

Somewhere between levels 2, and 3, she mistakenly entertained such ideals — forgetting that what simply started as a sweet serene call to sleep, to allow oneself to wander through a realm as unsteady lucid dreams is like flipping a coin. She had forgotten that her nightmares are dreams too only this time they’re disguised in wool.

Call it Pandora’s box if you will,lifting the lid of box even just a crack lets a world deprived of all color escape, allowing  its inky grey, black, and fluorescent white take over and force her to leave behind any pieces that weigh too much behind, mostly that which she held dear to her. She leaves the parts of her heart that are scattered or broken on the floor, persevering onward to delve deeper inside of the lost parts of herself.

There’s the sound of a recording skipping, and repeating the same segment over and over again, comes to her attention. Has it been playing all this time?

Around them, every brick surrounding, every tile beneath her feet starts to shift — they’re no longer in the chapel and instead they find themselves inside of a metro. Colors come to her attention, greens, yellow undertones, red of the mural covering the wall is so vivid along with the echo bouncing off the walls of the upcoming metro train nearly drowns out the irritating scratch of the looping music. A gust of wind comes, causing her long dark hair to beat against her face and the force of the dream collapsing causes her to fall to the floor.

Aria screams. She brings her hands to cover her ears, and ineffective attempt to block out her surroundings. I’m not ready. I’m not ready. I’m not ready to face myself. Please, not yet.

As much as she wordlessly begs, despite her futile attempts to stabilize the dream the record has reached its end. This dream session is over despite the fact she’s not ready to wake up and face the empty apartment again — She isn’t ready to leave, not when this particular manifestation of Skyler feels so real. I’m not ready to wake up. I’m not ready. I’m not ready. Let me see him for a while longer, please.

Aria. A distant voice calls her name, it overpowers the music, the train, and everything else that’s falling apart around her. It breaks down any barriers she’s built, shatters all levels around her as her own body responds. Her conscious recognizes it, and she lets go.

Awaking with a gasp, a sharp intake that makes her hyper aware of her surroundings. Instantaneously, Aria notices that she’s covered in a thin layer of sweat, her bangs are a mess and plastered to her forehead just like the cotton of her dress shirt clings to her body. All of this are the least of her worries, and though it takes a while to fully come out of the high the dream has left her in —  the hardest part is accepting it: After being lost for so long, she finally found what she sought after for all this time.

A bittersweet feeling resonates in her chest. What do you do with the so much freedom and the thread of time suddenly at her finger tips, again? Do you make up for lost memories, lost words, lost… time? This is the first time in months she can cling to the hand she has so desperately missed for so long, with her own small hands. The roughness of Skyler’s palms are a familiarity she promises she will never take for granted.

Clearly, all this is not a dream. The strong pulse of his blood is her indication, when she presses her thumb against the vein on the underside of his wrist it’s a simple past time she will never able to take pleasure in even in her wildest dreams. Never, could she ever, conjure up something as beautiful and pure as the warmth of his skin brushing lightly the skin of her own.

After a few more intakes of breath, Aria moves to lay on her side and look at him. It almost hurts to untangle their fingers, but she has to in order to touch Skyler’s face just as she had done in her dream, only this time she can take in all the tiny details she missed. Her eyes drink up every bit of him. Savoring details such as the small bit of stubble growing on his chin and along the run of his jaw, the length of his eyelashes, the imperfections that decorated the skin of his cheeks - God, how could she have forgotten such important things in her pathetic attempt to recreate him in her dreams?

“Is death really that far away from me.” Aria’s voice comes out hoarse. Gingerly she drags the tips of her fingers across the slope of his chapped lips. Everything about him is so vivid, and bright, almost like that metro they both love so much that she feels ashamed to look at him; ashamed of herself for past transgressions. “Because I feel as if heaven is here with me now.”

This isn’t a dream anymore…

Reality is too hard of a concept to grasp. To believe that she isn’t stuck on another layer of a dream, nor trapped in the endless loop of her nightmares is nearly impossible to believe. What’s even more blasphemous is to think that some where between being lost and found, she managed to take back a missing link from the complex web of her mind as Skyler made it through the paradoxes littered with the misplaced monsters from those whose minds she left empty after stealing what was most precious to them. He conquered her demons, he wore the scars proudly like a trophy.

“I was born alone in this world only to become a by product of someone else’s game of manipulation. A tool. Inhuman, and alone are you still so certain that death is so far away from me or from us, my darling boy?”

He doesn’t recall the last time he’s dreamt a dream.

The line between what is real and what is nightmare is a blur, as it always has been. Instead of creating an Aria, he nightmares himself a god, and they meet to talk, always by the corner cafe a block away from the Sacré-Cœur.

“What was it like to leave her?” God asks.

“You’re always asking questions you know the answers to.” He replies.

“Well, am I not just another figment of your imagination? You’re taking a question too seriously from someone that isn’t real.” God seems displeased at his silence, but doesn’t press on forward.

They both survey their surroundings, where things have begun their way in becoming out of place. Flowers growing from within car parts. Birds walking the sidewalk as if they’ve forgotten flight. Rain falling inside a shop. Coffee cups filled with gasoline. Everything is misplaced, astray – he remains trying to find some meaning in all of this. “Skyler, what was it like to lose her?”

“It was…” He begins, and god ceases. He watches a mother and her son part two streets away, and turns his head left to watch two children waving each other goodbye. “It was like hearing every goodbye said to me."

"It was like hearing every goodbye said to me, all at once.”

God doesn’t appear to him after that ‘mare. He waits at the same cafe every night, but he is kept in solitude. Instead, he continues to observe the universe out of order and the millions of goodbyes around him that seem both endless and perpetual. The next time god appears, is the first time he looks for god in a place that doesn’t hurt.

He wakes with her, and unlike her, he’s clear sure of reality for the first time. Their eyes meet and he realizes what he’s done to her, and it’s a little more terrifying than love itself. She looks at him like he’s some religion, and with the utmost softness in her hues. Somewhere, the god of his mind comes to him again. He seems angry, and he does not blame him for the rage.

(God: You took a girl who needed saving, tried to be god – and now she’s too afraid to go to church.)

“Not death.” He brings her hand into his own, and swears he can feel each heartbeat through her wrist. “And not heaven.” He places his lips on her palm, giving her a kiss that he knows will linger and reach her heart. His eyes remain steadfast on her the whole time, until he leans in, their lips coming together softly.

A kiss, some fucked up kind of absolution.

He finds her three levels under.

She's asleep in a chapel, all windows and doors closed and locked. He only enters from a floor beneath, through an entrance only he and she know -- from the Kernig mission, four whole years ago. The architecture of the scape is all the same. The same, quiet sanctuary, with only his steps in echo between the walls. The light bleeds in through colored mosaic, and he lifts his arm to keep sight. The light comes to kiss his skin but does no more -- it leaves, his bones remaining untouched.

He walks past thirty, or so aisles of empty, wooden benches. As he approaches the front area, he slows. (His blood begins to run.)

He remembers the morning of leaving. The rain showers outside, and the still apartment. Midnight, perched upon a chair, stirred awake with even the smallest of noise. His body thinks differently than his mind: it gravitates for, towards her. It knows not of space, and only of proximity. His hands not know of what to do when they are not in hers, and when he stands, his feet remain where she remains. All his lips desire are butterfly kisses upon her skin while his fingers thread through her hair -- his heart is in her palms. His human heart: that ill-obedient, tender engine.

Returning was out of plan and highly unlogical. Like everything else, he had made an impulsive, selfish decision, and everything else had followed, naturally and unnaturally. He was always running, and someone was always chasing. To ask her to come run with him for something as stupid as love -- was foolish. To have her need to join this endless, paradoxical race -- was selfish. And so he had ran, to anywhere she would not follow, to everywhere she could not follow. But here he was again, at the center of the loop. He had run right back to her, idiotically, illogically.

His human heart: that ill-obedient, tender engine. Love revved it.

The footsteps stop once he takes a seat besides her. She should be peaceful, slumbering in such a serene place -- yet there is dusk under her eyes and nothing warm about her. When he touches her, a palm against her cheek, the presence of God overwhelms him and sin sits besides him.

Selfish, selfish sinner.

But Lord, I will only be more selfish.

What comes after turns away the gaze of the angels. He ignores all conscious and he leans down, lips kissing upon her's. To the heavens, it is simile to Eve's first kiss with the forbidden fruit -- this is the start of mayhem, and he knows it. She stirs easily, eyes slow to open till meeting his. Then she slinks upward, a hand on his face, expression of someone who's seen a phantom, a white ghost. She seems at a loss for words, and so he smiles, hand placed over hers. They sit in silence for a minute longer, until she cracks at words."It's easy to return, difficult to leave... is this what it's like to die?"

“Are you alright, Jiyong? You seem out of it today.” 

You should have died instead, I should have lived. It’s almost like it’s your own blood on your hands, isn’t it? Are you happy, Jiyong? I thought we would be together till the end, two halves together only whole when together. That’s what you said – It’s almost like it’s your own blood on your hands, isn’t it? Don’t miss me, move on. It’s almost like it’s your own blood on your hands isn’t it? It’s lonely here without you. It’s almost like it’s your own blood on your hands isn’t it? I miss you, so much more than I can bare, Jiyong. But you… you, ah.

Do you miss me? 

SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT THE FUCK UP –  

“Jiyong, are you okay?” No. Too many voices in my head.

No, that was the wrong way to describe his mental cell. There were only two voices residing there. The first, whom only chanted one and only one sentence. And the second, such a familiar voice he knew so well that whispered one thing, then changed masks to shout another. Multiple different facades and he was losing himself trying to listen for which one was truly her.  It was a voice that was fading out by the second and he longed to hold onto for longer. But instead it slipped between his fingers, like loose strands of gray hair. But he needed to capture it, her voice. That was all he had left. He needed to save it, some how, trap it more than in the confinements of his head. He was losing her too quickly. Time was not a comrade. Comrade? What battle was he fighting? Whomever the enemy was, he was losing. Wounded. Bleeding? Internally. Or maybe this was just a psychological game. Only the worst warfare of them all. 

He was going insane.

Too many fucking voices in his head yet he couldn’t find his own amongst it.

She sees them before he feels them. The next time he grasps any sense of reality is when her fingers brush over his arms, tracing along the outer bits until they arrived by his palms. And then she would trace his palm lines, one by one, ever so patient and slowly. Her final act would be to place their hands together, clasping her fingers over his own. He only realized he was in tears when his vision was blurry as he tried so hard to gaze upon that face of hers. No words are allowed to leave him but his hands sign to her. 

There’s violence in my head, and it won’t stop.

She watches him make out the words with his hands, and he sees the pity glossing over her eyes. “Sometimes, violence is necessary. Violence changes things… It’s… it’s not alright, obviously.” She seems to regret her own words all of a sudden before she continues again. “I don’t think anything will be the same for any of us… but can you please, at least try to tell me, just what is going on inside that head of yours?” She pauses. He can see the way she contemplates. It’s written over the way her lips purse, tightly too as they close until they speak with that wondrous voice of hers again. “Or… not tell, but show me.” For a moment, it’s him who contemplates. It’s written in the way his eyes close, shut tight until wrinkles formulate along his forehead. 

“Show me.”

The scene shifts immediately, and he doesn’t quite remember when he’s ever agreed to what is happening – but it all happens too quick, and he’s got her hand in his own the next time he breathes out. It’s hard to show her the monsters in his head, because – they are only mere projections, and what he believes is that the true monster lurks beneath his own skin. It’s even harder because she only smiles, as if he cannot feel the way her every step shakes against the solid cement they walk upon. He doesn’t blame her for her fearing, his dreams weren’t exactly a child’s fantasy.

The charcoal cement beneath almost melts into tile as they continue. Suddenly there’s a glow, some sort of light and then one realizes they had been in the darkness the whole time. And then the air hits them – it’s warm, ventilated, kept and trapped. Then walls come up soon after, and the house builds around them, above them. They still are walking as the house constructs itself all around, and when Jiyong ceases in his next stop, sudden the ground beneath them has been brought up. They stop and soon they stand upon the second floor of a miniature house. He tenses, because he feels her anger in bringing someone else into their home.

The wall besides him is splattered with red, marked with an H. As they walk past, his steps quicken but they are not quick enough. The walls almost seem to cave in on the both of them as they whisper – it’s almost like it’s your own blood on your hands, isn’t it? His hand tightens on Aria’s, and he stops again once a door appears down the hall.

“Let me out. Let me out… LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT – JIYONG, LET ME OUT!” 

The door shakes in fear. The ground beneath them trembles with it too. He hears the lights on the ceiling buzz, not in excitement but in complete frantic anticipation. But he remains firm in his stance, looking over at Aria. It’s pain stricken, but he smiles. Apologetic, maybe. Before he can say anything else, the door frame succumbs to the pounding and the air around them becomes cold. His hand slips from Aria’s and he can no longer hide the way it vibrates in the journey to the door handle. It turns, unlocks – the door screams.

She comes ready, bursting from the door and he only watches as a knife plunges through Aria’s stomach. She falls to the ground on her knees and he feels the other female tug him towards the door, inside. He wants to help Aria and he can only watch through the punctured gape of how she bleeds on the floor of the house. The walls cry for her. He disappears behind the door with Hayong. 

son: soy milk