It was three in the morning.
Sharon walked home.
Sammy had muttered something about him staying late into the night. She’d thought she’d heard a dog bark in the distance, and when she looked again Sammy was, briefly, afraid. Gotta go, he’d said. Gotta feed the imps yesterday’s recycling. This whole city shit–you fix it for your homework, okay?
Then he was gone.
She walked and had never felt so alone.
She walked the shadow walk, the walk just-out-of-seeing, and sometimes, when her mind wandered, she thought she walked the spirit walk too, and the forgotten things came crawling out between the cracks in the paving stones, and pawed at her, and asked her to remember them.
She collapsed on her bed in the silent house, where once
family of five rowing–go on hit me do it then do it–how dare you talk to me like that I am your mother–I hate you! I hate you I’m not your brother!
had argued, voices singing in the pipes out of the creaking boiler cupboard, and she pressed her head into the pillow where once
a mother rolled over in her sleep, dreaming of flying above the sea, before the memory faded with waking
and swore and cursed and finally, fully dressed, she slept.
Even in her sleep, she walked.
She walked in a place where there was no light, and no need for light, seeing without sight, hearing without sound.
She walked through a city, and it was bright, and burning, and behind every light there were faces watching and beneath her feet was the place where other steps had fallen, and then between it all there were a few places, just a few but growing more, where the light had gone out. An emptiness where something else should have been. Here a girder turned to rust, there a bulb that could not be replaced, or a water main cracked beneath the street, gushing up silent and unplugged.
She walked the dream walk, passing through the thoughts of the child who lived two doors over and who dreamed of
you’re never on time never on time never on time for class
while below the old woman slumbered, her mind giddy on blood thinners, who dreamed of
smell of paper in a place forgotten long ago.
She walked, and the dreams and half-dreams and downright nightmares of the city scattered before her, the half-heard thoughts of the slumbering streets, and as she walked she felt tiny, and alone, and heard the silence all the more when she passed by the building with the boarded-up door coated in dreamtime mists.
She thought she heard the rustling of spiders crawling into open mouths, chitinous legs on soft lips.
She wondered if she was naked on her first day at work, and decided she probably wasn’t but that it would be best not to look.
She heard the crackle of electric wings, far off.
She wanted to go home, and couldn’t quite remember where home was. She was in the street, and it was familiar and unknown, the physical reality lost behind the dream walk, her body one place, her mind another, and all around behind the darkened windows the dreamers dreamed of
flying glorious free! wonder of wonders up and up and up and nothing I ever dream will ever be so ecstatic
her lips on my neck
paper drowning in paper did I did I did I do it did I get it done? email email writing email in my sleep email to him and email to her tap tap tap dancing on the screen and it’s still not right!
Sharon put her head in her hands, burdened by all the sound, and still it came, the rising whisper of a thousand dreaming minds, a million dreaming minds, the city dreaming, united in sleep, all of it rising up around her and
there were footsteps on the earth.
No, not quite right.
Not feet.
Paws.
Each the size of a woman’s shoe, splayed out into three points with a sharp claw at each end. The creature’s, every stride was longer than Sharon’s reach, and where its paws pressed down, whether on the thin floor of reality or the fiction of a dream, they burned the earth.
… didn’t mean to make it happen didn’t mean to leave…
falling out of the bunk falling out of the bed falling so far so far so long so fast but I tried I tried so hard sir
something under the sheets oh god don’t let it be a snake please god not a snake in the bed a snake crawling up my leg I can’t move I can’t move god please
She threw her head back, opening her mouth to scream, silent screaming in the silent, roaring night. And there was a voice, louder, more real than anything which had come before and it said, to the sound of scampering feet:
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to tonight’s episode of–Dream Walking! I am your spirit guide for tonight, Dez Cliff Junior, as today we ask ourselves, Shamans? What are they like?”
Sharon thought she saw a figure. He was stepping through a grey-blue mist. There was a flash of white teeth, a suggestion of curly blond hair, a flare of orange-tanned skin, and a voice that whispered:
I am with you.
Then nothing.