Fever Dream
A single icy bead of water trickles down through condensation, growing as it descends, and coming to rest at the base of the glass. It expands along the perimeter of the cup, staining the dark wooden table with its moisture, joining the beads of water that had fallen before it.
There is no water in the glass.
A flower turns its head up, basking in the heat of a broad beam of light cascading from the sky. Each grain of sand at its roots is illuminated, shimmering on one side and casting minuscule shadows on the other. Heat waves dance along the ground. The edges of the light green leaves curl inwards, darkening and browning. The innocent face of the flower is forced down, the deep red petals withering and spiraling to the earth below.
It is past midnight.
↤↦
I am awake. Unexpectedly. It’s a startling thing, being dropped into consciousness, your eyes opening before your brain registers it’s awake. Processing is made all the more difficult by the alabaster haze flooding my corneas. Unearthly light pours into the room, and settles like silk, vampiric in that it drains my possessions of their saturation and encapsulates them in moonglow.
Out of the window are leaves, expanding like thirsty lungs over winter worn bones. A thousand cold, skeletal fingers– dark, and individual- scratch the sky. Now, a dense pelt covers the beast, and it is ancient in its deep pull on one’s primal nostalgia.
No, that’s not right. It is January, and I’ve mistaken the deep shadowy contours of the forest for life. As unusual as this might sound, I have quite a fondness for unreliable narrating.
The ceiling fan, rotating slowly, a carousel to small ridges of dust lining the edge of its blades, is slightly off balance. As I set my eyes upwards to observe it, a small clicking sound stepped forward from the symphony of white noise and attributed itself to the ever-so-slightly wiggling blade.
My favorite unreliable narrator is a man named Egeaus from Edgar Allen Poe’s Berenice. This tale is about a man, lost in his own imagination, potentially with schizophrenia, who is in love with his vivacious cousin, Berenice. When she becomes ill, Egeaus loses his mind, and fixates on the only unchanged part of her– her teeth. Eventually this leads to a scene that is potentially a grave robbing? I’m also still unsure if he killed Berenice. Most likely, yes.
I shudder. That was an involuntary train of thought. What is it that I like so much about that story again?
“Berenice! — I call upon her name — Berenice! — and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah! vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh! gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh! sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim! — Oh! Naiad among its fountains! — and then — then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told.”
That’s right. It’s a reminder that if there is one thing even more vulnerable to misinterpretation than our reality, it is our memories. It was a few memories in particular that jolted me awake, and I imagine their personified form to be a small, lizardlike figure, darting from the shadows to sink its fangs into my neck, its venom accelerating my heart rate and dilating my pupils, before dissipating into nothingness.
Oh! Naiad among its fountains!
The moon is reflected off of the frozen snow that coats the earth like resin, warmed by winter rain and cooled by the setting sun. I realize that the lighting feels refreshing in the same way that a deep, dark, calm lake does. The word vampiric emerges in my mind again, running sleep laden eyes across my creme walls, rug, white sheets, and finally, my luminescent skin.
A deep, dark, calm lake…
