Josh Conviser- Writer
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Lungenkrankenhaus by jrej
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All lime, no lemon. by Tripletreat on Flickr.
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Manuscript of “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen. Rough draft with suggested revisions by Siegfried Sassoon.
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Cairo, Egypt
Dreamscape #2
I’ve been jotting down my dreams recently. They’re not stories - not in the logical beggining-middle-end kind of way. Honestly, I’m not sure what they are but Freud would certainly have a field day. So here’s Dream #2
I’m on an alien planet, bashing through lush vegetation, rainforest thick but different - skewed. The trees looming over me jag at haphazard angles, their leaves hexagonal. The dirt under my feet has the silken, loose consistency of a low-gravity world.
The planet was discovered by Rebecca, the woman who now guides me. She was also the first to be infected by the grubs. Microscopic organisms, they invade the blood, borough cell-deep and alter their hosts at a genetic level. Maybe I’m a doctor, here to help, but she doesn’t seem sick.
Rebecca is tall, lean, still humanoid but stronger, her movements that barest fraction faster than they should be. There is other within her that can’t be defined. I see it in her gait, the shake of her head, a side-long glance. I’m attracted to her one moment, repulsed the next.
“No,” she tells me as she slips through the trees, “it’s not like that. It’s perfect. They are perfect.”
Her body moves beyond fast, her mind whips from thought to thought but, through the whirlwind, her eyes remain passive. Void.
“It’s like…” she shakes her head, then finds the words, “couple years ago I took this hallucinogen. I was on a beach and when the drug kicked in I could see each grain of sand, one rolling over the next in easy flow. With the grubs, it’s like that for everything. No filters.”
Her mind is open, she tells me, her intelligence capable of ingesting reality whole. Contentment flows through her, deep and cold. Is that what makes her alien? Can one be human and so complete?
Before us, the jungle yields to a shock-blue lake. This is where the grubs spawn, and where my guide was infected, afflicted, awarded, anointed.
I walk the lake’s banks, finally reaching the far side, a thin ridge dropping off into an immense cliff. I peer over and vertigo’s hammer-fist wallops me.
A low hum pulls me back. I whip around to the see the lake boiling with grubs. The water slithers with them, teaming sludge. The slop bursts the banks, washes over me and cascades down the cliff in a perfect sheet. I watch its leading edge fall away. At a single instant, that edge phase-shifts into vapor. A cloud begins to form. Fed by ever more water, it billows out, thousands of feet below me, becomming a cumulous sea that will shroud the world.
Terror wells in me. I look to Rebecca, but the depth of her peace remains an impenetrable barrier between us.
Insight flashes through me, rising, I suspect, from my own gestating infection. The grubs will infest everything, live in everything, through everything. This will be a symbiont planet. The grubs are spacefarers. They enter a world, colonize it, become it, and with their new hosts, they travel on.
They will parasitize the universe. Inevitable. I want to fight, to rebel. But what is there to rage against? What more could I want? Rebecca looks down on me, lost in cool enlightenment.
“Accept it. There is no downside,” she says.
I grow stronger, smarter but something deep in me begins to slip.
No downside…
I will never age. Never die. I don’t want this.
NO, downside.
Rage pierces the chill, driving up through the ice. For one final moment, I exist. But I can not hold. My will flash-freezes.
Then, there is only peace.
No downside.
Flying/Falling
This was a 4x5 negative that I manipulated.
I’ve started jotting down my dreams and thought I’d compile them into a series of posts. They’re not stories - not in the logical beggining-middle-end kind of way. Honestly, I’m not sure what they are but Freud would certainly have a field day. So here’s Dream 1:
I stand in a sea of frogs, millions deep, miles long. Their low-groan cacophony envelopes me. I begin to sink into them as they squirm out from under my feet. Just inches from going under, the croaking roar ebbs as the billion-fold frogs retreat through time: frogs to tadpoles, tadpoles to eggs. I find a vile of something in my hand. Poison, or a drug, maybe. I uncork it and pour it onto the eggs. Under my hand, they desiccate, finally turning to black paste that holds my weight. With the poison, I build a rotted path through the eggs and begin to walk.
Sinkholes open around me, eggs collapsing down to the abyssal plain miles below. The voids quickly fill with wallowing lava. Within the lava, massive slugs writhe in ecstatic fervor. I begin to run as the gaping maws of lava and life infest the egg sea.
Finally, I reach the shore. Before me, mountains spring up. I begin to climb. As I do, twining, coral-like spires rise around me, sequoia-tall. I move faster to keep from their web. Up and up.
I reach a massive cave. It wriggles before me, edges quivering in reaction to my presence. I enter. Behind, the cave grinds shut.
Black crushes in on me. And silence. I inch forward, hands outstretched. Then light. Dim at first. I burst into a vast room. A man (naked and lose limbed) stands at its center. His face has burrowed in on itself, pocks of bone gleaming through. He is old beyond old. And he is me.
Terror grips me. I plead with him to come with me. He refuses. I can’t let him stay. Not here. Not like this.
“Useless,” he mutters. It’s my voice, but husked and pitted with age.
I grab him by the arms but he will not come. Waves of panic slam into me. He claws at me, hits me, but he is old and tired. I let him pummel me until he has lost all strength. He crumples to the floor, skin and bone. Mostly bone. I grab his hands and drag him from the room. We re-enter the darkness - so thick it takes on weight. I strain and pull, the man fighting me, gasping out pleas I don’t heed. Can’t.
Finally, we reach the cave’s mouth. Don’t turn to face it. I know I mustn’t. Instead I back against the cracked lips and push. The man whimpers. I press harder, legs straining. I feel some give. Then, release.
We spill out into light - but no ground. The mountains, the coral, the lava - all gone.
Only air greets our escape and we plummet faster and faster, forever accelerating through roaring sky. The earth appears - nearing - impact. It swallows me and I continue to fall. The dirt grinds me down, ripping skin from bone. Pain decimates any sanity I’ve got left. The man is gone. No. That’s not right. I have become the man.
After an eternity, I land in a room. Tight and dank gray. It is my prison cell - one with no no key because there is no door - no exit at all. I stay. Forever? I don’t know. It’s hard to cut the vast swath of time into pieces. Into the time, I speak a mantra: “This is my cell.” Over and over. Sometimes a shriek, sometimes a whisper.
Time trickles past and with it, a realization begins to take hold. This is my cell. I’m am not its prisoner. I am its creator.
The room grows whiter and wider. Finally, it bleaches into pure void.
Freedom!
I break into a run, faster and faster through the nothing. Lost in action, I don’t notice my pursuer, not until a crossbow bolt slams into my back. With the pain, time wrenches down. I watch the arrowhead burst from my chest, drenched in gore. Rage fills me. I rip the bolt free, my own viscera tugged with it.
I whip around to confront my attacker. She does not match my fury. Instead, she gazes at me - a study in calm contrition. She wears the garb of an amazon, but there is a familiarity to her. I know her, and I don’t.
Looking at her, reality warps. I know suddenly that I am dreaming and lost in a world of my creation - my own painting that drew me down.
Knowing this, I rise up. Out of my canvas world - up into the body I know, lying in bed. Next to me lies my wife - whom I know, and I don’t.
I sit up, trying to lock back into reality. A night light spills soft orange light into the room. When did we get a nightlight? It illuminates a picture, hazy at first, then details begin to condense. It reveals a sea of frogs. A falling man. Poison and pain. Running. On my wall, the painting rebuilds itself.
It locks me. I can’t turn away. An itch to return becomes fire. I rise from my bed and put a finger to the painting. As I do, it extends into a third dimension. I pull my hand back and take the painting off the wall. I touch the wall - normal. I flip the painting over; it’s black, smooth and flat. Only a signature mars the surface. It might be my own.
I sit back on the bed, painting on my lap, riding sleep’s edge. My wife, whom I know and I don’t, throws a hand onto my thigh, hooking me to this world. But the hook slips. My head falls back, imprisoned within the pillow. Eyes close. I can’t stop them.
I taste vinegar. Poison. A drug, maybe.
The tang of it rips me from sleep. My eyes snap open, my mouth all cotton and bile.
I stand in a sea of frogs, millions deep, miles long. Their low-groan cacophony envelopes me…
