dream

I was reading from a book about a girl in pretty early postcolonial america-equivalent who was sent to the next town over either for medicine or news regarding one of our family members, as our farm had been undergoing a series of tragedies. Early on in reading the account I became the girl. Leaving the outer wall of the village was practically a different, actually normal world (of that era) and I had quite a fun romp, all in all, though I was still quite stressed. There was a festival with melons, and a spa with a hot shower! Unfortunately, the dream or book skipped the events surrounding the purpose of my outing.

It began getting dark as I approached the village gate (nestled between two hills and a small, tall redbrick house) and almost immediately passing the threshold turned black-night, only a hint of purple against a yellow moon poking through the leaves and I knowing the way but still lost amongst the tall grasses centering our community. Across the black circle and up a hill again until the torches and calls for my baby brother showed me the rest of the way; some neighbors, searching, my mother gone (dead?) and so my eldest brother, the middling one out searching with father though the mood grumbled about the fields was that there was nothing to be found. I tried to grab his attention, but a wild look in his eyes was the only response, and he waved his lantern around, unseeing. I don't know my brother's name.

Over time the others filtered away, either given up or unnerved by his madness and rudeness in the search. I was pledged to both, knowing something had been wrong in the house a long time now, and also that wherever my baby brother had gone, he was not in the village anymore. And when my middling brother tried telling him, tried pulling him away, my father snapped and cracked over the head him with the torch, for the lantern was an open flame now, and my brother began to burn and cry, and my father blind and deaf to him.

I tried best I could do rescue him, but the flame would not go out. So I cradled him in my lap as his head burned, and after a time, there was nothing left of it, just a black spot where his neck had been on his torso, and my father bellowing in the dark. All the neighbors had gone from now, but faraway lights would wreath the hill in stark light and shadow at random, like my father was a giant, or had an army in the treeline.

I pull out the case from my pack, a handful of vials and disgustsingly large syringes. Evidently I had been sent out for medicine of a sort, and climb onto our low roof, half-snagged in the branches of the tree grown in our chimney. It might be an elm; it doesn't seem to matter but for the way it scares me. My father climbs atop it, hearing the noise, searching for something. He is no longer speaking any language I can understand, and I presume no longer even pretending to search for my brother. The girl is certain in her heart that her mother has left safely, and will not return.

I call to my father. He lumbers forth, cooing, hoping to embrace his sweet daughter, but some animal instinct smells the danger and before he is in arm's reach he jumps back, shouts, falls off the roof. Afraid he will flee, or else set violence upon me, I clamber down the tree and nearly - do indeed - fall, arms twisting. My knees fall out, I stand anyway. She stands - it becomes apparent again, either as part of the dream, or my brain, that I am not the daughter. The daughter calls to her father, sprawled on the ground. I blink. The daughter stabs the syringe into her father's neck while he rushes forward; he grabs at her, but she's pushed the plunger far enough for it to have an effect. There is a suggestion of it being insulin, but with how instantly her father loses consciousness, it's clearly not.

She stands over him while shivering. The season has shifted from late summer to the start of winter over the course of the night. She drags him inside. Blink. Chops his hand, then the other, then the feet, then hacks at the elbow, then the knee, then the other, then at the hip and shoulders. I am amazed at how clean the room is. She keeps the neck attached, hauls his body onto the dinner table, then with a cleaver hacks at the skull. It's a poor implement, but eventually the top of the skull comes clean off and she scoops out the brain like jelly. It's cranberry sauce and smells like dentistry. She chops, chops, chops, hammers with the handle, breaks the plate and pummels that too. Eventually, minutes and days later, there is a perfect loaf of brain-skull-ceramic-blood jelly on the table, plated, waiting for her to dig in. She stares but doesn't eat. Picks up a pen, dips it in the juices on the table, begins to write in her journal. The strength is leaving her body. Blink.

She is on the floor, sick or hungry or both. There are hundreds of cans in the house but she cannot eat them, only sip. Maybe salt? She does not believe any neighbors will come to check, and is certain she will starve this winter, but I know she will live, that she has time and I don't. I read from her journal.

Day 3
Tired tired so tired surely she will die here. The wood has gone and the heat has fled the house and her eyes are bright, collarbones rippling, lying on the ground huddled in on herself and feeling all around
Day 7
The key is to trim along the can, shake it, then pry open the top to suckle at the foam. She cuts her mouth and wonders at the savory blood. Suckle and discard. the taste makes it worse but she's so much farther now
Day 13
magic magic magic in the air rising higher and higher leaving her

She looks at the brain-jelly and understands something I don't. The kitchen is covered with gore and I am scared for my own life. I look over at the journal, but it is still being written, and my cat wakes me up by flopping down on the side of my face.