Dead People & Ambrosia

Date: 11/22/2021

On a boat. It all started on a shitty lifeboat. Someone was on the lifeboat with me. A friend? friend. There were bodies in the sea and I recognized their faces. But I also didnt? I fell in the water. Hair from long decayed scalps wrapped around my wrists. I killed one of these bodies. I killed 5 of these bodies. I washed up on an island and stacked those 5 perfectly preserved bodies on a shelf. One had glasses and balding grey hair. I left. The island faded away, and I was in an ampitheatre packed with people. It was some sort of comedy show where famous people of all kinds gathered to show off their theatrics and crack-wise to each other. I was not supposed to be there, I snuck in. Then people started dying, too packed, too crowded, too many people had snuck in. Guilt. Suffocating guilt. I could do nothing else but sit in my gold guilded chair and eat the food sat in front of me, watching Steve Buscemi talk about the Mets. I ate mashed potatoes and cold stew. Suddenly I was in my parent's house. Architecture looked like older japanese houses, thin paper dividers, circular openings and windows, arches and support beams made of yew and dark oak. My parent's house - though, they were not home. We had a steady stream of money coming in from our market stall selling potatoes and carrots. Maybe lettuce? Definitely not onions. I gathered my robes about me - Robes? Yes I think I was wearing some sort of robes with long sleeves and tightly cinched waist. Also, I was wearing jeans. My aunt arrived with thugs at the front gates. I had a familial duty to let her in, but I was terrified of what they would do, what they would take. They roughed me up a bit, asking about the potatoes, the carrots, the lettuce? Definitely the money though. Where was the money. I stood my ground, keeping silent except for the grunts of pain as they laid into me. They left. I was on the ground, beat up for my troubles. I was afraid my parents wouldn't believe me so I cut a slit into the thin paper wall where the money was hidden, letting the crisp dollar bills spill to the floor. There, they'd believe me now. I walked down the Long Hallway. Towards the back, to the pond where my parents lay sunbathing. I think it took me awhile to get there, I was so tired. My dad laid on the steps leading into the pond, my mother floating in a pool floatie 2 feet away from him. I decided to let them have their peace for now. I wouldn't say anything about the money - about my aunt and her thugs. Walking toward them I took in the scenery, lily pads and lotus roots dotted the waist deep pond. The water was crystal clear, but the excessive foliage floating on the top made it a bit hard to see the clear parts. A disturbance near my mother drew me away. A terrifying sight. An alligator, not comically large, but it was swimming towards my parents with a leisure that spoke only of the amusement of a predator towards its prey. My parents saw it, but treated it like an errant wasp, something to be dealt with only if it caused pain. Fear settled over me like an old friend, my bones felt cold, my skin felt sick, a beautiful day, a beautiful pond, a deadly hunter. I lured it away. I lured it down the Long Hallway. I lured it towards the money that I had so foolishly put into the open. I tried to lure it down to the basement, connected to the upstairs by a plastic yellow slide. The opening was huge, but somehow I was just the right size - in essence, I was stuck. I waited for the alligator to attack me. It didn't. I struggled. I struggled. I struggled. I think I was there for a long time, I was sweating profusely by the time I got myself unstuck. I was still on edge from the alligator, it had seemingly disappeared without attacking me. Did I even lure it away in the first place? A vision, a distant fractal of a dream slotted into my dream mind. fractal among fractals among discordant brain waves. I was wandering around in a ball pit, wandering around in back rooms, dusty and covered in half decayed broken bodies. The ball pit showed no gore, but I knew what hid underneath, I had to get out and so I did. The backrooms were dusty and had rotten wood crates stacked on top of each other. the backrooms were so big I couldn't question it for the sake of my sanity. I got the sense that I was seeing the echos of an apocalypse that no one could explain. I snapped back to myself, fractal shattering in front of my eyes. I had wandered, it seems, to the bridge that preceeded the Long Hallway. But that was not there before, when I had gone to my parents. It was open, sunlight streaming in, and the bridge was covered in a light layer of water. Ankle deep at most. The house had changed while I wasn't looking. How rude. I walked across the lily pads to the middle of the pond by the bridge. Not the same pond my parents had been in, but it was only a little bit bigger. Big enough. I was unsure why I was here, but suddenly I wasnt anywhere. I was gone. Gonegonegonegonegonegonegonegonegonegone. And then I was back. But I was 100 feet in the air from where I had been previously standing. Oh shit. I was falling. Falling into the now comically wide mouth of the alligator with too many teeth. As I fell down to the earth, it rose to meet me from the water into the air. I was accepting my demise, but I found myself looking around anyways. My eyes met a figure in a gondola in the form of a bamboo raft on wheels. It moved like a gondola, going over my house and stretching off into the distance, but the housing of it was just a bamboo slab on wheels. Stranger yet was the figure on the raft. They looked deep into my eyes, and suddenly a moving golden liquid light stretched between us. It came from their entire being, and it entered my eyes and my nose and my mouth. A split second was all it took for that golden energy to freeze me in the air. As they moved, I moved with them, still at the same height - not falling. The alligators teeth chomped the air a few feet below me, I felt the huff of air on my back as it began its haphazard descent back to the water. I was still moving, and the weird golden energy sort of solidified in my mouth. It felt weird, like it was something that was not supposed to happen under normal circumstances. It felt like a small rod like balloon slowly filling up in my mouth. I know how that sounds and honestly, its probably what you think it is. It was still energy though, and it was still connecting me and this other person. Their piercing stare turned from icy to suddenly shocked and warm and warm and warm. I think one of my teeth snagged on the energy balloon in my mouth, light as a feather. The energy balloon popped, and my mouth filled with a golden liquid, and it was ambrosia on my tongue. The person that I had been having this intense staring contest with seemed to be incredibly flustered. The word "soulmate" popped into my head. I stared on in confusion. Suddenly, they looked away, face redder than a cherry tomato, and I fell the final 50 feet towards the earth. I had moved too far away from the pond so it was only cold hard dirt beneath me. I blacked out at the ground rushed up to meet me. When I woke, the gondola was far far away rambling upwards into the sky, and I had a straw in my mouth. The straw was attached to a cup that had a thick magenta liquid in it. It tasted rooty and gritty like a smoothie, but it was so good and it made me feel instantly revitalized. I walked away from my house, still drinking this liquid from this cup that seemed to change shape with every step. I walked into the city, a modern place full of technicolor. I was looking for the person who just so happened to save me. I was going to find them.