Of interest to me was how much further I managed to delve into my sleepland when I was unwell. I wasn't ill much – the usual whooping cough, chicken pox and the odd cold – but at these times my dreams really started to change. My beautiful angel looked even more appealing. As she glided above the grass, it seemed to bow down before her. The green blades would stay strewn across the floor and if I looked back, a clear pathway could be seen. The trees would bend like weeping willows, as if in mourning, their branches too heavy to bear. The ground underneath me would feel warm, no not warm, scorching. It didn't exactly hurt but neither did I enjoy these sensations. The clouds would gather in the sky and form ominous shapes around me. The once empty blue skies of my dreams would become saturated, oppressive and suffocating. Although the sun still shone, I would shiver. Perhaps it was the swirling cold mist with its icy cold fingers grasping at my legs. Sometimes I feared that I had lost sight of my angel in her flowing gown, but as I ran faster I would catch a glimpse of her and my panic would subside a little. I would feel my muscles starting to ache and my eyes streaming as the cold winds started to bite at my body. My lungs would not fill with the oxygen needed to run at such a pace and my breathing became short and sharp, eventually I would be gasping. Yet still all I wanted to do was follow Death. She beckoned me forwards, ever onwards.
As quickly as I fell into my dreams, I would be forced back out of them. I would awaken to the labored sounds of my gasps, my parents watching over me trying to rouse me from my sleep. They would gently talk to me and I would come out of my confused state to their loving voices. Once I was fully conscious, they would chatter and sing to me before carefully tucking me back into bed, my toys placed back on my quilt, picked up from the floor. I never understood why these little toy animals and soft teddies had gone from my bed. Years later, my parents would tell me about these night terrors. They explained that they would find me thrashing and screaming, toys strewn across the floor and my duvet wrapped round and round my body. I would be clawing at the sheets, desperately trying to escape my dreams. My parents would blame my increased temperature on these bad dreams; they only really happened when I was ill. Yes, the rest of the time I clearly had dreams, but never as outwardly emotional or reactive as when I was poorly.
I learnt to not talk about my dreams. Nobody else ever saw my world, not a soul saw the woman that I did. No matter how often I described the flowing, iridescent gown or her raven black hair, I never saw a hint of recognition in their eyes. Plenty of people understood waking and gasping, heart pounding and blood pumping wildly around their bodies. Many folks would also understand those feelings of getting stuck inside the bedsheets; that paralysis that accompanied it. Some people even identified with the suffocating, strangling, envelopment of the sheets that I knew that I was captured in. The more I talked about it, the more people agreed that they frequently felt it, but surely that was normal. You went to sleep, moved about, got stuck in the bedding and your brain simply woke you up in order to restore the bedsheets and covers. This sensible rationale started to break down the day I met my friend Emma.
We started university at the same time; both of us studying biology with chemistry, learning slowly to understand the world around us via science. She too dreamed. Despite her love for science, Emma also had a passion for dream books and her Book of Dreams. The former consisted of a great collection of literary works intended to help the reader understand their present dreams. The Book of Dreams was, in contrast, a book where you wrote down your own dreams. These could be those that you had whilst asleep, or those that you hoped would be achieved in your real life. My flat mates Melissa and Alice gave me my first Book of Dreams for my birthday, a cold and snowy January day. We all started filling in those books and spent homely winter evenings discussing them and the lives that were waiting for us on the other side of our educations. It wasn't science but dreams were always interesting. I gained no more control of that angel or her surroundings by writing everything down and analyzing my dreams, but I was learning to further embrace my sleepland.
During our first summer vacation, the four of us went across to Africa. The idea was to help provide clean water to a small village and the surrounding area. We loved the hard work, living with the generous and happy families and seeing the children running carefree yet so busy with their play. On our final night, we organized a party to thank the village for their hospitality. So much food and drink were consumed, the dances were wild and happy-go-lucky, magical memories were created. The local healer came along to bless us on our journeys. We sat around the flickering fire talking with her, listening to her wise words on how to treat people and how to make the most of life. She gave us soup containing roots and leaves which would help us to stay healthy. None of us really believed in such healing but she said a lot about humanity that made sense. As the moon rose over the hill, she looked at us all and told us to shed our dreams. Confused by this we questioned her further. She told us that our dreams would lead us to our deaths, hastened and helped by the cotton with memories. Smiling quietly to ourselves, we promised her that we would try not to dream, despite having no idea what the ramblings of this eccentric old woman could mean. The sad look on her face made her look even more ancient. It was no wonder that she was able to give the village sound advice and contemplate their lives so deeply.
As the moon grew brighter and the stars twinkled in the sky, we began to feel tired. The hard work from the previous weeks, the prospect of a long and bumpy car journey followed by a flight across the continents, and the exertion from the dancing had taken their toll. We were ready for bed and so, with great sadness, we bade a fond farewell to our dear friends and headed off to our room. That night I had the most vivid and frightening dream of my life. Instead of walking into the balmy woods and fields, I felt myself falling into a cold and forbidding well. All I could feel was the sensation of plummeting faster and faster, the wind gathering speed and I was losing sight of the small amount of light at the top of the well, now seemingly miles above me. With a jolt, I hit the bottom of the empty well but to my shock I had sustained no injuries and was not hurt at all. Then I heard the voice of the old healer. She was muttering and whispering about the cotton with memories. The slaves that had died, the beaten children, the abused workers, evil farm and factory owners and managers. She was spluttering on about the bloodied hands from farming and harvesting the cotton and how that blood had mixed with that from the men, women and children who had been whipped and murdered. Over seven thousand years of history showed cotton use, trade and human abuse in so many countries throughout the world. The blood had seeped into each and every plant and now it wanted revenge. Death had worked her evil ways and the cotton shrubs were helping to take souls from the Earth. The cotton sheets, covers and pillowcases were not exactly haunted, but held innate memories of pain and suffering and were now taking that out on humans.
This nightmare seemed so real and I couldn't drag myself out of it. Where had these thoughts come from and how had my brain managed to come up with these delirious concepts? I was so deeply asleep that I couldn't escape seeing the blood stained cotton, hands ripped open by the plants, small children burnt from the sun and stooped over in pain from harvesting that cotton day after day. The healers voice became more broken, more agitated, increasingly emotional and insistent. Her last words will haunt me forever, “think about it, think hard, why do most people die in their sleep? The sheets will kill you and death will take you”. I didn't know what to say or do and that familiar feeling of paralysis set in. With a gasp I awoke, my heart pounding inside my chest, tears streaming from my eyes. I looked around and realized that my friends were in exactly the same state as me. That woman must have given us poisonous or drug filled plant leaves, put the dreams in our heads via all of her weird stories and advice. I mean you see that all the time on television, the power of suggestion making folks eat raw onions or believing that real zombies are attacking them. We gradually calmed down.
Non
e of us really wanted to sleep, so we spent the rest of the night discussing our nightmares. How could she have made us think the same things? As soon as we got home, we started searching the Internet for sleep death. It was barely even recognized as something that happened frequently. Yes, one in eight people died in their sleep but the numbers were never really tallied. People didn't die of sleep, they died of heart problems, respiratory failure, cancer, and the list went on and on. Babies, children and even adults sometimes had unexplained deaths in their beds, but otherwise there was usually a medical reason, or, of course, death by accidents, suicide and murder. Surely if dying in your sleep were common, especially due to sheets or duvets, the world would have recognized that already? We laughed it off and put it down to experiencing a different mindset, a different culture and maybe some strange drugs that had been given without our knowledge or consent. Cotton had no memory and was not out to kill people.
My friends and I recounted the tales of our summer travels and, over the months and years, we finally started to prepare for our finals – a month of hellish exams preceded by strenuous revision. As luck would have it, I was not to sit those exams, but I was certainly not fortunate. Just six weeks before finals I got glandular fever. At first I just felt exhausted and wanted to sleep, but over time my neck and throat swelled, my spleen became enlarged, my eyes could no longer deal with light and, just to make it all worse, I got tonsillitis and my health declined rapidly. Nothing could keep me awake. I didn't eat, barely drank, my temperature soared and eventually I was admitted to hospital after my liver finally started to fail and my skin had turned a shocking shade of yellow. I was in constant pain and only fleetingly regained consciousness. When I did, the doctors were pushing endoscopes into my obstructed trachea and I was bewildered at the needles sticking out from every possible point in my arms, supplying me with a concoction of drugs and fluids.
Eventually I was released from hospital and returned home, back to the safety and comfort of my own bed. I would improve over time but it would be painful and could take a while, my doctors assured me that I would recover. They were right. Over the weeks, I slowly began to notice the inflammation decreasing, visitors popped over to keep me amused when I was awake. When I slept, it was sound and peaceful. My dear Angel returned to take me away from my world of pain. She guided me through the windflowers and all the way up to the hills and mountains, places that I had never been in my dreams. Further and further into my sleepland. My dear old friend was always within reach. Once we reached the snowcapped mountains, great blizzards formed around us and once we had reached the highest mountain, the sun vanished. The dark had appeared like a great eclipse. I desperately waited for the sun to shine, grabbing out to my Angel in her floating gown. I needed her, only she could comfort me. The ice, snow and bitter storm got ever colder. I could feel my skin becoming numb and then it was as though jagged ice particles were right inside my bloodstream. I couldn't move. I collapsed into the snow, unable to cry or scream. Not a single cell inside my body seemed alive; I could feel death standing over me.
My eyes abruptly opened. Instead of the usual awakening gasp, I was greeted with her looking down on me. She had escaped from my dreams. My sheets pulled tighter around me and I was utterly paralyzed. I gazed into those once wondrous eyes and saw that she had won, my life had become hers. My heart rate slowed, my mind became blurred and unable to fight and I impassively went back into sleepland forever. She was never there again, her prize had been achieved and there was nothing for her to need from me now, she had stolen it. I am left in absolute darkness. Now I only see you all in glimpses of your own dreams.
The Angel of Death leads you, you follow but you don't see her. I call out to you but you don't hear me, I try to stop you but your body’s breeze through mine as if I don't exist. I can only write in my Book of Dreams and I'm not even sure whether that is only real here or whether you can see my warnings too. Melissa, Alice, Emma, please read my Book of Dreams, can see my story? Your sheets and duvets will suffocate you, render you helpless. The cotton has memories and is listening to Death's commands, that old medicine woman knew this already. Share my story with the world. Stop Death from doing her bidding and don't let the cotton give your life to her.
It is not Death that you have to fear, she cannot take you on her own, she needs allies. Throughout the centuries, the cotton plants had seen enough torture and pain caused by humans to humans and now it wanted revenge. You’re safe, secure and cozy bedsheets and duvets are leading you towards Death and we live in blissful ignorance, or do we?
I know what you’re thinking and, yes, that is a piece of Halloween candy on the shelf. You might ask why a consignment shop like this would have single piece of wrapped candy on offer. Under the right circumstances, this particular piece of candy might save your life…or cause you to lose it.
Award winning author K. Trap Jones gave us this. Although he was last seen lurking around Tampa Florida, you can learn more about him at ktrapjones.wordpress.com.
A WRAPPER IN THE WIND
K. Trap Jones
OUR NAMES are carried within the wind along the darkened streets and whispered amongst the shadows. Our vision lurks within the blackened fog and creeps around every corner. In Hell is where we are banished for the sins committed. Lone cells of confinement, within the belly of the beast, serve as our sentences. United, we seek sanctuary during the limited time we are allowed to speak with one another. Our Fiend Clubdoes not meet as much as we would like, but Hell is not a place for pity and reasoning. We gather amongst the bottomless pits within the hidden trenches of the cavern. The discussions are always the same. Dreaming of release, we take turns describing the limitless amount of chaos we will cause and the sheer level of disruption the human society will endure. Our souls clamor at the idea of returning into a flesh controlled mass capable to chaotic touching and altering physical attributes. Never again did we take a meat body for granted‒the bones, muscles, and the ability to control. We suffer due to the lack of touch. Without touch, none of us can disrupt. In our soul state, we are misfits, incapable of utilizing our given talents to supply destroying elements to the gears of the world. Everything we live for is evil; everything our thoughts dwell upon is torment. Our club meetings pass the time until we once again roam the world. Pity how I am here due to the simplest of items; a wrapper in the wind. Of all the sins, greed was my favorite, but ultimately led to my downfall.
For centuries, we roamed aimlessly amongst the vastness of the world. Considered fiends; we enjoyed the challenge of manipulating the inner workings of machinery and contraptions. We were a plague to factories as an overnight visit could completely shut down production and inflict torment upon human society. We crept through towns across the land leaving behind brutal damages and unfixable mistakes. The Industrial Age became our playground and as mechanisms advanced through time, so did we. We lived for the evil; for the chance of disruption. Bred into chaos, we marched throughout the land leaving behind anarchy in our wake.
Mechanical failure was my personal satisfaction; my salvation. I focused mainly on transportation. Cars broke down, trains crashed and airplanes plummeted from the skies. One night, while I was under the hood of a moving car trying to sever the brake fluid tubing, the car came to a halt. Sifting through the cracks of the engine, I exited. What I saw next would forever change me. Humans were walking around everywhere. What struck me as odd was the way they were all dressed. Monsters and creatures roamed the streets. To understand the concept and to see if any of my skills could be put to use, I scurried with a group of monsters up to a doorstep. I observed the owner of the house giving out what appeared to be mortal food. With a claw extended, the woman dropped a small wrapped piece of food into my hand. I thought nothing of the notion as there were no machines or gadgets to destroy.
Boredom carved through my skin and split my skull with an axe as I watched the monsters collecting more. Consumption of mortal food was never to my liking, but curiosity to
ok the reins as I chewed upon a hardened nugget. The essence of the sweetness blurred my visions and devoured my thoughts. My tongue swirled like a watery serpent seeking nourishment. I swallowed the pebble of goodness and instantly desired more.
Feeding into the cravings, I followed another grouping to the front steps of the same house. Like the inner workings of a mechanical clock, the woman opened the door. Confused by the festival of goodness, I reached my claw out for the bowl she was carrying. It was filled to the brim with different colors. She pushed my hand away. I frowned at her denial and envisioned ripping her spine out through the mouth. Instead, I waited for another group in order to receive more. Once again, I saw the sheer amount of sweetness dwelling within the bowl and watched it disappear as she closed the door.
Greed boiled within my veins as I crept through an open window. I scurried up the walls and ceiling until I found the bowl. With no one around, I dropped down and devoured it all. Excitement stirred my emotions and lathered me with an aura of enlightenment. The experience quickly ended as I heard screams. I jumped from the bowl and landed on the woman’s chest. The flesh of her throat was no match for my sharpened claws. The taste of her blood almost overmatched the sweetness in my mouth. I finished up the bowl and left the house as stealthily as I arrived. As I intertwined myself with more humans, I desired more and no mortal life was going to stand in my way.
I broke free from the humans in front of the house. I found their method to be insufficient to my ultimate goal. I was unhappy with the single offering. The real prize resided behind closed doors. As the monsters knocked, they provided a distraction so I could easily slip through the back. The next house had two unguarded bowls. A large man startled me when he entered the kitchen and found me swimming in a lake of empty wrappers. His collection of kitchen knives proved useful as each of the blades flew across the room and entered his chest. I couldn’t resist the temptation so I tinkered with the stove and refrigerator before leaving. My mind was racing through random thoughts and my muscles were twitching uncontrollably. With eyes rapidly shifting from one side to another, I wasn’t quite sure as to what was happening. The only thing I knew was that I needed more.
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