She did it
Raphael was wrong. Although the dream is in our minds, we have no
control over it. Our fantasy of escape is just that—a fantasy. The Dream
Stalker let us think we were escaping, like a cat toying with a mouse, but
we’re still there. Our bodies are still in the Château des Rêves, enfolded in a
terrible nightmare. Sooner or later, the dark prince and his guards will find
us. Fear crackles through my nerves.
If I know I’m dreaming, can I force myself to wake? I pinch myself, but
that doesn’t help. Pain is real in this nightmare, and it’s not a way out. If we
drown here, I feel disturbingly certain that would mean the end for us.
What does the Dream Stalker want? I’ve heard his thoughts for years.
He craves pleasure and beauty, but he always feels alone. If I’m in the
château right now, as I suspect, could I slip into his mind as I accidentally
did before? Maybe—only then—we can find a way out of this nightmare.
The thought of going anywhere near him, much less his thoughts, scares
the shit out of me. I’ve already come close to losing my sanity by invading
too many people’s thoughts. It would be dumb to risk drowning in a sea of
consciousness again, but do I have a choice? Not if I wish to escape this
nightmare.
Gripping the slippery wooden edge of the boat, I close my eyes and
focus on the magic inside me, the frenetic, high-pitched, violet magic that
allows me to hear another person’s thoughts.
As I summon it, I recall the way the prince’s mind felt as it touched
mine. Dark, brooding. Obsessed with sex.
I channel my telepathic powers at that mind and feel something brush
my thoughts, a shadow of another entity. Dark. Alluring. Seductive. But
right now—above all—furious.
But it’s hard to concentrate with the boat heaving up and down,
threatening to spit me into the void.
Jim not that way Jim. That's no way to treat a garage door, bending stiffly down at the waist and yanking at the handle so the door jerks up and out jerky and hard and you crack your shins and my ruined knees, son. Let's see you bend at the healthy knees. Let's see you hook a soft hand lightly over the handle feeling its subtle grain and pull just as exactly gently as will make it come to you. Experiment, Jim. See just how much force you need to start the door easy, let it roll up out open on its hidden greasy rollers and pulleys in the ceiling's set of spiderwebbed beams. Think of all garage doors as the well-oiled open-out door of a broiler with hot meat in, heat roiling out, hot. Needless and dangerous ever to yank, pull, shove, thrust. Your mother is a shover and a thruster, son. She treats bodies outside herself without respect or due care. She's never learned that treating things in the gentlest most relaxed way is also treating them and your own body in the most efficient way. It's Marlon Brando's fault, Jim. Your mother back in California before you were born, before she became a devoted mother and long-suffering wife and breadwinner, son, your mother had a bit part in a Marlon Brando movie. Her big moment. Had to stand there in saddle shoes and bobby sox and ponytail and put her hands over her ears as really loud motorbikes roared by. A major thespian moment, believe you me. She was in love from afar with this fellow Marlon Brando, son. Who? Who. Jim, Marlon Brando was the archetypal new-type actor who ruined it looks like two whole generations' relations with their own bodies and the everyday objects and bodies around them. No? Well it was because of Brando you were opening that garage door like that, Jimbo. The disrespect gets learned and passed on. Passed
“Kötü bir anıyı unutmanın en iyi yolu güzel bir tanesiyle değişmektir.”
Slade then?
And then...nothing.
No sounds at all.
My heart races and my stomach roils, while fear squeezes me in its
nefarious grasp.
Then, the doorknob jiggles. Just once. Like someone tested to see if it
was locked. A second later, I see the handle fall away completely,
disintegrated into grains of golden sand.
I tense as the door swings open, and a silhouette appears in the
threshold like a demon stepping out of hell.
The dim light of the room shouldn’t be enough for me to recognize
who it is, but I know. I think even in the pitch black, I’d know.
Because I can feel it.
Just like when I was on that hill, his power seems to travel from the
ground and soak into my feet. Another wave of nausea roils through me,
making my fingers curl tighter around the bars as King Ravinger himself
steps into the room.
All the air in my lungs dissolves like that doorknob did, and my body
freezes in fear. He steps in almost boredly, without even squinting in the
dim light, as if his eyes don’t need to adjust to the dark.
Maybe that’s because darkness lurks within him already.
Walking forward, he scans the room methodically. He’s wearing neat
black leathers with a high collar shirt, and a barbed crown of branches sits
proudly on his head. They look withered, petrified, like they died long ago
and then hardened in a molded polish.
He stops in the shadows, a few feet away from my cage, but I don’t
need him closer to see how his gaze hooks onto me.
His are deep green eyes, like rich moss right before it’s about to turn
brown. Life, right before death. Richness, right before rot.
But it’s the markings on his face that I can’t stop staring at. They rise
out of his collar, trailing up his neck, curling over his jaw, like roots
Song of Myself (I)
1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
Tüm ülke kara dumanlara boğulduk. Göz gözü görmez oldu. Büyük, küçük tanınmaz; saygı, sevgi bilinmez oldu. Herkes birbirini çiğnemeye başladı. Bütün düzen altüst oldu. Ayaklar baş, başlar ayak oldu. Kimin üste çıktığı, kimin altta kaldığı anlaşılamadı. Ezilenlerin iniltileri göklere yükseldi. Çarpan, deviren, düşüren birbiri ne karıştı. Kim kime, dum duma, alan çalan bilinmedi.
Aleksandra Duma, ' Mösyö Alfons' adlı kitabında der ki : " Erkekler iki ahlak yöntemi yarattılar. Biri kendileri için , öbürü kadınlar içindir. Birinci ahlak kendilerine her kadını sevme hakkını verir ; İkincisi , kadına yitirdiği bu özgürlüğe karşılık , yalnız bir erkeği sevmek hakkını verir." Aleksandra Duma bu sözlerinde çok haklıdır.
