Nightmare Cinema

I'm walking through a dream or a nightmare. I can't decide which. It feels so surreal, I can only imagine that any moment I will awaken- wrapped warm in the folds of my feather blanket drowsy with this lingering sleep and blissful at the day's coming. Though I pray for this end, I know it will not come.

The dream plays out and the curtains part.

Act one is narrated by a still persistent voice on some far away receiver; he tells me this is reality, and I believe him. His benevolence lowers me, and I sink to my knees defeated. I am entangled in these slackened strings. This is the voice echoing in my head, it congeals to a razor point. He reminds me to fear and love alike; to bleed and to heal. This voice which reminds me to watch commands, and I feel the eyes searching back at me for signs of the break. His tone is flat and self-controlled. I hear ice and steel. I loathe that tone. It's the tone he always uses when he's furious but unwilling to betray the emotion.

And so it is. Cracks appear and the paint flays under fingers probing porcelain cheeks. But then the tender hopes fade and strings tug once more. I am moving, I am dancing, as the voice has now commanded. Looking upwards, I see candles lighted high up on the ceiling- those same hands guiding waltzes spinning dizzy. Delirium glows warm and shining, the voice speaking a velvet demand. Of instinct the strings jump and I react.

The ushers bow as act two begins full in ferocity; it's swirling around me and these insecurities take the stage like goblin marionettes of myself, deformed and mocking. They chant and cry out to me, and though I avert my eyes they persist.

The curtains remain parted, tied back taught still, and yet I have outlived my purpose. The scene plays out perfectly as I lie prostrate and helpless, abandoned with disdain. The disapproval, the loving hands having turned away from me, it scalds and cauterizes this wound searing across my consciousness. I can't scream but sit fascinated by this gorgeous implosion. Sentience collapses inward as all is drowned in a sea of burgundy velvet. Exhausted and furious, full of rage and venom I cannot move. I am helpless and ruined. Drowning and sinking, lost and forgotten at the bottom of a steamer trunk post-performance. I am dragged back into the blackness and lose thoughts of myself.

Pull my strings, for you I'll dance, and be no more myself. From this point forward no more will I think but to be of a puppet and a toy. So statuesque will I remain, thoughtless and complacent so that no more harsh words will I endure.

But please god please if there be mercy in you- to save the light shining dull in these doll eyes- wake me from this nightmare cinema.