Lucid Waking

Archive for March, 2007

The Ironic Masquerade

Welcome to the Ironic Masquerade!
A night unlike all the rest
The people can’t see what fools they can be…
Why don’t we look at the guests:

The Lady of the Thousand Masks
Of each she’ll quickly retrieve
Is sitting with friends as time never ends
Hoping soon they all will leave.

The Lord of the Pensive Vaudeville
Inspires all he knows
By bringing a smile to the world for a while
Without thought for new friends, he goes

The Lady of the Golden Mirror
Sits in her golden hall
And Brushes her hair without a care,
Except to impress them all.

The Lord of Gentleman Empathy
Is there with a helping hand
Tries his best to help those who’re depressed
But not seen as the one who’s most grand

The Lady of Torn Perceptions
Sees things through rose-colored glass
And tries to cheer the friends she holds dear
As they slowly and silently pass

The Lord of Theatrical Perfection
Is struggling with life a lot
He’ll blow you away in the part that he plays
All but his name is forgot.

The Lady of Lost Identity
Knows just whom she is inside
But the rest, you see, does not agree
No one’s sure what to do, though they’ve tried

The Lord of Stolen Slumber
Wants to sleep for years
But there’s much to do and places, too
There’s no time to deal with his peers

The Lady of Deadly Offenses
Can snap your neck on a whim
But she’s not as daunting when her prey she is haunting
If you knew her hope is dim

The Lord of Poison Entrapments
Sipping wine with his troubles close by
Pretends not to care with a standoffish air
But, will help if you let him try.

The Lady of the Quicksilver Pen
Hides her true feelings inside
In order to be a mother to me
And everyone yearning to hide.

The Lord of Jester Propriety
Will make you think he’s fair
He’ll joke and tease anyone with ease
But he’s as sweet as can compare

The Lady of the Forever Young
Plays in the orchard at noon
She wants to be grown up, you see.
I hope that they let her soon.

Now you see my moral dilemma,
These guests are not credible at all
But without them, you see, who would I be?
What would happen to this ball?

Myself? The hostess? Can you guess?
I admit, it isn’t that hard
The one who’s aware of all that she shared
And plays the anonymous bard

I’m the Lady of Internal Conflict
Openhearted I try to be
But I can’t be sincere when the demons are here
As they are constantly torturing me

Now you’ve met all the guests at this party
Complicated souls through and through
But don’t judge them just to condemn
Until you’ve examined you.

Blind Flowers

            “If our spirits were all flowers, what flower do you think you are?”
            “That’s an odd question,” Thom said following the ring of the coffee cup rim. They were sitting in a dark bar, the buzz of music adding to the blushing heat of alcohol. The other couples around them whispered and laughed, but they sat in serious silence. He picked up his Irish coffee to take another sip, but just kept it in his hand.
            “What flower would I be?” he blushed as Caitlin nodded her head up and down and gazed at him expectantly. “I don’t know,” he said rubbing the back of his neck nervously and breaking from her gaze. He tried to enjoy himself, but her gaze and seriousness were starting to make him nervous. He vowed never to take another blind date again.
            “Well, no one can know,” she said smiling gently, melting the tension. He couldn’t help but smile back. She put her hand on his and started massaging gently. “If you’re feeling uncomfortable answering that question, you don’t have to.”
            He watched her bone-accentuated hands gently relax the muscles in his hand, but didn’t catch her gaze.
            “I guess I’m a calla lily,” he said at last as the noise somewhat died down. “Simple and ugly.”
            She laughed and dropped her hands. “From what I’ve seen, you’re not simple and calla lilies aren’t ugly.”
            “So that was the wrong answer?”
            “If there is a wrong answer.”
            He thought for a moment and watched her in the haze. She sipped her drink quietly, gazing into the flame of the candle meditatively. The fire caught her hair in a blaze of passionate red and glowed like a new penny never could. Her freckles had disappeared off of her pale skin in the dim light, except by her nose where the candle illuminated her skin playfully. Her green eyes reflected the light like a cat and he could almost see the emerald green shadows on the table from their metallic shine. Yet, she sat perfectly and simply still, not making a single move to touch him besides the small hand massage she had finished earlier.
            Thom thought about how he had gotten there. His friend, Jack, had called him up (something Jack never did) and told Thom to prepare himself for a date the following evening. “You need to get out and about,” he had said before hanging up the phone on Thom’s protests, “you need to find yourself a mate.” That was the last of the words on the matter, but Thom was not one to leave someone out alone at a bar waiting the whole night, so he showed up. Caitlin was quite a beautiful girl, thin as a flower stem with poppy-bright hair and she was incredibly outgoing. After analyzing drink orders and telling him speculative stories of other people in the bar, she had started the conversation about flowers. Such outgoing spirit, was not what Thom had expected from this shy-looking lady and had set his mind racing with emotions for hours.
            “Maybe I’m a rose. There are so many layers to me and so many different colors. The center is small and really never ending, but the outer petals are large enough to hide the inside.”
            She nodded as if she knew the answer all along.
            “What do you think I am?”
            He shifted nervously and took a sip of coffee.
            “Probably a zinnia,” she frowned as he continued, “the core of your spirit is so easy to see and there are so many different parts to the whole. Every uniqueness is easy to spot and without them, there isn’t much.”
            “Without the other parts, I’m just a core on a stem.”
            He paused and followed her gaze to look at her hands. “Look, I’m sorry about this date, thing. I was never really good at getting to know people through small talk. It always seemed so superficial and…I don’t know what I was thinking.”
            “I just…I’ve never done a blind date, either and I didn’t really want…”
            They looked at each other and Thom stood up, extending his hand towards hers. “Let’s start over and do this differently.” He grabbed her coat and helped her into it. “Would you like to go out to dinner with me tomorrow night?”
            She smiled and left the glow of the candlelight beside him. They walked out of the smoke into the cold, clear night sky. “I’d be delighted.” She smiled again and signaled for a taxi. “Would seven o’clock do?”
            “Perfect,” he said. “At O’Malley’s Restaurant down the street from here.”
            The taxi pulled up to the curb and she opened the door. “I look forward to seeing you.” She closed the door behind her, spoke to the driver, and waved out the window at him as the car pulled away.
            Thom took a deep breath of fresh air and started walking back to his small flat on the eastside of the city. “Well, seven o’clock it is then. That’s bowling night and isn’t Jack going to be surprised.”

A Little Conversation

            She was giving him that look again and he wanted no part of the deal.
            “Jennifer,” he said pulling his hands away from hers. “Stop it. My answer is no and its not going to change.”
            “But you were so good at it,” she whined.
            “Well, I’ve obviously stopped doing that and moved on to a more honorable profession.”
            She huffed daintily out her nose to signal disdain and shifted her position so her hip was jutting sensually out. He sighed and pinched his nose bridge to signal that he knew what she was doing. She ignored him and eyed him teasingly.
            Thankfully, the hotel lobby was dark and lonely save for two figures: the receptionist and this girl. She looked like the type of traveler to stop at the ritziest hotel in the city: her red heels just barely peeking out of her skin tight red dress and long black pea coat. Her leather suitcase was sitting next to her back foot as she moved from her flirtatious position to one of annoyed dismay.
            “Look, we need this done. If I tell you any more and you refuse, I’ll kill you. If I don’t, they will, so either go with it or leave me now in the cold.”
            “Jen, I can’t do another thieving job. Just because I was the best one in the society doesn’t mean I didn’t have my morals. I hated thieving because it was wrong; even as a Robin Hood, stealing isn’t right. Society needs to fix those imbalances themselves.”
            “And so here you are, working at this ritzy hotel and you say that society needs to work at balance. You’re not getting a small salary.”
            “I help out at a soup kitchen every week and my wife is a teacher.”
            “I don’t really care about your life,” she said picking up the suitcase and turning to go.
            “That’s the most honest thing you’ve ever said.”
            She shot him a venom look and turned back towards the door. “I hope you’re sure, because I’m not coming back.”
            He smiled and continued his small amount of paper work. The desk phone rang, so he was preoccupied when she walked out the door and entered a white Porche parked in the front of the building.
            “He won’t take it,” she told the driver.
            “Perfect,” the driver replied back. “Let’s drive over to Scotland Yard and tell them to take him off their suspect list. If he won’t take that one, he won’t take a single job after that.”
            “And if he does? From another agent, I mean.”
            “Then he won’t be suspected and that’ll make the job easier for him. They won’t even think to be on his tail.”
            “If only he knew we were off the team, too. And how we just saved his life.”
            The driver laughed and slammed on the accelerator towards the edge of town.

Fix It, Please

            Once, I was tired of having the same dream over and over again. So I packed my backpack with food and stuff and went with my teddy bear, Harold to see the Dream Maker. I was not a terribly intimidating kid, especially since I was a girl. I was short with brown freckles, brown hair, and brown eyes. I had on my blue footie pajamas and pink winter gloves. I put on my coat and boots and walked out the door.
            As soon as I reached the top of the mountain where the Dream Maker lived I knew he wasn’t home. Harold started whining about how we should go home, but I just dragged him up with me and knocked on the door. Then we waited…for five days. Finally this old wrinkly man came up the mountain and upon seeing me, looked surprised.
            I’m tired of having the same dream, I said right away. Harold was tugging at my leg, but I didn’t pay attention. “Oh,” the man said taking out a large key and putting it a high lock. “I suppose I’m the one to help you.”
            I sat down on a large couch and he gave me cookies and milk and said that all I needed to do was get a new teddy bear. I looked at Harold and Harold looked at me. I don’t think I can do that, I said. The man just looked at me again. “Your teddy bear isn’t channeling my dreams very well. He just needs to be fixed. It will be quicker if you get a new one.”
            I don’t want a new one, I said. Please fix him.
            Harold whimpered a little and sank further into the cushions. The man sighed. “Alright, give me a moment.”
            Well, that moment lasted another day and just waited and ate cookies and drank milk. By the time I had a big tummy ache, the Dream Maker came back out again with Harold all fixed. Harold was all smiles to see me again and begged to be taken home. He wouldn’t even let go of my hand. I told the man that if this didn’t work I would come back and kick him. He said it would work and rushed me out the door.
            Well, that night I had the most unbelievable dreams and the next night it would be something else. I was happy, Harold was happy, Mommy was happy that I was getting sleep. And I think the Dream Maker was happy that he didn’t get kicked. The only other time I had to go back to the Dream Maker was to get Harold fixed again. But that was only when Harold was feeling sick and Mommy drove me. After that, I had the best dreams of anyone I knew. And whenever I got teased, I would just tell them they were jealous and if they were good they could get a magic teddy bear, too.

What are you waiting for?

            It was the end of her nine-to-five shift and Miriam was just about finished cleaning up for the night. The small coffee shop was empty except for her boyfriend, Lance, standing by the door and the small boy sitting at the table in the corner just out of the window. Another employee had brought a hot chocolate to him earlier, but it had remained untouched. The boy continued staring at her through his red-brown eyes even when she approached to take away his cold hot chocolate.
            “Please,” his voice echoed through her head as he grabbed her wrist and held onto it with a death grip. “Don’t go. We’ve been looking for you.”
            Miriam’s heart started to echo its beats off of his voice. “Who needs me?” she said. The coffee shop started melting off the walls of a stone dungeon.
            The boy smiled and spoke out loud: “The inmates of the 13^th asylum.”
            Miriam tried pulling her wrist from his grasp, but his grip remained steadfast and her wrist was cracking from the opposite pull. The boy continued to stare at her, the red in his eyes bleeding through the white until they were completely dark red. His pupils slit and his teeth sharpened, but he continued smiling and unblinkingly staring.
            “Who are you?” she screamed. Her mind was racing too fast to comprehend as scenes of the past came rushing back of black fae, three pixies, a dragon… She shook her head and pulled again. Her skin ripped like fabric and the seams around her wrist strained between the boy and her.
            “You’ve been sleeping too long and your prince has yet to come. He took you from your bed and brought you to his home, but you were still asleep. Your prince has yet to come.”
            Miriam pulled and detached her hand from the boy’s grasp with a loud pop. Without thinking, she ran backwards towards the wall. Away from the boy for a moment and able to think, she saw now that her dungeon was a tower and the only way to the door was upward. The boy was running after her, so with a final wiggle of her fingers to assure herself they were working, she jumped up to a jutted rock and started to climb. He was now growing small wings and hopping as he ran in order to pick up wind and start to fly. His skin was getting more charcoal gray and his limbs elongated and fingers and toes turned to claws. She pulled herself up above his head, but her climb was becoming more and more difficult as her gym shoes became slippers and her jeans turned into a gown. Her hair started to get longer and it stuck to the sweat on her face.
            The boy stopped struggling below and lay curled in the center of the floor, waiting for his wings to grow. He cleared his voice in a raspy cough that shook the walls of the tower, and when he spoke again, his voice was clear and low.
            “Princess Rosalind was a very young girl, and one day she was given the gift of death should she prick her finger. Her parents sent her to the 13^th asylum in order to keep her out of harms way, but the girl fell asleep and was never to wake up until her prince came. Buried alive she awaited that day until the knight came. He wasn’t a prince, but he woke her up and broke her curse and took her away. But she needs to stay in the asylum until she wakes up or the inmates will have nothing to do to pass their time. She was so pretty.”
            Miriam continued to climb, but her wrist was starting to tear even further revealing stuffing from her wrist. A small stream of blood trickled down her arm, but she ignored it and continued pulling herself up, kicking off her shoes deliberately in the process.
            “She was their little doll,” the dragon said as it flapped its premature wings with a little hop. “She had to continue sleeping until they needed her again.”
            Finally, Miriam reached the stone door. At the bottom of the door was a small flap used for getting food down to her, but the rest of the door was smooth metal. She pushed the small door outward and hung onto the edge of the large door. Her arms were aching and she could barely hold on, but she risked it and swung herself over so she was completely hanging perpendicular to the door. She moved her sweating hands further through the flap and tried to get a better grip by jamming her arms through the small door. She felt someone tie a rope around on of her wrists and give her a little more slack.
            “Just let go,” she heard a man say. The dragon roared as if on cue and rose towards her perch. Without thinking, she pushed herself out of the small door and held onto the rope.
            The door swung open just long enough for a glittery ball of fire to hit the dragon square in the chest plate. Stunned, it flew backwards to the other wall of the cave, just long enough for the rope Miriam was on to be pulled up and out and the door to be shut. The dragon hit the door right after it closed, the smash of metal reverberating through the halls.
            “Is this all that is hurt?” Lance asked pointing to her wrist. Miriam nodded, breathless.
            “So you really don’t remember,” he said pulling out a needle and glittering pink thread. “On your birthday you were cursed: if you ever pricked your finger you would die. Your parents took great pains to shed you from anything that could prick your finger, but the only effective answer they could find was to lock you away in a tower with no windows and a door at the ceiling.”
            “That must’ve been it,” Miriam said regaining her speech. Finding it hard to watch him sew her wrist together, she looked around her. They were the only two people in the coffee shop, but now they were both sitting on the floor. The only car in the parking lot was theirs and the light outside was diminishing. The little shop was just as she had left it and perfectly clean, including the cup of cold hot chocolate sitting on the table.
            Her boyfriend tied a knot and cut the thread with a knife. “However, the fae are mischievous folk and the dark fae didn’t really want to kill you, she just wanted you all for herself. Now that your parents were not watching you, she put you into a deep sleep and declared that, should a prince wake you, your curse would be broken. She watched over you in the tower and built a castle that she called the 13^th asylum. Apparently, other fae lived there, but no one knows what happened to them. Well, I was a knight of your father and not a prince, but your father wanted you back with the curse broken, so he asked me to save you from the dark fae. Apparently, her deal was very specific, as she was just insisting that a knight could not save you, only royal blood. But the curse is broken; I just don’t know how to stop this from happening again.” 
            “Well,” Miriam said getting up, “we’ll just have to redefine what a prince is.”
            He smiled at her and lent her his arm. Taking it gladly, she locked up the little shop and they drove home for the night.

Ambassador to the Fairy Wood

            Felicity looked out her window and sighed. It was a glum day and no matter how hard she imagined sunshine, it wasn’t going to appear. There was a knock on the door.
            “Yes,” she called and walked across the room to open the door.
            “M’lady, Lord Albert calls,” a boy’s voice came from the opposite side of the door. “He wishes your presence to mediate a special matter.”
            She sighed again, but with a little more pleasure and unlatched the lock. The short little fae boy who she knew belonged to the voice bowed when she opened the door and extended his hand upward to meet hers. She walked lightly down the stairs and past the large double doors to the garden where she was to meet visitors. Lord Albert stood leaning under the wide oak tree off the corner of the castle and stared at the sky. He bowed ever so slightly as she approached and without a word, as he usually did, took her hand and led her to Skylark, his silver horse. Skylark was a very quite horse that looked like stone, if you were far away from her, but as soon as they approached her, she snorted lightly and tossed her main to the side. Albert helped Felicity onto the back of the saddle and mounted behind her, gently flicking the reigns to signal Skylark’s quick gallop across the plains.
            They reached the forest as the invisible sun turned the sky a white gray. The fae boy was waiting for them along with three others and they helped Felicity off the horse and carried her train through the forest. She always knew the farther into the fairy realm she got because ever so gradually, the colors got more vibrant and the light got brighter and warmer. Lavender dotted the brown landscape and small patches of moss sat underneath the trees all facing inward to where she was going. Finally, Felicity stopped and bowed to Seraphia, queen of the fae.
            “Felicity,” Seraphia said, waving her hand to create a chair for her ambassador, “we are having trouble with contacting the humans. They don’t seem to want to listen to us.”
            “But of course they listen to you,” Felicity said sitting down in the chair. “We are very much interested in what the fae have to say.”
            Seraphia laughed. “No, my dear. I mean in the future. Your children do not believe in us anymore and don’t listen to our cries. My kingdom will slowly be killed unless you help us.”
            “I really don’t know what to do,” Felicity said.
            “Please, teach them. It is the only thing you can do. And with that ambassador, I give you your final task for the fae. Should you succeed, I will know because your children will be bound ambassadors to my fae. Should you fail, I will know because the children will not heed our cries and we will die alone.”
            Felicity nodded and stood up. “If that is all, my humble lady.”
            Seraphia stood up for the first time Felicity had ever seen. She stood up taller than the trees themselves and bent down to kiss Felicity on the head. “Sweet child, my time is coming to a close. But should you feel the need to contact us, remember our stories.”
            Felicity nodded and finding herself devoid of any other words, walked out of the circle.
            “Well, where are we going now, princess?” Lord Albert said with a smile.
            “Home,” Felicity said, taking his hand and pulling herself up onto Skylark’s back. “I believe my time as ambassador is finally over.”