Nightforms

Lois L. K. Chan

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     Want to hear something terrible? In my dream last night, I had walked past your room and into the washroom, glimpsing your empty bed, its muddled sheets. Wondering where you were tonight, if not asleep nor awake in your bed.

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     In my dream, I thought of a story to tell you while I washed warm piss off my hands. Brother Vame, a character, falls to the surface of a moon in a Tigerstar, which is a star and also a tiger. Tucked within its cosmic ribs, cheeks squished between its nebulous lungs, Vame crashed his Tigerstar into periwinkle rock amidst cracked Corinthian pillars and withering chili flake trees.

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     The Tigerstar dispersed into cartoon sparkles. The last pieces of itself swirled into the wind. 

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     Then Mystige Datch, a character who witnessed this crash, got up, and walked away.

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     In my dream, the soap I used didn't lather, was a public bathroom type of green, and cleaned away the piss good enough.

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     After washing my hands, I stayed in the washroom. People joined me from nowhere, four of them, and I had the distinct feeling they were other Dreamers. As we huddled around the toilet, casting vermillion Q-tips into its ceramic maw, we didn't flush, we just kept casting—a softer version of pyromaniacs and matches.

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     In my dream, when I gave up on my disposal duties, I refused to look in the mirror. I wanted to blame you for the bloody Q-tips, Vame's tragic crash, how slippery that green soap was. That stupid soap smelled like you. Only your scent could mask the sound of ash crying out, fuel laughing in spouts, and your charred body sizzling in the remains of an astral pyre.

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     It took me a whole box of cotton swabs to clean you from under my fingernails: half for the blood, half for the feeling. And still—the weight of your neck was a ghost branded onto my palms. The red and blue of wailing, still threaded into my throat.

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     In my dream last night, it was 5:56 for a long time until it wasn't. Your death was a violation of time.

 

     I woke up after that, into a state of unsleep. I remembered the time I went to you in the middle of night, sat on your bed, and asked you to be with me—and you were, even though you didn't know how.