Grilled Cheese & Cider (More Blood, Deeper Dream)

Part II - Vulgar Dawn

Cheese stirs dreams. It is the LCD of the sleeping brain, good and bad. Cheese on toast was the particulatr culprit for my visions. Lots of it washed down with crisp cider.
The nightmare I experienced in my previous rest had gone, there was no trace of it like it had never been. Who was Thea Pierrepoint? Or Leaf Gritt? I had no clue.
The surreal movie that I watched behind heavy eyelids on this second occasion was different, somehow reminding me of black and white films. I spread my legs in bed and suddenly I was in a room filled with bearded men with bulging eyes, the pupils floating like dewy tadpoles.
They were friendly enough characters who offered me one of the largest measures of brandy I had ever clamped my talons on. I drank it eagerly then looked around the room again, hoping not to see any demons, gobblins or anything not familiar in the real world.
Not a thing, although the posters and pictures on the walls were disturbing. Every one depicted a heart in different designs; broken hearts, crushed hearts, hearts gripped in steel fists, shredded hearts and most bizarre of all a heart being pulled from a Jack-in-the-box by a rabid looking dog.
The smoke in the room was sickly, they might have been smoking limbs. I wanted none of it. It was not drug smell, it had the aroma of dried fungus but the music was familiar. I'd heard it before during a drunken stupour in the Little Club tavern.
A man whose beard was on fire handed me another brandy. I refused this time, I needed fresh air so slid over to a window. Taking a lungfull of air, I noticed the view was a lush, green forest. A dragon sailed past, its wing almost decapitating me. Strange, the view from another window was under ocean waves with dolphins and submarines in bad moods.
I decided to go upstairs and look through the top window. A man whose sober face had escaped him lay half dead on the stair. Dead to the world or the world was dead to him.
Hearing lusty sounds of love making in the first bedroom I skipped to the next one. Bearded ghouls in the throes of passion are a miserable sight.
The door opened revealing a carpet covered deep with cigarette ends and broken glass. A rat spewed in a corner, as I crossed the floor of empty debauchery to reach the window.
The scene outside was of two drunkards arguing through spittle and whiskers. Nothing else, not even a street or floor as if they were rowing in mid air. The love making in the other room stopped, I thought of going to it but when the voices inside started to aruge like the two drunks I decided to keep it shut. The room was not meant to be opened so I went to the bathroom window.
The door handle was soft as butter and as I turned it the brass melted, and there was shouting downstairs.
On pushing open the door I felt as though Id rolled over in bed, not a simple turning over it was a complete roll like I had somersaulted and kicked my wife out of bed. Hearing no yelp the dream steamed on. Cheese and cider playing with my mind.
The mad bathroom yelled at me, there was no stained glass so with rot in my stomach I peered outside. Instead of hells chapter of beasts and ripped souls in front of me were the long dead; Sid Vicious playing croquet with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on a freshly cut lawn, Jimi Hendrix had married Jane Austin and was being brought slippers and Albert Einstein had taken up skateboarding, street jamming with DaVinci.
I must have laughed in my slumber for I recieved a sharp nudge from my beloved after which I awoke breifly, a glass half full of cider on the bedside table winked. With a fermenting heart I drank hoping to travel back to the house of beards and landscapes.
Passing through a dream of sobbing one armed bandits, crying smiling coins I reached my crooked destination and went running to the bathroom again to see the dead artists and passing the forbidden lovers room who had evidently made up as grunts came from behind their peeling door.
There was no butter door handle, this time it felt like cold iron. As I tried turning it another rat was sick in the narrow corridor and laughed at his emptied innards.
The vathroom looked different, I knew as I walked to the window that my dead heroes were gone forever, a heart sank in a steel locket. Gripping the razor bladed frame I closed my eyes, took a breath of musty air then opened them again.
Christmas and birthday cards lay strewn across the croquet lawn, a tear mingled with sweat and I felt pain and happiness in one swift pang.
Hearing a noise behind me I turned to see one of the beardies holding hands with one of the spewing rats, behind my eyes I felt a terrible electric shock.
I was alone, afraid in a dream I had readily flung myself into. Was it possible to commit mental suicide?
Beardy offered me a drink, I refused telling him I needed to get through the window of dead idols. What happened next, even as I write my hands tremble and my mind cries.
The rat which had seemed friends with the man grabbed his tail and scrabbled to a hole in the wall and as soon as it disappeared into its stony portals the hole closed like a stubborn mouth swalling vomit.
Alone now with the whiskery giant, skin crawling, mouth dry. Then, slowly at first, the long beard that had grown past his waistline began to shrink until he was nearly clean shaven.
It had probably taken him a decade to grow his badgers nest and now it shook me, it was my fault it was gone! Screams came from downstairs, sounding like hell again but my eyes were transfixed on the newly shorn man.
'Ten years to grow', rattled my brain, and with this thought he whimpered. This giant fist of muscle actually whimpered!
'Ten years of messy growth,' again whispered my head, taunting him now but no whimper followed. Instead the quivering lips curled to bare sewer green fangs. Laser eyes bore into me, shaking me to my roots.
I must have tossed in bed because in that instant I heard more howling from below and threw myself through the window of hero spirits.
The pile of Christmas and birthday cards cushioned my short fall but I soon doubted the wisdom of my stunt. Had I killed myself in dreamstate? Was my beloved wife sleeping nex to my cold body wearing a worried expression on my face?
Bad trip, it must have been mouldy cheese. Or could it be that maggots had poisoned the apples the cider had come from?
I picked up one of the cards piled around me and opened it. 'To Grim Chops, Happy Birthday!' Scrawled in chalk. I picked up a Christmas card depicting a black bearded Santa Claus being pulled by his intestines by rabid, frothing bulls who had ripped his bloated belly open.
I had no will to open it but there was no need, I already knew what it said by stroking the braille like cover. 'Merry Mourning Ghoul Boy, Love Grandfather!' In the real world he was long dead but the dead walk freely in dreams.

(I was awaking.)

Only when the heart stops Loving do pyjamas make way for shrouds. Had I been walking with Death? Had the bed's headboard briefly been a tombstone happily declaring R.I.P?
I looked for my legs amongst the generations of greeting cards around me and got up. The window through which I had jumped was gone, and my sight was fading.

(The cold dawn skipped on my chest.)

It felt like I had been lost in the middle of a Christmas tree with darkness on the inside whilst outside was lit by twinkling lights and merriment.

(I was awake.)