16. I'm crying, crying, crying,

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"I'M RUNNING OUT OF GOOD THINGS

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"I'M RUNNING OUT OF GOOD THINGS."

In your dream, there is a door. A heavily barricaded door, with a log locking it diagonally.

You lift the plank of wood and open the heavy room. Blood red peonies scatter the floors, like a snail trail of blood. Bright white lips of spider lilies spin and blossom to red. The walls are nightmare black and in the centre of all this redness is a figure with her arms open and her lips open into the shape of a crescent moon. Her eyes are covered with a thick, opaque veil.

"Come here, (first name)."

You take a step closer to her.

You pause to pick a flower on the side of your foot to give it to mom.

A flower. A rabbit.

A flower.

But there's something wrong in the way she stood; she stood as though she was emanating vapour from her shoulders, steam rising like dissipating perfume off her body, like a plug pulled on a float toy. You pause.

There is something very wrong with this person that looked like mom.

She is tiptoeing on the stool that she is standing on, her arms open as though a wooden figurine of Jesus Christ and his white robes.

Dreams distort a sound since it is sent over many seas of the mind—again you cannot see mom's face properly without guessing where her eyes are looking. Are they looking at you or—

Or the blood on your hands?

When did that happen?

You look down and find that the flower you have picked wasn't a flower at all, but instead a rabbit that you have shredded into pieces. Sticky, dark blood clings to your palms and streak the lines there, fingers glued together as they quickly begin to dry into a coppery brown.

"My sweet (first name)," Mom says, her neck tilted down from the noose that was hoisting her up. Then, with a smile, she kicks the stool away from her and swings side to side slightly.

You run to her to hug her body and tug her down, but she eludes you like water receding; the more you run, the farther she disappears into the darkness.

In the middle of this dream, it seems like the dream will never end; you feel dead: you are like a blacksmith, with so much dark matter staining your apron. You try to wipe the blood away but to no avail—they simply grow darker and darker against your skin. You are in a place not even God can reach, because you are trapped within yourself, a Godless place where a dead person is resting in.

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