Allen's Dream

Allen wakes up into a new dream: he’s a detective, looking for clues of the missing wise goats, apparently stars in some god-forsaken and bizarre-to-no-end circus with a ridiculously pretentious name – “Doppelganger”. Of course, he’s able to crack the case very fast – the goats haven’t really disappeared, they are just a dream like everyone else, after all, no goat has ever spoken a word, and of course, they are bound to reappear soon, again, as dreamlike forms to be sold to the public. There is an exception. In one cycle of this dream, Allen realizes that there is something beneath this circus and the point where it is placed (an underground lake runs right beneath it, some say to popular disbelief) at the time when the goats disappear. So he digs deeper. There is a connection between the goats and this mysterious fairy that had also disappeared from the circus some time (a month? two? can’t really tell) before the goats. There is this strange talk about some kind of dimension of negativity and how the goats are supposed to get the fairy out of it but it is all really messed up, and there is still no indication as to how any of it relates to the mess Allen has in his own world. Then, right at the top of the dream, Allen wakes up into yet another dream where everything is white, and he poses no questions, he has no fear, for he is free.

Motivation

From time to time, they figure, they need to give hope to the masses, just to get them going towards their daily jobs, and move the economy a freakin’ inch or two closer to whatever it is they predicted. But their plans are all messed up and none of them seem motivational enough, so they scrap everything and start from nil. It is a frustrating job, this endless planning, but someone has to do it, and why not if it keeps you from becoming a rock every time the hum comes. A wall of boredom is known to hit them when the rest of the world dies for a few hours, but it is nothing a few gulps of home-made liquor won’t cure. Some of them pretend to read something, “for educational purposes” they say, but it is well-known that they are simply scared. Who knows what a mouth can blurt out when it is drunk? A few wrong words here, a few wrong words there, and you are out of the joint, and in the middle of the street, becoming a rock like everyone else. They have cameras everywhere, but they don’t really need them. There is always someone that doesn’t like you around, and they always have good ears for information like this. Some people are so well-informed of the others’ intentions they don’t have to hear anything. You lie down on the silk sofa in front of the monitors and you receive this strange message that you’re called by management for good. Those who have questioned the leadership are nowhere around to pass their experience to the younger ones. The most rebellious are marked even after they are thrown out, always in a different manner. If you ever see a big piece of rock set in the middle of a street with a thick coat of pink paint smudged across, you know this guy said something terribly bad in front of the monitors. “It’s for motivational purposes,” they say, before bursting in laughter the size of Saturn.

Touristic Promo

By the Ferris Wheel

The theme park has dried up. The Ferris wheel is rotating with a rusty screech, its elephant-shaped cabins empty and at places completely missing. The concrete labyrinthine paths between the so-called attractions – a shooting range is never an attraction – are marked with a web of cracks that used to host stubborn weeds but is as void of life as everything else these days. Pogo horses rattle from time to time for no obvious reason. A crow flies above high in the sky, and somehow, it does not disintegrate. Maybe, it is too high, that rascal. A northern wind blows lightly, raising dust in the air, making it twirl like a mini tornado, until it reaches a clown-shaped stand post and drops dead. The smell of sweet candy, however, still hangs around, and that counts for something. Then it comes. A metallic pitch grows to a feverish level, two plates of concrete separate uncovering a hidden compartment beneath the ground, and a number of Cyclops soldiers jump up from it. “Let’s shake some dust,” says one of them and off they go. After awhile, an inverse pitch announces shift in the mechanism, the concrete plates close, and the compartment becomes invisible again. The crow flies down to a pogo-horse and upon first touch, it bursts into zillion molecules.

Dark Alley Memory

A memory roams the dark alleys of this city, looking for a host to inhabit but can’t find anyone. “Where have they disappeared to?” the memory asks itself but it cannot remember – there is a different memory roaming the same street that keeps that kind of information, but memories, as always, are impervious and possibly invisible to each other, selective to the death. That other memory knows that everything is gone, that there is nothing left, but bits and scraps of the chaos it once was, yet it doesn’t give up, it will never give up, and continues to do the same thing it’s been doing for ages, floating slowly through the deserted corridors of grey buildings, looking for someone to finally remember. “There are these two wise goats…” the first memory repeats to itself again, just-in-case, to preserve the message for the next host, as it gradually falls apart in the silver light.

The Second Shard

Windows stay closed as a cold winter morning blows through the summer afternoon. The empty boulevards hiss with loneliness, the old white and yellow paint separating driving lanes growing paler with each breath. Shards of glass wiggle in piles here and there, and you can see wonderful human drawings painted and broken into their fabric. One piece holds an almost lifelike green eye; it even blinks from time to time. Another piece holds a breathing mouth, a third one is a finger pointing forever in a single direction, then twitching in a spasm of pointlessness. The afternoon gets colder, and as a crow flies over to summarize the leftovers of pretty much everything, it cows a single time, then breaks apart into a new glass puzzle, falls fifty meters down towards the asphalt, and piles up with the rest of them. A tiny glass kitty tongue tries to lick the crow’s feathers but it can’t reach that far, so it gives up eventually.

The Beach (scene)

The sun is silver gray again, but the beach is full as always this time of the year. The Beta Police steps through the sunbathing rock bodies, paying no care to avoid any physical contact. Some Betas kick the tourists, but these do not object; they’re good three hours away from returning to their waking form. Suddenly, a piercing shriek rises from the other side of the pebble beach and a flock of gulls flies up in the air before they disintegrate at first contact with the silver sunlight. The Betas run towards the shriek in hazy dissonance. Lying down in the shallow water a half-man, half-rock is dying covered with moss, and nobody, not even the most senior Beta, can hide the fear that piles thick in the air.

The First Shard

Small creatures roam through the cracks of boredom inhabiting the passengers of this train wreck wagon. Plastic eyeglasses stab stares at me, idle as molested pests pretending to hide dark secretes. The rhythm of the rail underneath our feet seems harmonic at first, but slips and cracks feed us cold reality, we’re going nowhere.