Emmaculata Xenomid 2.0 was 100% organic but she was raised by faceless robots from birth which meant she lacked the ability to make friendly facial expressions when in polite societal conversation so her human adoptive parents fitted her with subdermal holographic implants to give her a virtual smile to make her more approachable.
Élise said, “Ne me quitte pas,” and I only understood the words “leave” and “me” so that was what I did, little realizing I was walking away from my one true soulmate all because of a language barrier and my preteen refusal to pay attention in French Class.
Alandria was convinced she could have taken Maxum down with a simple flick of her wrist but she was Brambleroot and there were coven traditions for formal magic duels that needed to be followed to the letter if she was to benefit and claim that loud-mouthed loser’s wand, magic incantations, and mystic artifacts.
Her features were extraordinary but she thought she was too pale. Her skin looked washed out against her strawberry hair, making her wish it was her Mama’s brilliant fiery red or her sister’s burning sunset gold but Anne’s lacked luster. It was as dull as dirty pennies.
I’m a pessimistic saver and she’s an optimistic spender, we vibe on different humor wavelengths, and she’s a throw-things-explosive-screaming arguer while I tend to shut down and walk away, so there was absitively posolutely no way in hell Demi and I were ever going to hook up but that crafty little bish caught my ass off guard by whispering “I love you” in my ear and nibbling on my neck and suddenly the fundamental laws of physics and the profound theorems of mathematics no longer made sense.
They say you don’t know what you don’t know which caused me to question, What did I know of love or its origins?
I called her love, this astonishing enchantress who slipped out of the void and through my vanity, her beauty masking the faceless monster beneath, and publicly stoning me with a slander so brutal it left me no option but to seek refuge within her oblivion.
Autumn had been a lucid dreamer long before she knew there was a term for it so she wasn’t afraid when she was being chased by a nasty piece of horrifying nightmare but, as she was about to wake herself up, she slipped on an icy patch of sueños and fell headlong into the underdream, the sleep realm in which she possessed no control.
The beast could have ripped the young girl’s throat clean away without raising a sweat, and wanted to, but it was forced into servitude because Aisling possessed a precious strand of the púca’s hair that had—intricately woven into its genetic pattern—a sliver of the creature’s soul.
Without the consent of Earth’s so-called Supreme Deity, the canine chrononauts actually had no motive grander for reviving the long-dead homo sapien species through means of planetary time reversal other than to witness first hand how their former oppressors lived.
Once upon a time, there was a poor little dream girl who, through no fault of her own, became separated from her mother and found herself lost in the real world. It was a terribly dark and lonely place and as she was the sleepy byproduct of ephemeral thoughts, ethereal ideas, and gossamer sensations, she was essentially naked. She roamed through the streets lacking the protective emotional outer layers mortals wrapped themselves with in order to survive the harshness of reality.
Added to her misfortune, Dream Girl quickly discovered the longer she remained on this all too physical plane of existence, the more solid, the more human she was becoming. She needed clothing to hide a nakedness that she was not previously aware of, as well as food and shelter if she was to survive, but unfortunately she possessed none of the currency of this world, so she plucked individual dreams from her nacreous cloud hair to barter for what she needed. They were all high quality fantasies and flights of imagination and she offered them at a fraction of their true worth but no one was interested. Another lesson she learned was that once plucked, dreams that were unattached to a dreamer, had a limited lifespan before eventually withering away from neglect.
During the day, even when the sun was at its apex, Dream Girl found reality to be cold and at night it became colder still. It was necessary to find shelter but despite the many doors she knocked on, no one took pity on her plight, so she was forced to hunker down in an alleyway to make her bedding. She plucked more dreams from her head and wove a crude blanket to help keep off the cold. As she slept, street urchins in dirty rags stole her blanket and plucked handfuls of dreams from her hair and when she woke in the early hours her mostly human body was blue from frost and her head nearly bald.
Dream Girl found that she lacked the strength to move from the alley, so she plucked one of the remaining dreams and attempted to turn it into a wish to return home, a trick she had watched her mother do on many occasions, but she was too young and lacked the knowledge and experience to perform the deed properly. Shivering, she hugged her knees to her chest, drawing herself into the tightest ball she could manage, and plucked another dream. And one after that. And another one still, trying in vain to open a doorway back to the place she belonged, back home with her family, until she had only one strand, one single dream remaining.
Dream Girl held the final dream between frozen fingers that had lost all sensation but this time there was no thought of turning it into a wish. She simply let a dream be a dream, and oh how she dreamed. It was the biggest dream she ever dreamt, which was filled with the most beautiful light in existence that washed away the gray of reality and gave off such a warmth as to permeate to her marrow. And in that magnificent light she saw the loving and concerned face of her mother.
“Mother, I am lost and I am dying,” Dream Girl said, breaking down into uncontrollable sobs.
“I am coming for you,” Dream Mother said. She too was crying but her tears were tiny glistening stars that fell upon her daughter, blanketing her in warmth. And as the little one stretched out her arms toward her mother, the dream evaporated.
***
In the early hours just before dawn, Dream Mother stepped into the gritty, gray alley, past the vermin and refuse and found her daughter, the little dream of her life, huddled in the farthest corner, frozen to death. She knelt and gingerly took the stiff corpse into her loving arms and from her own hair of swirling colorful fantasies, she plucked a special dream and began the gentle process of transmuting it into a wish.
Text and Audio ©2020 & 2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
MADD FICTIONAL 