Torn Fragility

I crawled through
the lies and pain
wandering aimlessly
through paths of dirt

Trees caressed my cheeks
and rivers would sing
ginger bread houses
and fairy wings

Blowing kisses
to other wanderers
only to watch them
be blown away

with paper limbs
and glass hearts
with no protection
nothing but shattered parts~Paper People by Beautiful illusions(www.poems-and-quotes.com)

“Talia,” my host breathed, paling as a slender hand came to rest upon his shoulder. The fingernails were dark red. Like blood.

And then the owner of the hand peered over his shoulder at me, her light brown eyes a sickening twist upon my own.

Her face a cruel copy of mine.

“Hello me,” she said, giggling and emerging entirely from behind him, the dress she wore an elaborate gown that fell in silvery folds to the floor. Her hair was up in a stiff bun pulling her features taut, too smooth.

I was stunned. That someone would do something like this was a smack in the face, an unimaginable insult for anyone who has ever known me knows my biggest downfall: I’m humbled, sometimes embarrassed by how I look. I’m not even plain, I’m just…there.

I have no solid presence but somehow this copy of me did; she even looked better than I had ever known myself to look. But it was like hearing a butchered version of a song or childhood memory you grew up with. There was something wrong about seeing my smile twisted like that, of my eyes having a reflection of a smaller me within them, a less definite me…a better me.

“Talia, what are you doing here?” my host hissed, about to step forward, his hand held out to take her by the arm.

Talia’s smile vanished for an instant; there was the briefest flash of outrage streaked across her face, a face I had thought I knew so well, like an angry brush stroke.

“How dare you!” she said to the small inert blackbird lying on the floor where Not-Max had stood moments previously. It gave a pathetic struggle as she bent down towards it, its tiny black eyes rolling up at her in alarm, its wings a flurried panicked beating.

It was if I could hear that small heart pounding away in place of my own and completely forgetting my fear of the woman in front of me, I shoved her out of the way and cradled the bird to my hands.

I don’t know what expression I gave her when she first moved towards me with her hand outstretched expectantly but she quickly stepped back as if I had bitten her. Her eyes were wide and quite unlike my own now; I had never looked as horrified in my life as she did now.

Without warning something heavy fell on top of me, crashing me onto the cold floor. Winded I lay there for a few seconds, under the weight of something impossibly heavy, before opening my eyes and tilting my head up. I met face to face with a monster. The one that had chased me to my room that one day before I fell unconscious on a rose bush.

I screamed and the monster rolled off of me, whisper tendrils of black smoke pouring from it and forming scythe like arms. It rolled like an ominous dark mist upon the floor making no use of legs. But this strangely airy looking creature had been heavy, my winded lungs could attest to that and rolling around, seemingly in nothing, looking from me to Talia was a pair of large solid human eyes. I screamed again and looked away, huddling myself up tightly hearing Talia’s awful laughter in the background, while my mind was in a chaotic jumble of emotions each striving for dominance. When I finally found a grain of courage I looked up but the monster was gone. There were deep scars along the floor as if something had dug ploughs through the marble like it was soft earth. I shivered looking around me at the reckless destruction. Curtains were ripped from their railings, the door leading out to the patio had been plucked from its hinges and the windows near it were shattered. How had all this happened in only a few minutes? How had I not heard anything?

I put my hand out but it connected with something hard and I quickly pulled it back to nurse my reddened knuckles. I was entrapped within a bubble of something like glass. I groaned. Not again.

Talia laughed, but I could not hear her only see her. She shouted something, not at me, but at doorway that led outside, although it was clear the monster was no longer within earshot. She stuck out her tongue childishly and her lips moved but I could only listen to the sound of my own rapid breathing.

I stared at her, my mouth slightly agape. Rivulets of black red blood ran down her arms and face but she seemed oblivious to it and when she turned towards me, a manic smile was plastered on her face, distorting her features.

She stepped towards me but knocked into the bubble and her smile vanished to be replaced by a frown of annoyance.

She placed her hands upon the glassy surface and leaned down until her face was scrunched up against it. She would’ve looked ridiculous had her eyes not been an intense kaleidoscope of shifting colours and had I not noticed the talons that now grew from her fingertips.

I pushed my back into a concave of glass behind me, trying to get as far away from her as possible.

‘Boo’, she mouthed, grinning to reveal jagged shark like teeth. She removed one hand from its position and gave me a cheery mocking wave.

My bubble began to sink through the floor and as the hollowed roof sank to meet me, I was forced to press myself up against the floor to avoid being crushed. My eyes widened in dawning realisation when I saw that its progress would not be halted.

“No!” I shouted pushing my palms and shoulder against it as it slowly began to press me. I can’t die in a dream! This is my fairy tale, mine!

Not-Max’s words sprang to mind. “This is half real.”

And with that thought in mind I pushed away everything that felt real, the horror, the pain, and the fear.

And I embraced true dreaming.