Limbs
We can’t remember anything: where the train had come from, where it was headed; we can’t even remember why all of its passengers are now speckled along the tracks, haughtily tugging their children out of their coaches and into the blood orange heat that saturates the canyon top. All we know for certain is that the large man leaning up against an old telephone pole has been staring at us for too long. We stare right back as intimidatingly as we can, to the point where the man has no other facial features except for his eyes, those hateful eyes.
“Don’t antagonize him,” Mama cautions without even turning around. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Don’t want any trouble?” The man repeats. His question hangs like a clothesline in the dry desert air, echoes down the empty street behind us. I could barely even hear her, and she’s standing right next to me, we think. No one is speaking now. The man stretches his arms. Mama doesn’t move a single muscle.
He paces around the dirt slowly, deliberately, occasionally kicking up dust as he inches himself closer. He moves like one of those cowboys in an old Western movie, the kind of way you move when you want to be noticed.
“Way I see it, ever since she set foot on this train, there’s been nothin’ but trouble.”
What is he talking about? Am I the reason the train broke down? “Mama,” we glance up at her as innocently as possible, hoping her expression will give something, anything away. “Where are we going? I mean, once the train gets fixed— where are we going?” Before her voice has a chance to prod through the silence, the man’s flares up again:
“I’ll tell you where you two are going—” he shoots his finger down, damning the tip of his boot. “Straight to hell!” Passengers murmur all around us, waiting for a rebuttal from Mama that she is all too terrified to give. “Yeah, that’s right.” Furiously, he points again— this time, directly at us. “That little girl right there,” he yells, “is a bonafide witch!” Hearing that, mothers hurriedly pull their children away, shielding their faces as if the word itself is some sort of contagious curse.
“And trust me— this train breaking down? Well, that ain’t no accident.”
Oh; I guess I did have something to do with the train, we think to ourself. Am I really a witch? I mean, I don’t really look like one— or feel like one. Maybe—
“—before she gets smart and kills every last one of us!” Apparently, during our daydream, the man must’ve decided to take matters into his own hands. His hateful eyes lurch for Mama and us; the rest of him isn’t far behind. I have about seven, maybe ten seconds, we realize. Before I even understand what we’re saying, we’re saying it:
“Mama, look at me. You need to run down that road as fast as you can. Don’t worry about me —I can protect you— but you’ve gotta trust me. Run!” Leaving Mama behind, we break into a dead sprint, heading straight for a nearby cliffside. We look up at the sky, and a membrane materializes overhead, thin and sticky like milk skin over a cold bowl of soup. I need more Power, we think. I’ve got to get more Power before this man kills Mama.
Once we reach the canyon’s edge, we don’t even hesitate: we just fix our eyes on the milk skin and keep on running. Somehow, without turning back, we’re able to catch a glimpse of the whole scene splayed out behind us: flakes of passengers salting the red Earth, Mama bolting down the street as fast as she can from the man with hateful eyes; from this high up, we can even render the entire train in perfect condition— with just enough of the track built so that the people on the ground believe it was ever meant to go anywhere.
As we make our way higher and higher, our body becomes number and number, more like a stranger’s. The little girl plants her feet firmly in the sky and uses her arms to pull herself up, poking her head right through the membrane.
More Power.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
“Aw, are you sleepy, baby?” Your voice coos from a sliver of blinding light. You close the door behind you, and the room falls back into darkness. “You takin’ a little nap in here?”
“Yeah,” I croak, vaguely conscious. “I’ve gotta tell you about this crazy dream I was just having.” You lie down beside me as I begin to recount the dream to the best of my ability:
“Okay, so there was this little girl and her mom, and they were in this… like, a ghost town or something with a bunch of other people who were passengers on this broken down train—”
“Hello?”
I can barely make out your face, but I think that you might be upset.
“Wait— what did you just say; what are you talking about?”
“An alarm,” you repeated calmly. “On your phone. Can you set an alarm on your phone for the morning?” I fumble around on the floor, irritated that you had just interrupted my story and worried that now I might not remember all the cool parts. When I pick back up, I do a bad job at hiding my agitation.
“Anyways, yeah. So there was this broken down train—” As I’m speaking, I’m fiddling with my phone, trying to figure out how to put in my passcode. “— and as she was running through the sky, she just kept saying to herself that she needed more power, more power. But the power she was talking about, like, the reason why all the passengers thought she was a witch and stuff— was, like— me. Like, me asleep in bed dreaming the dream that she was in, and she’s, like, stealing my consciousness or something through this portal in the sky to get more power. Isn’t that fucking wild?”
“Honey, put the password in your phone and set an alarm for the morning, please.” Your tone is impossible. It’s like you aren’t even talking at all, and I’m just reading your script off a page.
“Oh right, yeah. Sorry, hold on.” My entire body feels so heavy that I can’t tell where any of my limbs are— which makes it all the more difficult to try and navigate my blurry phone. Somewhere beneath me or maybe behind me, I feel this tugging sensation, pulling me warmer and folding me into myself.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
The little girl’s grunts can still be heard through the membrane as she struggles to pull some intangible force from its depths, like a fisherman wrestling his catch-of-the-day. I can no longer hear her thoughts, no longer feel her weight as my own. I can only helplessly observe her now; there is nothing for me to hold onto anymore. The dream’s setting looks exactly as it did before: same empty train, same empty passengers, same bloody-orange-desert-canyon backdrop. The little girl’s mother and the man with the hateful eyes are nowhere to be found; they must be someplace my mind’s eye can't reach.
As I turn my attention back to the girl, I realize that she doesn’t notice me at all. Only her legs and torso remain, wriggling around in the odd pale sky as she tries to save her mother's life by siphoning mine.
Meanwhile, the other side of the membrane can no longer move her limbs at all; she’s completely paralyzed, falling deeper and deeper into something like sleep. As I watch these parallel scenes heave, heave, heave, it occurs to me that the man with the hateful eyes might’ve been right all along. It occurs to me that this little witch-parasite might end up killing its host, her dream, and everyone in it. It occurs to me that the giant might’ve forgotten to set her alarm.
I get this feeling that I probably should be scared of losing my real life, but just as quickly realize that I can’t remember which one of them was mine to begin with. From here, both bodies feel just as foreign. From here, I can’t seem to feel much of anything at all; I can’t seem to remember anything, do anything, be anything. But none of it seems to frighten me; I only notice these things passively, how someone might look at an ant on the sidewalk. I think that my new body might be the sky.
I think that I see like limbs feel.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
That must've been right about when you actually opened the bedroom door and woke me up.