The Dream Part II and the Cunning Fennec Fox

26 September 2013

2218 hrs

        February 2012.  Drifting down a terrace toward a door. A door on the right.   An apartment door.   My apartment door.  Slightly ajar, it waits for me at the end like a question mark.

         I approach the falcon perched on the railing.   A saker, she corrects me.  She tells me her name but I do not speak falcon.   I do not yet fully understand her or her reason for being here.  She is watching... guarding... guarding The Coeur.

  

        I point my finger like a gun, like I did as a boy, thumb up like a cocked hammer, and push against the door.  It creaks on its hinges, and I cringe at its squeals.  A pig being slaughtered.   Neutral beige carpet on the floor, the apartment so far empty, even of furniture.

 

        The saker on the railing says more, says, '-be careful...' says, '-beware, for love is near...'

       Not that.  Anything but that.  Not love, in all of its evil horrorshow, deceptive in its endorphin rush.  It feels so good to be torn to pieces.

       'Yes,' lies the saker in its truth.  'Love is behind the door.'

        Kristen is behind the door.  Sitting on the floor, her back against the camel-colored couch.  I see this is the only furniture here, not visible until the door is wide, like a church.

        '- See, I told you,' I think the saker said, and there were tears, from Kristen, from me...  tears from the saker, for she failed her only task...  protect The Coeur.

        Telling Kristen I loved her is how I met the saker, her chestnut feathers and her breasts the color of cream.   She had acknowledged the Cunning Fennec Fox, and allowed him to pass...  The saker, so beautiful and dangerous, especially to A Cunning Fennec Fox.

        'I found you,' I said...' nearly weeping.  Found you after so many goddamn years...  I'm so sorry I'm late.  So sorry I could not be there for you when you went through all of that, went through four decades of your life...' 

      She knew I had been looking, though.   She was there when a little girl of 12 told a little boy of 13 to come and find her.   She was there, because she was She, wasn't she?  She was the girl, The Girl From The Dream, and dammit, I found her in only 32 years.   Found her after we both were married twice, she in her third, I in my perpetual, eternal solitude.  I hadn't had the Creek dream in years, yet IT slouched into my sleeping brain like an insidiousness, escorted by the saker whom I had met mere days before, outside what I think must be an apartment I will have sometime in the future...

I guess I'll know it when I see it.  

       Yes, I had the Cottonwood Creek dream once again, one last time, mere days after I met the saker on the railing.  

       Play me a song, Cunning Fennec Fox, said Kristen, and I remembered her face...  I was by then the fox, the tiger cub long gone, the Bear dead and buried, its carcass dug up and eaten by the wolves of repair.  But the saker's dream...

      I meet the saker, meet Kristin behind the door, Kristin whom I already knew... Kristin my boss, my editor, my cheerleader... My brilliant corresponder. My endless, aching need... My Girl... My Cottonwood Creek Girl.

My Married Woman. Frau verboten... 

       Of course she was married.  Who would let a woman like that be alone?  I never would have.  She was not perfect, as the old cliche goes, but she was perfect for me.

       Then it happened.  That horrible thing.  It crept like an Angel of Death across me, and I did not have lamb's blood at my threshold to save me.  I woke up.

       Torn apart, wishing I did not know...  Wishing that it was anyone but her.  Anyone but this woman.  How cruel, the IS, to bring us together across this weird time, this horrible life, through so many twists and turns it boggles sanity, only to be stopped here, so close.  Barbed wire to separate the killing thirst from the Oasis that would be my savior.  And I was to be hers.  I knew it in my soul, knew of her unhappiness with this life.  Knew that I could hold her and she could hold me, our embrace impenetrable to evil...

       And I still had to go to work.  I still had to see her and feel my secret claw at my heart, a heart I tried to kill and thought was dead.

       I had two days to get my shit together.

... to be continued...