it is something a twisted mind spawns some times.
happy halloween.


Dream-quest

The last sizzling of the chemical mixture in the old tin can died slowly in the thick fog, Lisa huddled up closer to herself while turning down the volume of the small plastic box that played the only fifteen songs of music she had ever known, the small thing ran long with the batteries she traded off various travellers whenever she came across anyone with some manner of riches.
But it was not in fear of battery loss that she lowered the volume of the heartily playing old 1990’s hard-rock cover of an ancient folk-song, long since lost in the seas of chaos and madness that engulfed the world.
She adjusted her goggles carefully and lifted her head just enough not to let too much warm air out from her small shape as she looked around in the deadened cityscape.
A poor choice of place to camp for the night, but she had both good knowledge of the area and heavy enough armaments to deal with whomever might take her for just what she was.
A small girl of fourteen, almost untouched by the fallout, carefully geared in cloth, leather and metal, she was short, even for her age, but no one would ever question someone able to wield a fully automatic assault rifle of the old world.
The scent of damp earth gave the small girl some comfort, like a loving change to the usual smell of rotting corpses and chemical waste.
She had just began to doze off and sink into her sacky clothing, her rough scarf covering most of her face.
She corrected the far-too big goggles once more and narrowed her eyes to have a careful look around in the mist.
Wretched chunks of twisted metal arose against the lightly red night sky, millions of miles above, the untouched stars were laughing at the earth, the planet which had all the possibilities in the universe, now a smoking hole of boiling disease and mutation.
She took comfort in that it was probably just her own paranoia playing up on her and went back to wondering what the beautiful man’s voice in her ears meant with whiskey in the jar, as she had never seen a whiskey, and could not picture it.
Very soon, the wretched shapes began to look more and more like a wondrous dreamscape, rather than the pitiful remnants of a failed race.
Lisa drifted off on an endless dream-quest to far-off horizons and of the castles of old, as she had been told by the old ones, the ones that still had some memory or olden tales about before the fall.
Back when the earth had something curious called forests, cities and something she only pretended to understand, not to make the old ones feel uncomfortable, something they called countries.
In her calm dreams, Lisa flew over the deep valleys and unpolluted streams of glistering water on a pair of enormous raven-wings, not bony and charred like those that picked on the corpses of every other battle, but ones that were shiny and made calm flapping noises as she soared the heavens.
She saw small villages, hearty fires and throngs of people that were gathered in blissful harmony by calm work and joyful dances, the beautiful music could be heard even up to her, in the heavens.
As she flew on, an enormous spike of clearest white rose between the soft clouds, it was like something she had never seen, not even in the books and records so carefully kept to show little girls like her that the human race had something called history, and that history was both grand and oblivious.
She came closer and closer to the wall of perfect white, she flew upwards with all that her black wings could bear her, until suddenly, a small gap in the white wall opened up like the jaws of an enormous sea-beast before her.
Hesitant but curious, the little girl landed upon the thin shelf, taking a good look around, seeing the white walls curve and bend, the endless greenlands below and the terrible height she had ascended.
A chilling wind tore through her very soul and she pressed herself against the inner wall of the small dent in the unending spike of white, there in the middle of that endless dreamscape.
She could felt the whole thing rumble, as when a large machine breaks structure asunder, then suddenly, a tiny, tiny hole opened before her, in the middle of the perfect while she was holding on to.
She leaned over to the small imperfection in the endless white to look at it, and eventually, into it.
Lisa could not believe her eyes, it was like staring back into reality, she could see the pinkish red sky, the malign clouds, the wretched iron and broken hills of dead soil.
She saw the small, small tin can of chemicals she had fancied a campfire, a tiny streak of smoke were lingering in the still-warm material, she gazed beyond the small thing and had to keep herself from screaming out loud, for terror or for joy, she could not tell.
Where she sat, there was an emptiness, there were not even a dry spot where she would have shielded the broken soil from the soft rain and thick mist.
She could feel the sudden tug of something hard and heavy against her tiny body, suddenly her wings were gone, her earlier weightlessness were swept away and now she was yet again adorned with rough bags and a tremendously oversized and dirty old rifle.
The hole in the white wall slowly began to creep to a shut, it shrunk rapidly, until after only a few moments, nothing was left, but the smooth white wall.
Lisa whimpered with sheer panic, she was left in this strange place without wings, without sanity.
Another gust of terrible wind and this time, she was easily thrown off her feet, the extra weight of the bags and weaponry pulled her downwards.
She could hear herself scream, the goggles gave her some manner of vision before being blown off her face, flapping violently against her back, as they were carefully fastened in the belt she wore over her shoulder.
The fall seemed endless, she could hear her own screaming slowly die away and she even had the time to observe the surrounding unearthly beauty.
Before a thought crossed her mind, it must after all only be a dream.
She was not falling against her death in an untouched world where pain and horror seemed to have not even the slightest trace, she was merely dozed off in the middle of her pondering about the whiskey.
She would wake up soon.
But another thought followed, wake up, for what?
The world below, the world that was soon to take her young life, seemed such a merry one, would she not be better off living her last moments in bliss, like the dancing people below, rather than come back into the dirty hell that was the broken earth.
The dream-death that awaited suddenly seemed like a manner of peace, she would never more know pain, hunger or thirst.
A smile across her soft lips, a shimmer in her green eyes, the ground below looked so soft and it was like a mother’s arms opening to embrace her lovingly.
First she could feel was nothing, a pure, weightless feeling, blackness swept over her eyes like a fine silk, well-kept and not the slightest dirty.
Then she blinked, once, twice, something she had never seen was suddenly presented before her eyes.
A wall, coated in something that would appear as paper, delightfully coloured in a light shade of blue, on the paper-coated wall was another paper, this one made shiny and gloss with many colours, presenting a motif of a passionately singing man.
Lisa blinked a couple of times more and let her eyes wander over the man, the long stick that ended in some manner of device and then her gaze fell upon the letters.
Sharp lines that formed some word.
She formulated slowly for herself inside her head, for she had been taught that reading silently is a virtue.
Metallica.
Lisa could not recall if she had ever met a man called something as strange as that before, she could not take her eyes off him, wondering why he was on the wall before her, wondering what he was meant for, a protecting patron saint perhaps.
She threw another glance around and saw that she was deeply embedded in an endless flow of poofy blankets, he softness was like nothing she had ever felt.
The rest of the room had a few extraordinary things as well, more papers on the walls, as the light blue layer was not enough, all portraying men or women, along with things Lisa had never seen, some times portrayed with named, some times even with the sharp stamp of Metallica yet again.
She tried to move her arms and legs and instantly felt that the fall did indeed not kill her, she was not the least broken, nor was she soar or heavy.
Her clothing had been stripped down into a very sparse, thin costume, soft white pants and a shirt of the same qualities.
She shifted carefully and set her feet down on the floor, expecting chilling cold but surprisingly found that the plastic coating of the unbroken floor was both warm and rather soft.
She thought back on her dream-quest and wondered if this was another step on her journey through the unfamiliar lands, or if she had indeed died, only to wake anew in another shape.
She caressed her own face carefully and found herself to be quite the same as always.
Dazed in confusion, she could hear something moving outside the apparent door of the small room, she quickly looked around for something to fend herself with but could not find more than a long stick, ending in a curiously shaped piece of wood, something the olden ones had called a guitar, and explained that it was the source of the sound in most of the songs in Lisa’s small plastic box that needed batteries.
She held the guitar like she would any club and slowly advanced towards the door, not hesitating or shaking one blink of an eye, she had worse, she knew no fear.
The noise outside had subdued just about the same time as she grabbed the guitar and now she was unsure should she open the door or not, even to try if it was barred.
Eventually, after a few moments of thinking and remembering how liberating her earlier death was, she concluded that there was nothing within the understanding of man she could find dreadful.
With one hand around the long stick of the slightly heavy guitar and one hand on the warm metal handle of the door, she took one deep breath, then opened it.
Searing light engulfed her, whiter than the white spike amongst the clouds, blissful silence around her and a long, long hallway before her, carefully lit with electric lights, lazily dangling from the ceiling, seemingly connected through thick wires.
She took a step forth, the floor outside the room was both cold and hard, but she did not hesitate in advancing, she heard the door close behind her but did not look back.
Her senses were all stretched to the absolute limit, but she could not hear, smell or see much, only feel the cold of the floor, the smoothness of the guitar and the softness of the white clothing against her untainted skin.
The hallway proved shorter than what it first had appeared, at the end of it was a small staircase, crowned with a haphazardly closed hatch.
The small girl quickly undid the metal bars that were supposed to hold the hatch in place and looked up through the hole.
Around her was almost complete blackness, save a small source of light in what would seem no distance to what she had earlier traversed.
She flung the guitar up and quickly followed it, lithely climbing the hatch with the natural softness of her young body.
She advanced quicker now, pulled towards the small light as if by some force.
Eventually she reached the source of the light, a small opening what seemed to be some manner of door, standing slightly ajar.
Carefully pushing the door open, she strode in, yet again without any fear or anxiousness, the room she stood in was even smaller than in the room she had awakened.
In the room stood one single table, upon it lay many books and other things Lisa had never seen, a screen with tiny words on it cast the only light that lit the room.
On a chair before the table and blazing screen sat a man, he smelled somewhat familiar to the small girl and in his unshaven face and long, dirty hair, she found comfort.
Father.