taphophobia

I dream that I'm crawling. Crawling along wet, brittle earth. My face is blackened, my hands unclean. My clothes cling to me... stick to my body. The dirt and the damp creep on my skin. There is no light. It's as if Light doesn't exist.

Somewhere in the distance a choir is singing. Sharp voices of steel rise in unison and fuse to form an intense music. A quality one lone voice could never achieve.

If I lie still the music reaches me... reaches within me, shifting energy inside me... lifting it farther and farther away from my body... till I can finally look down at myself lying motionless in the mud.

My body looks up at me and for a brief second I am in two places at the same time. I see myself suspended above my head. I give off blue light; faded, translucent, washed out like photographs taken in the 40's. But blue nevertheless. Calming. Of water. It doesn't shimmer. It isn't iridescent. It's smoky.

My crawling is not futile. I have a destination to reach. There is a hole in the ground. A trench, into which I slide. My other self follows me where ever I go. It illuminates the hole, but only faintly. I can smell what I cant see. It's the stench of the squelching mounds of worms under my feet and other dead things; the smell of mild decay.

For the time being, I am fated to remain in this hole. I don't mind terribly since I can sense the openness above me. However, once that begins to close, little by little, slowly but surely, I begin to panic. What if I am stuck here all my life? Will I die. Decompose, just like the rest of the half living organisms down here. Turn to dust. Re-emerge as a blade of grass. Or worse. A weed of some sort.Something forgettable. Obsolete.

There is no way out, except one. My body begins to let go of it's energy. All of it. My other shadowy, blue-light self turns stronger. The smoke grows denser. The microscopic, dust-like balls of light glimmer and swell. Now that part of me is whole. My body is empty. Exhausted. I don't feel what it feels any more. I can drift.

When the sun rises and light breaks the air into fragments the smoke curls... upwards ... above the damp heavy air... into the light. It is breathed in.