Mind Whispers Louder at Night

Spiderwebbed rusty hinges on a bedroom door shrieked in the dead of night. Disrupting the abstruse arachnoidal telecommunication hotlines, and disentangling the gossamery figment of the bewitching hour.

A pair of unwelcomed hands in black gloves nudged the door just a crack from behind. Suddenly, a dream-like profile of a man appeared. For a fleeting moment, in spectral silence, he stood as still as a cold stone. Like an unknown soldier seeking his tomb in the catacombs of his own mind; the one bearing the scar of an epitaphic misnomer of a real man cut in boldface lie on a tightlipped marble slab. Even so, he stood at attention in his fuliginous funerary shrouds of mourning-black that night.

What he did next was eye-popping and unreal. You can say that again -- unreal: He expelled all the necromantic air he could spare out of his lungs to reduce his rotund waistline. And now, with deflated girth, he slanted his body askew and sidestepped fittingly right through the opening that he'd just cracked ajar.

Soon thereafter, others with penguoid footsteps followed. Some entered sideways, while others straight up, in accordance with their sizes, measured in breadths -- not lengths. In their wake, the alary shadows flung high and low on ceilings and walls and began to fitfully flap and flutter in corvine clapperclawing avigation. Just like ominous black ravens -- false phoenixes of hope -- from under each shuffling shoe they birthed and flew. Only to bounce off the sleeper's walls and fall.

Everyone's head hurt a little. Everyone's!

Somnus, our sleeper, with his head buried deep in a feather pillow, felt a sudden unease in the noosphere of his woolgathering bed. His orthodoxy challenged and sangfroid in self-doubt, he raised his groggy head off the pillow a whisper to survey the subjective surroundings through the sticky eyelashes of his mind. Soon enough, he directed his gaze towards the uninvited whisperers -- it's no longer a dream -- and what he saw were nine, repeat, nine, eyeballs staring at him all at once in full force.

The one-eyed fellow raised his two eyebrows and didn't even blink once. He was visually impaired all right, but efficient enough with what God had given him -- one of, or taken.

The other four intruders were less dumbfound, understandably, for each had twice as many optical orbs as the other fellow before, but not for long. Until that is, all six -- dreamers, susurrous sleepers, and somnambulant seekers -- all jumped as one.

A~H~A! What a moment!

Just then, out of nowhere, a single eye with pineal glare, not belonging to any one single person per se -- saw it in toto! as it flashed and dazzled them all. Whilst streaking down like a shooting star, and with one epiphanic bang, it awakened all but ONE.

Which? ... Which one "is" the lone dreamer now?

This was as true as a dream could get, yet not unreal -- this was not Somnus' dream, nor the dreamer was he or she. It was not the writer's dream dreamt up in a syllabary bed in deep sleep. Neither were those the other five wanderers' imaginings ... Who's left?

Let's leave things at sixes and sevens, shall we?

It seemed like this selfsame six,VI, 6, were once again hexed as one; as though nary a sleeper was left.

As further, and farther wander I, I wonder! too who the real whisperers of the mind are ... is?

The Wayfarer

It might not have been summer just yet, but it felt like one and it was hot. A lonesome narrow path meandered slowly upon a hill in perfect lockstep with the walker's feet -- as path moved, so did two shoes and a walking stick, or so it seemed.

Destiny, the wayfarer lady, was too tired, fragile, and old. Beside, it was too hazy and quite hot to figure out this mental blur at this noontide. Perhaps a mirage was causing a stir -- is it the person on the path, or the path in the person that carries this mustard seed, which moves mountains under one's feet?  as any advanced soul would care to know, while most would let the question linger and grow.

This old lady, burdened with age of fourscore and three, through aches and pains trekked up some more, with eyes focused on the summit of the first hill all along with two more to scale in coming days. At last, Destiny made it to the top of the first hill and then she stopped! She lifted up her head and eyes in silence to reflect.

As she stood there on a slanted ledge of a new perspective, she took in the whispers of  the wind and smiled. In her mind, she straddled a chasm in time out of the fabrics of today to clothe a new pair of yesterday and tomorrow. Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, the earth she stood upon shook the foundation of her earthly senses asunder placing her in a kind of fugue state. Thereupon, the path before her eyes rearranged itself like magic and stretched deep into two distinct vanishing points of what's gone and what's yet to come.

This foot traveler, in shoes of half-torn soles and a shaking stick, lifted one foot first and then summoned her soul, murmured something and walked. She pressed forward with all her might to reach the faraway lands, which only seem far from here, but once reached or approached, most travelers turn around, straggle quickly and disappear on their desultory way -- very few stay a trifle to contemplate -- as to what, why, or who brought them here, on the first place. Nevertheless, it must be done. She knows not why she does these things, only knows that she must.

With ears pricked high to the skies while eyes cast low to her toes, gingerly, she put one foot in front of the other and the earth began to move again as if on cue, each going in opposite way from the other; just as always. She straightened out her time-worn and -fused vertebrae as best she could in deference to gravity's downhill traffic-laws. She then commenced her descent down towards the next valley where she'd been before, but long-forgotten. Feeling lighter, down the rambling path she ambled once more as if for the first time in her life. Alas! there are two more hills ahead to negotiate and their corresponding valleys to boot.

And back.

Only to do it all over again; to rise and fall forever more, till she's no more.