The Mare

Ginger

I dreamed I went to hell, just like I told Velvet. In the dream I was little again, and again, I went looking for treasure. I found it, but in this dream I lost it; I got lost in hell. I met a naked old woman carrying love wrapped in pain. But I wasn’t afraid of her. There were horrible things happening all around us, all the terrible things that can happen in the world — but most of them I didn’t even notice. The old woman took me to a terrible hallway where living human heads protruded from the walls, talking incessantly in every language, unable to understand or hear each other and crying in desperation to be heard. One of them was me and one of them was a beautiful young man. The old woman said, “He is your love.” And he was. He was Michael.

I fought to wake up. I fought to run. An iron hand was holding me; there was a spider that was also a person. And then someone came to help me. An old man and someone else I couldn’t see. The old man carried me in his arms over a field. But I said something he didn’t like and he dropped me. And I woke up, turning violently on my side and remembering: Velvet had dreamed of going to hell too. Through a door in our backyard.