Dead dreaming.

Wow. I last posted to this formerly beloved blog of mine back in November. Pathetic, wouldn't you say? I'm a writer who no longer writes. I have found an easier path of pretending to live life in NYC while mostly trying not to drown in the pool of cold. Every day I tend to fritter away in my endless battle against loneliness. I am having dreams that Freud would probably spill a martini (or at least a gram of his precious coke the damn hypocrite) over. The most recent one disturbed me so much that I will actually post it in my most neglected of forums.

I stand over a steel funerary casket that looks more like a cauldron. My eyes avert as the newest victim takes their place. I know this person not by name or face, but by serial number. They lie down and place their arms at their sides, a pleading look meant only for me creasing the lines of their face. The latest prisoner sent here to be "dealt with." I know that this man has committed egregious crimes against humanity. They only send the worst here. I look away, appalled at what I am doing. The room is dark and bare, typical of 17th century England. The walls are black and ashen, almost cave like. The only light that is cast on our faces is from the fire, illuminating the hard lines of men who have been forced to work in hell. The prisoner spares me one last look. The look of a man who knows he is about to face more than he is capable of enduring. Endless pain and then judgment, if that is what in store for him. I close the lid of the cauldron, which I cannot bear to think of as a coffin, and slide it into the wall. The furnace does not wait. Its tongue is one that will find its body to lick clean the sins that it has committed. Even if it may be in the most brutal way possible. The priest stands over him, reading his last rites. I do not speak. We wait for the man of the cloth to finish his empty words that will take this man into whatever terrifying realm awaits for him. Then we stand in broken silence. The priest looks up at us with heavy lids and a hardened heart. "You know what you are doing goes against God? I am only here because of my duty to the Church. You do this for a wage? I am sickened!" He is interrupted by the harrowing screams of the prisoner as the flames engulf his body as he is burned alive in the cauldron. I feel that I can get through this if I justify their horrific deaths with the things they have done. Murderers, rapists, thieves, scandalous scourge of human waste that they are. But I cannot justify this method of torture and execution. I cannot excuse the hand that I am playing in this. I look down at those hands of mine and find ash. This is not merely dirt from a job, this is human. I look up at the priest, hoping to find comfort. Even the Church, however, cannot find validation for what we do. Funny considering what they have done in the past. The fire rages as the next prisoner waits in line. Their pleas. Their screams. Their last moments of inhaling and exhaling where they desperately appeal for forgiveness. Is this humanity? A lifetime of committing atrocities wherein the last moment they realize that they are terrified eight year olds about to be scolded by the ultimate parental figure? The black cauldron comes back empty, ready for the next person to be laid into it. Ready for the next person to beg…

And then I woke up....