Fitful sleep. Must have been too much Mountain Dew. That stuff's lethal. Good thing I didn't mix it with vodka.
Dreamed of Jane. Dreamed that Jane stood naked before me, paler than I remembered, sort of an apparition. It was just past dusk, we were in some burned-out industrial-looking city. She was standing on a short ledge, so she was just a few feet taller than me. She said: "It's your fault."
I said: "What?"
She said: "I'm going to die."
I said: "You don't have to die."
She said: "You killed me."
She held a gun in her hand. As always, she was strikingly beautiful: her black hair longer than I remembered, her pretty blue eyes sort of pained and desperate. She was so pale, so, so pale, I could almost see through her. I wanted to ask if she WAS dead; I thought maybe she was a ghost, but I wasn't sure.
"I didn't kill you," I said. "I love you. Remember the silly-string fight?"
"I'm going to die," she repeated. "I can read your eyes."
I can read your eyes... That was exactly what she said. What an eerie, horrible statement.
She picked up the gun, held it to her head, and pretended to shoot. There she stood, this tragic, vulnerable figure, pale and naked with her back to grey bricks and wires. But she didn't shoot. She was already dead. She was a ghost, and she hated me.
I realize, in typing this, that sometime within this dream, I stopped dreaming in color. Everything became black and white; Jane's body a stricken, fearful white, her hair a velvety black, the walls around us grey and unforgiving. This was a movie I saw as a very young child: a black and white Sunday afternoon movie with a beautiful ghost chasing down her murderers.
"I did not kill you," I pleaded. "I never meant to hurt you. I always loved you. You're my friend. Remember the map of Texas? How hard we laughed? And the bus-ride and the Indian paintings?"
She raised the gun once more, and I covered my head with my hands. Jane was now wearing a long white gown, like the dead woman in the Sunday afternoon black and white movie. I curled myself into a little ball, waiting for her to kill me. But as her pale arm rose, she turned the gun on herself once more, and shot directly into her forehead, collapsing on the pavement.
As in Sunday afternoon black and white movies, there was no bloody gore, just a little bullet-hole between Jane's eyes. I ran to her, sat next to her, cradled her head in my lap, and caressed her hair as she lay dying. "You killed me," she said once more. "I know what you did." I tried once more to tell her she was my friend, that I never meant to hurt her, but she'd spoken her last words, and I was cradling a dead girl in my arms: as beautiful in death as in life; pale and beautiful and obliterated. There was no more desperation on her face, yet no peace, either. Just death, just non-existence, just pale stony death.
I woke up trying not to scream. Or maybe trying not to cry. Norman poked at me and asked if I was okay. I think I might have said, "I killed my friend," but I'm not sure.
The "proper" thing to do, I suppose, would be not to drink any more Mountain Dew before bed.
My mail today contained a mix-CD from Mike. Have put it on "random," and am giggling hysterically. Ohhh, Mike, Mike, Mike, you silly boy.
"Intergalactic" by the Beastie Boys. I want to laugh very, very hard. I also want to sort of get sentimental. This was the very song that was playing when Mike and I met. How I love it when people seem to remember things like that! How I love my weird little collection of friends! How I love the Beastie Boys!
"Two Princes," by the Spin Doctors. Hm. Ohhh, the associations this song has for me... It seems just faintly accusatory. Not unjustifiably, of course. Oh, Mike, the ugly messes I made for you... Ouch. Little teeny guilt pangs. But there's no accusation anymore, just a gentle nudging. How very Mike-ish. To nudge just a bit, and then put the Beastie Boys and Violent Femmes next to poke at me about the silly times of driving around Santa Fe yelling at the top of our lungs: "WHEN I'M A-WALKING, I STRUT MY STUFF..." etc, etc...
I miss Mike. It's funny, I never noticed so many of the things I liked about him. So for right now, I'm sitting here listening to this CD, recalling desert, and dorm-mates, and too much coffee, and taping porn on the bathroom walls, and endless, endless X-files...
Off to get some lunch...
~Helena*
"...everybody needs a bosom for a pillow..."