Albert and Death

***CONTENT WARNING***THIS IS A TRANSCRIPT OF A DREAM AND HAS NOT BEEN SANITIZED FOR CONTENT, GRAMMAR, ETC.

I went to bed early last night - before 8:30 in fact, sick to my stomach and feeling bleary from spending the day in the sun. I think I have food poisoning or a kidney infection. Everything aches. From all of those growls and pains I had an incredible sleep, just awake from hours of traveling, visiting people I don't know and nearly dying. Here's the scoop.

At some point last night, I started with a tour of a gallery. It was a private viewing, something a little unusual for me - the artist as my tour guide. Martha, in a smart pink suit, showed me her very Rothko-esque work, panels of silver and gray and red with small accents along seams between the color blocks. She was not the Martha we know now, but was a snobbish artiste-type, Soho-featured, schooled but naturally talented (and with an amazing business acumen). I wasn't walking fast enough for her - she left me behind while I finished the exhibit myself.

From there I walked to an adjoining hotel - I don't know where I was going or why, but I went through the lobby and found myself entering a suite of rooms on a low floor. There was a young man resting on one of the couches - all of the furniture was of the Baroque or Rococo style. There was another woman in the room - older, dressed as a maid or a servant. She was fussing about the young man who wasn't feeling well. I looked at her, took a wet washcloth from her and went to his side, gently easing him down on the couch. He was flush, his curly blond hair wet. I made him comfortable - removed his sneakers and socks, loosened the collar to his shirt, and wiped his brow and his neck with the cloth. He dozed quietly, appearing to feel better. I leaned over and kissed him on the forehead and stood to leave, but he opened his eyes and held my hand. He asked me to stay, saying that he would feel better with an angel by his side. I smiled - I am no angel, I replied - but I would stay with him. I knew him as Albert. His family came home later and shooed me out - being neither family nor a servant paid to do the job, they could not understand my attention to him. I left.

It was then that I was with my brother in the lobby of our old restaurant - waiting for the right train to come by. The counter was gone - the restaurant was no longer a restaurant but was a sort of refugee station. This must be in response to all that I have seen on the news in the last few days. Trains came by - their subjects shouted by the conductors when the doors opened. 'History!' shouted one. 'Poetry,' another. One only had a few moments to gather belongings before hurling into the train - and I did not want to miss my train. I knew there was more than one train I would have to take, but I was not packed and I was not ready to leave my brother behind. When 'Literature!' came roaring through, I told him that I would take a later train, that I wanted more time to pack. He said he would come with me, but he was not ready to leave either. We stood on the platform watching the train leave.

When I turned around, it was nighttime and I was staring into the lobby of a clinic on the corner of two streets. The building looked like a yellow bungalow-type house, wood paneling on the side with a wide glass door in the front. To my left stood a friend - I don't know who she was, but I had the sense that she was a friend. We were talking about entering the building. Conspiring, actually. We walked into the building - and from this point on, I am in flashback in the dream. I recall her telling me that unless we believed in bad happening, nothing bad would happen. She wasn't sure she believed it. I had just walked away from a fire that should have killed me - and she insisted that it was because I believed it not happening. I don't recall what I believed. She took a blowtorch to her hands - and sure enough, she did not burn. But there was doubt in her eyes. She looked directly into the flame, yet nothing happened. When she switched off the blowtorch, we saw the damage. She immediately started dying, her arms and hands burned black, her throat crunchy, her jaw taut. In the glow of the flame she did not believe she would die, but she did not have faith. I called an ambulance as I cradled my friend in my arms. She spent her last breath whispering that it wasn't possible...and when I looked closely I saw her eyes were aglow the same color as the flame from the blowtorch. I dropped her immediately, laid back and closed my eyes. She stood up, demanded I look at her - screaming that it couldn't be possible that she was dead when I was not. She shook me, took my head in her hands and tried to get me to see. I believed completely that she was dead - this was not possible, I was not hearing her voice and I was not feeling her next to me. After a few minutes, she stopped moving - accepting death herself, I imagine.

A police car pulled up. I stood and walked to it, expecting an ambulance but happy to have anyone there. Their flashlights came out - they were pointing them to the sizzling mass inside. They explained they had been called on an alarm, and that security cameras had shown four older men sitting in the lobby of that small clinic, passing cigars and making deals. Immediately, I stood amongst them, looking from face to grizzled face, wondering what their disturbance had to do with the death of my friend. When I looked to where my friend had been laying, I was transported back to my spot on the curb - looking in at her as her eyes were aglow again, a gun in her hands. She fired, the police couldn't see where the shots were coming from. She was shooting at me. bullets whizzed past in slow motion as if shot into a barrel of water - blue flame around the tip of the bullets. I closed my eyes, dropped to the ground and rolled - trying to avoid the bullets but also trying to recall that feeling of faith in which I knew she was dead - that was the only way she would stop firing and that I would survive the hail. The firing stopped. I stood and was alone on the street under a streetlamp, looking into an empty yellow house with a big glass entry window.