~ 9 ~

        The long dark night had granted me scarce sleep.  After crawling under the covers—Walt still sprawled atop them—I’d tossed and turned until some measure of slumber fell scattered upon me.  
        Not long before sunrise, I woke from a dream where I’m on some sort of long sled or toboggan, but with no snow anywhere, callahooting down a rocky and treeless hillside.  The other folks on the sled, a dozen or so—me with no clue who they are—they’re all cutting up and having a big-eyed time, but I’m not having a lick of fun.  
        As we slide down the hill, which appears to have no bottom in sight, I feel sorely trapped, and the only way out is either to jump off the sled and take my chances tumbling onto the rocks, or just wake up.  But what puzzles me to no end is that I now have a choice.  Usually in my dreams things just happen to me, with no druthers of mine about it.  But now I have a decision to make—either jump off, or wake up.  And the shock of knowing that I could make such a choice in a dream jolts me awake.  
        Eyes wide open, staring at the mornglom on the motel-room ceiling, I knew the dream was all to do with the ride I’d been on that week.  And it left me with no doubt that I’d soon be shut of it all.  But how was it that I could make choices in dreamland?  It was as if I’d woken up smack-dab in the nightmare.  One timeless moment, I was powerless as usual—and the next, I could choose what to do and not be obliged to lay hold to everwhat’s foisted on me in the dream’s captivity.   I could opt for anything—with a free hand, my own free will behind it.
        A warm flood of deliverance washed through me—shortly followed by a cold rinse of dread.  How would I ever choose what to do in my dreams if I could hardly do so in the daylight?  The real world sat out there as-is—though after the LSD I wasn’t so sure about that anymore—while the dream world was likely all of my own making.  And if I had my say-so with on-goings while asleep, I now might be saddled with making up my nightly dream dramas myself, choosing what’s to happen next, with no rest for the weary.
        But wasn’t I beholden to do that, anyhow?  If this week had taught me anything, it was that things were up to me, much more than I’d allowed.  I had set out as a victim of the world around me, and had swapped that off to victimize others.  I’d felt cheated—so why not do unto others as they’d done unto me?  A sucker born every minute, I’d shunned becoming one myself.  Yet, hadn’t I?  
        I’d gotten myself sucked into yet another world that wasn’t mine.  I’d played the game, won some money, but lost even more of my self respect.  Somehow I’d won Walt’s love—be that what it was—but his prize turned out to be the loss of me.  Walt’s sins were his own—little I could do about them—however, there was much I could do about my own wrongdoings.  
        And the gumption to do so came from my own doing.  It wasn’t only the world’s fault that things weren’t right.  It was mine, too.  And if I could choose what to do in a dream, then why shouldn’t I be able to do the same when I’m supposedly awake?
        But what in heaven or hell was right or wrong?  What folks in Clandel say?  What carnies believe?  Lordy, save me from either.  Plainly up to my own reckoning, what’s good for me and mine was right, and what’s bad, wrong.  If I didn’t know what my own sorry self, then who would?
        So, once again, I had to ask myself, ‘Who am I?’  Whoever I was, lately I’d become more her.  That forlorn haunt who’d long lurked within me now appeared more nigh.  It was her I must be—and yet, I was her already.  Instead of listening to the babble of all the voices out there, what I needed to do was heed my own inborn whisperings.  I must trust myself.  Then, ever what came of it—good or bad, right or wrong—I’d at least be doing the best I knew how.
        My own self was no devil, no willipus-wallupus, no Saint Annabelle.  It was just little old me—that girl I’d once been born, that woman I was becoming.  Me, right there on that motel bed.  My world whirling from my past to my future.  
        My man asleep aside me and about to get his heart broke, Walt made his living seeing through to what folks want, to what they are.  Maybe he saw through to the real me, and that was who he loved.  But maybe who he loved was who he wanted me to be.  
        I allowed I’d done much the same.  When, in shining armor, he rescued me from my coaly dungeon, I went along willingly, more grateful than smitten.  But then he came up short on chivalry, as if someone else had swapped places with the feller I’d left out with.  Plainly, that sort of fancy wasn’t love—it was a worn-out cat’s-paw.  With no ken of who Walt truly might be, I’d taken the easy way over the mountain.  And now that I saw him in the dawning light, he wasn’t the sorriest critter in the creek—yet, he was no Sir Lancelot, neither.  That fairy tale was over and done with—the roses in the vase, wilted.
        But to abandon all what I’d felt of him sent a sickening dread through me.  What our bodies had set in motion was not so easy to cut loose of.  Our randy lust for each other had coupled us in a bond stuck fast with a super-glue made of raw sex.  Not yet gone, I already felt the loss of our intimate treasure of pleasure.  Though much of Walt’s doings hadn’t set right with me, somehow a marvelous magnetic magic had turned me into his woman—my body his, and his body mine.  And now as I lay there beside him, a distance already between us, my horny yearnings still longed for him like an addict for dope.  Was that what love is?
        If I asked him to go with me, would he?  Would I want him to?  His bold worldliness might fare well along the way.  He’d brought me this far—perhaps he might get me safely to whatever lies ahead in the big city.  And along the way, we might grow even closer to each other.  Or was all that just another romantic fancy?

                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2012 by S.M.Fernand