Dream as Short Story

In a dream, a Vodou Magician gives you a stone to keep in your pocket, unknowingly linked to a stone in his hand, an enchanted stone through which dark designs are writ. Suddenly, you awaken - in a mythical "Land of High Mountains" - map calls it "Underdadd." In a high-end hotel bustling with wealthy travelers & new arrivals. Peaks surround the city - some snowy, some green - mountain chill & warm sunlight, clouds gather in the early morning valleys. It is beautiful. Through an open window, you can see a tour group in colorful cold-weather gear led to the top of a mountain just outside the hotel, a snow-capped peak called Nuk. After settling in, we go walking on the outskirts of the city. We pass a stately, sprawling university campus on top of a hill overlooking vast moors and dark forest dotted with little cottages and smoking chimneys, well-to-do collegiates strolling the adjoining promenade. There is a small town nearby with a river running through it, homes and places of business built into the hills that spiral and rise above it. On a pedestrian bridge overlooking the river, an excited visitor turns and says, "You're in for a treat - this only happens this time of the year!" You smile, curious, and after a beat, the clouds begin to part. Sunlight pours in, and the water turns a deep, blood-red hue. Apparently, this is a natural, localized phenomenon - something to do with the conjunction of light, specific atmospheric conditions, the biochemical makeup of the water, and perhaps something altogether more mysterious. The crowd gasps, then bursts with excitement. Music plays - the roots in pagan celebrations here from time immemorial. You watch on high as a woman at the edge of a growing crowd along the river breaks into dance, quickly steps into the shallows of the newly red river - fast, agile, graceful choreography but with a pinch of chaos, full of a dark & lively passion. She sashays deeper into the crimson recurrently sending cupped handfuls of ruby-lit water shimmering through the air, further intensifying her movements (much to the audience's delight). At times, she slips and sinks down into the black mud of the riverbed and is fully submerged in the deep-red water only to spring back up as if engaged in some kind of self-baptismal ritual, working each dip into her dance with ease, exuberant and fully undeterred in ecstatic revelry. The otherworldly, ancient music that accompanies her intensifies into a thumping, rhythmic beat and two more dancers move in to join her - sun shining, blood-red water splashing & sparkling. Shortly after, everyone on the bank follows suit and soon the river is thronged with muddied, wide-eyed revellers. The celebration on the hillside grows wilder too, glasses clinking, heels stomping, excited hoots & hollers raise in pitch and frequency. We remain here for a while - entranced, jollified, bearing witness - then move on, down through town on the other side of the hill, a town that now appears to be a shantytown, but teeming with perfumed visitors in diamonds & expensive clothing, dipping in & out of designer outlets, bistros, clubs, galleries, all set up inside of tin-roofed shacks, no-longer-abandoned buildings, the ruins of old churches. There was sewage flowing down the streets, mosquitoes & flies biting - strange - a midpoint between worlds, some kind of alloyed magic waning, your eyes narrowing. You turn around with an odd, sickly feeling. The man from the dream is behind you - The Magician, a Bokor, stone in hand manifesting, in control of the Vision like a leash to a dog. None of it is real - a consuming illusion unsteadily cast over an altogether different and destitute place; a Pauper with a King's mantle and the All-Power vested in it. Seeing the look of horror, he says, "Don't make me crack you" - and he vanishes. The spell is back, full force. Dog wandered too far off the trail - leash tightened - he won't make that mistake again. And so, I am content with walking, lifelong, unknowing, blind to reality, led through the alterplace - the Underdadd - a tourist's place where nothing is real, all is but a Show - for preening, selfish travellers cursed to live preening, selfish lives - a spell of wanton luxury unbroken - mindless, soulbound, cyclic, inescapable - led like a Shepherd leads lambs to the slaughter...