Technicolor Dream

Short fantasy captured in a dream

Photo by agsandrew

Last night, while the full moon touched my world with its silver radiance, I dreamt. And my dream world was awash with colors that seemed so intense, they hurt my eyes.

I stood on a hill with the orange-red sky possessed by thunderous black clouds that whisked across its surface.

A one-eyed, neon-green parrot with bright purple wings nibbled my ear and bobbed up and down on my shoulder. This bird, my companion, was Loulou. This one, I felt, with its simple heart was my only friend left. Loulou’s feathers glistened even as a black cloud passed over us.

I moved slower in this world, with everything I did seeming to take great effort on my part. There was no one or thing moving on the lush, green valley floor in front of me.

So I turned slowly to my right, my head first, with my body pulled along by the momentum.

Nothing.

I turned right again and realized that the hill on which I stood clove the valley in half as if a giant had grown weary of carrying it and had decided to place it just there for symmetry.

Completing a full circle I turned back to the direction I first faced.

Then to my left I saw a bright blue light. I decided to make my way toward it. Loulou encouraged me by raucously chattering while pulling on my ear.

“Pass the salt! Pepper makes me sneeze!”

The light seemed to be only a mile away but I moved slowly and clumsily. My feet seemed slightly magnetized to the ground on which I walked.

Halfway there, with Loulou’s chatter throbbing in my head, I stopped. I removed Loulou from my shoulder, looked into his only functioning eye and said,

“Fly now. You’ll continue to torment me if you remain. Fly!”

With that, I released my hold on him, watching him fall for a second until his wings stretched in flight. He rose high above me and looking up I beheld his neon-green body and bright purple wings silhouetted against that red-orange sky. The black clouds had vanished; by what force I did not know as there had not been any currents of air to move them along.

I moved on, looking up every now and then to see Loulou circling like a green and purple vulture overhead. The light grew brighter as I approached it. When I was a hundred feet away from it I realized it was water. As I got closer I could see tiny ripples on its surface.

Suddenly Loulou was falling as if shot. He screeched as he nose-dived toward the water’s surface. I averted my head, so as not to see him plunge into the water but after awhile when I had not heard a splash, I turned to look. He had disappeared!

I walked forward and found myself standing on the edge of another world. This world was blue sky and water that was slowly taking over the world of color.

I stood rooted to the spot as the water crept toward me, finally surrounding my ankles. It crept steadily upward as I tried to lift my legs, tried to move my knees, tried to flex my feet. But I couldn’t move and the water was relentless. It completely surrounded me and everything around me. Its companion blue sky took over the orange-red one.

I had an overwhelming desire to yawn. My eyes felt heavy, lulled by the hypnotic ripples around me. My head was the only part of me I could still move, the water having immobilized the rest of my body.

Then it was over my shoulders, pushing its way up to my chin. My mouth opened in a yawn and the water poured in, obliterating my being, taking me over completely; my terror borne out by my eyes until those too were drowned.

And the only feeling left was at the very top of my head where I felt my hair being tugged until it hurt and I awoke with my head pressed against the bed’s headboard, in my room touched by silver moonbeams and grey shadows.

Author’s Note

This fantasy was inspired by A Simple Heart (aka A Simple Soul), a short story by Gustave Flaubert that appeared in his book Three Tales. I was specifically inspired by the following line.

Her heart slowed, becoming vaguer and gentler with each beat, like a fountain running dry, like an echo fading away, and as she breathed her last, she seemed to see, hovering above her head as the heavens opened, a giant parrot.

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