Ok, so I had this really weird dream last night. I used to have a blog specifically for my dreams but when all that shit went down with Mara, I let it fall by the wayside and started this one. I may have actually deleted it, which is sad to think about, because it means all that writing is gone, even if they were just dreams. Anyway, what happened last night…
I was in this store with a strange woman and a girl I went to grade school with (literally, I went through K-12 with the same people, and she was one of them). The woman was jogging along this river (sort of like in Venice) and a voice inside my head told me that I could go swimming. Well Grade School Girl got the same idea and as she dove in, so did the strange woman. They started swimming side by side, but the strange woman was polluting the water with this black ink. As Grade School Girl swam and got covered in ink, she became more and more fish-like. She was like the mermaids in Harry Potter. Not the pretty kind that sit on a rock and sing to you, but the siren kind, that are basically fish people. I dove into the water after that and the same thing started to happen to me. The effects wore off as we got back out of the water. Then the woman led us to some store where we could do all the shopping we wanted. Everything fit and looked amazing on us but in the back of my mind, something wasn’t right. I asked the woman directly what was going on and she was like, “oh, you didn’t know? You’re in Hell.”
This particular version of Hell wasn’t the fire pit of doom from Supernatural or the layered fortress of Dante. It was a sunny, seaside town with pastel colors, great fashion and the bluest water you could dream of. It was basically the opposite of anyone’s version of Hell. While Grade School Girl was trying on a new outfit, I was talking with the woman. She proceeded to explain to me that I had to enter Heaven and recruit everyone there for some reason (I don’t remember if she even told me why). Grade School Girl and I dove back into that weird river and in a Pirates of the Caribbean move, were upside down for a moment before surfacing in Heaven. She was just as confused as I was but we were determined not to fail in our task.
This particular version of Heaven was pretty much what you’d expect. It was white marble buildings and columns, same town-ish vibe as Hell but the whole atmosphere was chipper and pleasant. In Hell, it sort of felt like you were getting away with something you shouldn’t be doing (like the shopping) but that didn’t stop anyone from doing it. Heaven felt like Chuck E. Cheese. You were allowed to do whatever you wanted because you deserved it! Grade School Girl and I walked into some building that was very reminiscent of 1930s architecture. We climbed up this triple-wide, spiraled, marbled staircase looking for the souls we were supposed to recruit. And we found them.
Everyone I knew was there. Mara, Thomas, everyone. And they were armed. Grade School Girl and I thought this would be the easiest way to get everyone to fall from grace. Violence. But alas, their weapons were bouncy balls and guns that fired a red flag labeled “bang!”. Why we thought it would be any different in the hallowed halls of Heaven, I’m not really sure. But after chasing the blessed souls of all these people into the basement of the marbled building, we came up with a different plan.
I was upset that Mara was there. Grade School Girl, while ditzy and a bit preoccupied with something only she knew about, had never done anything in the time that I’d known her to deserve to be in Hell. But Mara? We all know how those emotions run deep in me, and especially rear themselves in my subconscious mind. And so I unleashed on her. I yelled at her and told her all the horrible things she’d done, not only to me, but to everyone she knew. I watched the grace that had dyed her eyes a lighter shade of their natural hue, drain from her irises. Her eyes darkened with hatred and, as if waking up from a dream, she wanted to know where she was and what was going on. Aha! I’d found the key to recruiting these souls in Heaven. Help them remember the ugly hatred they’d once felt on Earth. Grade School Girl and I proceeded to shout at everyone in our paths. We told them all the evil they’d done on Earth and made them remember all the ugly feelings they’d felt as human beings. Eventually, we’d recruited enough souls that the river opened back up. Grade School Girl and I led this new army through the river, back into Hell.
Once there, everyone was slightly shaken but overall, seemed to know the point of our recruitment. I found the strange woman and asked her what our next task was. She explained that we were now to recruit the souls in Hell, by any means necessary. And that’s when I started to remember why I was there. In my human life, I’d committed murder. It was justified on Earth and I was exonerated, but my soul had remained tarnished. When Grade School Girl and I were in Hell, it was just us and the woman. But now, as we walked around with the new, Heavenly, recruits, I saw more people. Innocent people that didn’t deserve to be there. But I did. And the shame and ugliness I always seem to feel in my dreams seeped back into me. I walked around until I found the victim of my Earthly crime. She was enjoying herself, doing whatever it was that gave her the feeling of getting away with something she wasn’t supposed to be, and I knew how to recruit the souls in Hell. I had to make them feel love, the same way I’d made the Heavenly recruits feel hatred. But this task was much harder. Hating someone is easy. It takes a lot of energy, but it’s energy easily expelled. Loving someone, forgiving someone, that was going to be nearly impossible.
I remember how I murdered her in the dream, I remember how good it felt to be in Hell and I remember how pissed I was at the souls in Heaven. And I remember how good it felt to infect them with the same hatred I had. To watch the heavenly grace leave their eyes. How sick is that? I woke up, trembling and my heart is still fluttering in my chest. I can’t catch my breath. I’m trying not to let this affect me, as my dad would tell me, it was just a dream but whoa. This is harder than usual.
*The original quote for the title is “Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.”