Sissy Pantelis

Delirium

 

In my dreams, the Vegetable Brigade would always attack me with knives, forks or even spoons. My sugar dress would always bleed, and I was in pain…the most unbearable pain one can ever imagine.

 

I had to wake up and scream for hours.

 

Mom took me to a doctor. He said that I had night terrors and gave me pills.

 

The medication did not help much. But the candy-people, who always saw me suffer in my dreams, did. "You don't have to always be the victim." Their sweet voices echoed in my mind like poisonous honey. " Defend yourself. You too can use a knife."

 

*

 

In the beginning, I was killing my assailants without giving them time to move, let alone defend themselves.

 

With time, I took a vicious liking to torturing them before the execution. Onions were my favorite victims. They shrieked delightfully and cried a lot while I slaughtered them with a sharp kitchen knife.

 

I enjoyed this part more than anything else, and it was only fair.

 

They had made me shed a lot of tears too when they attacked me in my sugar dress. I had not wronged them; I was only a beautiful cake doll. But they made me bleed and cry. Now, it was my turn to hurt them and I would not pity them, no matter how much they begged or wept.

 

Strange thing was that every time I woke up after butchering vegetables of the nightmarish brigade in my dreams, I saw one more of my dolls dead. Blood streamed between their legs, like a glittering red train or stained the doll’s chest, in the shape of bright red headless birds or tailless fishes that looked like wide-eyed doughnuts.

 

I was killing the dolls. How the vegetables of my dreams turned into my real dolls I could not say. But I was the murderer - about this I had no doubt.

 

*

 

One night, the dream master came to visit me in my tower. "You are too good to keep just killing onions," he said. "We will train you to be a Nightmare-killer."

 

I liked the idea and accepted his offer immediately.

 

I started my training in the poisonous candy fields. I had to ride a wild sugar-boar through a forest of twisted carnivorous candy-trees and kill as many of them as possible with a wailing sword.

 

It did not take me long to advance to a higher level. I was given a spear, and mounted an elegant deer-dragon; I had to use my weapons and put to death all sorts of weird beasts that infested dreams.

 

Eventually, I became extremely skilled at exterminating even the most resistant dream-infesting creatures. They did not look more than mere toys. Killing them was nothing to me; I took an indescribably prodigious pleasure in piercing their hearts and watching the button-shaped blood drops on their chests. Their hearts were just big buttons that bled button-shaped drops of blood.

 

Why should one be sad to kill a creature that has a button in the place of its heart?

 

As time passed, I became aware that every morning a dream guardian angel was dead just before I woke up. I saw the lovely, butterfly winged creatures bursting into minute snowflakes and vanishing into thin air.

 

At first I was sad. Angels were not soulless objects like dolls. They were breathtakingly beautiful creatures that had as mission to give nice dreams. I was revolted at the idea that I was killing them.

 

Then I gave it a second thought.

 

 

No, I am not killing angels – definitely not. The dream guardian had appointed me to kill the nightmarish beasts that infested dreams and I had received special training to be an assassin of those disgusting dream diseases.

 

The foul beasts were trying to confuse me. They were skilled tricksters and masters at creating illusions and hallucinations. My combat instructors had stressed this many times to caution me against the amazing illusionist abilities of the nightmare beasts.

 

They would not succeed in clouding my mind with their tricks; I would not allow them to do this. I will keep killing them, and prevent them from crowding dreams with their foul presence and contaminating them with toxic whimsies.  

 

But…what if I am really killing angels? Well, better to not think about this. It would only give power to my enemies and weaken me.

 

Besides, I enjoy too much killing the beasts. All I have to do is keep spilling their wicked button-shaped blood. Putting all guilt aside, I shush my doubts, and I keep riding among dream-clouds, mounted on my deer dragon, whose beak is shaped as a sharp spear made from onion skins.

 

 

 

DELIRIUM

is illustrated by 

Nicoletta Ceccoli

http://www.nicolettaceccoli.com/work.php

https://www.facebook.com/NicolettaCeccoliPainter/