Note/: stan requests his name and address be kept with the dream - r
DATE : 31 oct 1998 07:25
DREAM : storm maiden
=( a friday, i did not get home from teaching until almost 20:00. since my first class starts at 11:00, i was tired and hungry from the straight through lectures all day. i fixed myself some dinner by 22:00 and watched some mindless television with my mother until about midnight. fell to sleep rather easily. )=
i find myself in the third floor apartment where sheila and i never lived, but she is long gone these many years and i am still here, entertaining a few friends whenever they stop by. today i am just leaving, locking the deadbolt and going down the painted wooden stairs. i am expected at the last meeting of the faculty senate.
when i get there, i take a seat at the end of the long table in the board room. it is august and although this faculty meeting is usually cancelled, the outgoing chair, jay gould, has called together a short meeting anyway. he has forgotten to pass on the gavel to the new chairman elect and wants to give this a little ceremony. there are only three other faculty present and they take seats near me. at the far end, sits jay and mister constable, my high school english teacher. mister constable is amazingly fat, dressed up now in academic robes, a somber swatch shiny black satin stretched over his extended abdomen, decorated with a few colored medals and ribbons of scholarly awards. doctor gould is similarly dressed, but the few of us gathered at the other end of the table are dressed in normal street clothes.
"i would like to thank you all for coming out to this last meeting." begins jay, peering around at the meager attendance in nearly empty room. "i wanted to congratulate the man who will succeed me and give him this token of our esteem. i hope he will always perform as well as the propellers on this instrument." he hands mister constable a gift wrapped object. tearing off the paper, it is a brass barometer, all shiny metal and glass.
mister constable seems to be quite touched with the gift. he stands and sputters a bit until he recovers his wits. "this is very touching that you would think of me this way, and i shall do everything in my power to live up to your expectations." usually the departing chair is given gifts by the incoming officer elect, but jay has reversed that custom.
there being no other business, and no quorum to conduct it, we quickly adjourn and leave the administrative building. outside in the parking lot, i am talking with a few friends before leaving. there is no hurry to be anywhere today. as i am preparing to leave, mister constable comes up to me. he has left his academic robes behind, now dressed in his white long sleeved shirt, starched but never too clean. he is still carrying the barometer, obviously pleased with it.
"stan," he calls to me. "i just had the brakes rebuilt on my car and i need someone to help me get them adjusted." i agree to go with him to his car in the next lot.
mister constable's car is a sports car, some model i do not recognize, but it is a little larger than most, having a full backseat, but still smaller than most regular cars. i am surprised that such a huge man as my english teacher would choose to drive a car smaller than normal. it is, however, worn and slightly rusted around the edges. the cloth top tattered and dull. i get in the back seat, brushing aside empty paper drink cups and take out containers form numerous fast food stops. the messy interior is in keeping with my expectations of his glandular lifestyle.
the center console between the bucket seats has been taken out, exposing the linkages of the gear shift and emergency brake. the brake is a mechanical affair with steel cables and rachet gears. i am told that he has to drive the car is reverse very fast, and that the brake mechanism gets clicked up into proper tension after a few stops. since mister constable has to drive barkwards for a long while and occasionally clicking the brake, he asks me to keep a look out the rear window and shout if he steers too close to the edge of the road.
the car starts up and he starts backing out really fast, then braking hard to stop. we quickly run out space in the parking lot and take to back country roads. these roads lead up a steep woodland hill. apparently, the extra energy needed to back up the steep hill road is better to get the brake tightened up. the car makes a zzz-zzz noise as we speed up then brake, speed up then brake, over and over again. once in a while i see mister ronstable steer over too close to the edge of the road and i have to tell him which direction to counter steer back into his lane. one time, i see the road drop off a couple hundred feet beyond the edge of the pavement which we have dangerously close.
after a while, the brakes are as tight as they need to be, so mister constable stops one last time and then can drive on in forward gears. we see andy mcerlean standing beside the woodland road and offer him a ride. he gets in the right side front seat. "hello, stan. how have you been?" he asks me.
we drive to the top of the present hill, coming out into flat treeless area. as mister ronstable parks the car to take a moment to enjoy the view of the valley, i see the barometer on the dashboard is pointing heavily into the red zone marked 'storm'.
although we are still in a patch of sunshine, down in the river valley below us i see boiling dark storm clouds rolling quickly. that is a tornado pattern, i think to myself, excited to see this again. several masses of the swirling clouds point downward in conical shape, but they do not get organized into the funnel shape. i keep looking for the twister.
down the valley goes a jittery wave of dark objects, like bubbles but with a heavy appearance. that is the storm's harbingers, i think. i do not really know what these harbingers mean, but it is committed now to funnel formation. ah, there it is. i see a white gray finger poke down from the cloud mass to the valley below. it moves is slow stately progress compared to the quick rush that harbingers took. i watch as it moves down the valley, throwing hardwood trees about like matches.
then, suddenly, the end of the tornado lifts up off the ground like a crooked finger and bounces quickly around like a severed tentacle. its violent jumping action is no longer the linear progress it makes when attached to the ground, but flails about. suddenly, what was a spectacle to be viewed far away is coming straight for us, sitting on the hill top.
before i can do more than startle at its approach, the roaring funnel comes straight down over the car. the ragged cloth top of the convertible strains to be free to go with the wind. as the edges of the funnel cloud come down to the earth surrounding the car, i see the long white legs of a woman come down past the window of the car on andy's side. her feet touch the ground just after the raging funnel blocks out all surrounding us.
this white woman, maybe four meters tall, stoops down to look into the car. there is a breathless silence, like there is no air in the center of the funnel to carry the sounds of the nearby destruction. this woman of the storm is beautiful to look on, nearly naked with only wisps of cloud material swirling about her, affording little glimpses of her cold marble white flesh. she looks firm and solid although the wispy material about her seems to rush out of her skin.
when her face approaches the side of the car, the glass near andy's head shatters and is sucked outward into the storm. strangely there is little if any sound of this in the airless silence as she leans closer. i get a good look at her face which has a clean chiseled look of greek goddesses. but her eyes have small lightning bolts crackling inside in place of pupils. her white hair is a riot of motion.
"aw roc no mar wa mor ra" she says when her mouth opens. i can not understand a word she says, apparently in some strange language. her voice, awesome to hear, strangely cuts through the enforced silence with a slight echo. "mar den di wa for mor ra" she says. i still make no sense of her speech.
she reaches into the car with both hands and takes andy by the shoulders. apparently her intention is to take him with her. for the first time, i notice that andy and mister constable have passed out with the lack of air. i myself am struggling to remain awake even though i feel the adrenalin surging in my blood. andy's seat belt is preventing him from being sucked out into storm. she reaches down to undo the buckle. i hear a tearing sound as part of the cloth top gives way and the whole car shakes violently, being lifted a little way off the ground and dropped back.
"no," i yell at her. "you can not have him." i throw myself up into the front seats, holding andy to his seat. i am careless of contact with her, she draws back as if noticing me for the first time. the storm maiden seems amused that someone is still conscious to interact with her.
"i will leave your friend for you." she says directly to me, this time choosing to use clear english that blasts too loud in my ears. "but expect me to come again, this time for you and there will be no choice for you then." strangely, this does not sound so much like a threat but something of a promise. she smiles and her unnatural beauty is so magnetic that i want to go with her right now. you can not stare into the face of a being like this and keep free will. i am helpless to do anything further. she laughs at my plight, and a row of inhuman pointed teeth show from her parted dead white lips. her eyes crackle in silent sparks. the storm maiden looks upward in a slow deliberate movement.
with a loud swoosh the tornado is sucked upward back into the clouds. she is gone just before the swirling curtain of debris is withdrawn. the car settles back the ground with a thump. it is over. sunshine comes flooding back from blue skies behind the receding storm front. this sudden return to peaceful nature almost screams upon the nerves. heart beating fast, trying to catch my breath, and all around is just sunlight and rain water quietly dripping off leaves like nothing much has happened. uncaring nature just hanging out after we humans were almost obliterated forever. there is no justice in the universe, only cause and effect.
when mister constable and andy come back awake, i do not tell them of the storm maiden. indeed, as the air returns and my consciousness contracts to normal i begin to wonder if those experiences were induced by want of oxygen in the airless center of the storm. we all know we barely survived a disaster. the car starts up and we drive off in shocked silence.
later, back in my apartment andy's wife, toby, comes to join us as they tell her of our contact with the weather. she starts to pour a glass of ice tea from the pitcher i have out on the table. "let me fix you some coffee" i tell her. i know i do not make coffee up to andy's standards but it will have to do.
=( i wake a little after 07:00, still sluggish with sleep. it takes me a while to shake off the sleepiness and sit up to write this dream in the log. mister constable was a high school english teacher, while andy and toby are friends i have met here in pensacola. the console of my camaro is torn apart like the one this dream, parking mechanics exposed after i replaced the clutch with a friend. the terrain for this dream looked like massachusetts. the details of this dream were not difficult to recall. )=
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