Order and Chaos

Cut off their heads

They've got no tails, I found myself thinking. I suppose I'll have to cut off their heads this time.

I did no such thing. But it was a stark reminder of how absurdly similar this situation was to the last dream I recorded. True, they were men and not mice, but the dumpster was distressingly familiar. Even moreso considering the fact that we didn't even have any back at the castle. And... why had I felt so sure these men were twins, when there were three of them? It was as though the word "twins" had impressed itself upon me the moment I saw them.

The natural conclusion was that I was dreaming again, still resting on the road. Unless, perhaps, the mermaid had drugged me and returned me home to my bed, or captured me for some foul purpose. Or perhaps I had never left the castle at all, and merely desired it so strongly that I had chosen to escape it in my dreams.

Or perhaps I escaped the castle into my dreams.

The unbidden thoughts barely felt like my own, even though I knew they were. It reminded me of another part of the dream, another truth about myself that I had been afraid to confront.

Perhaps this was the time to face it.

it's me!! i'm nothing!! woohoohoo

"Nothing does exist," I said simply. "I know, for I know what it is to be Nothing."

"Ridiculous," said the man on the left. "We cannot see you, but we can hear you. We can smell you... well, we could if the dumpster's odor weren't so strong. My brother even touched you. Yet you say you are not even here?"

"Nothing takes lives," I continued. I stared at the three blind men, feeling strangely sure. "Lacking in identity, it chooses to consume it, becoming whoever it kills."

I approached the middle man and shoved him to the ground.

There was no sound as he landed, for he did not. I never even touched him.

He was not there. He had never been.

"In this case, what it killed was your brotherhood. You two were born twins. You had no third brother; you had a simulation of a brother. So long as he was present, the two of you found yourselves growing further apart, even as you continued to travel together."

The two men had already stopped listening to me. They locked themselves, tears streaming from their sightless eyes.

"Brother! How long have we squandered our time together on a useless argument?"

"Too long, brother, too long. What does it matter that Nothing was real? What mattered more was the reality of our love, and for years we have denied it."

"I've never wanted to live more than I have at this moment."

"Myself as well, brother."

I still wasn't sure if I was in a dream. I wondered how I might work it out.

melons

That was when I glanced down and saw the rotten melons that had fallen from the dumpster. I found myself contemplating them.

I had never tasted rotten melon, for rather obvious reasons. If this were a dream, surely the flavor would be familiar, what I expected them to taste like. Could I learn the truth if I simply bit into one?

I picked up one of the rotting husks and contemplated whether I was truly that desperate to know if it was all real.