ophidian-naiad:

I walk through a haunted maze past creatures wrapped in gauze and painted with scars and blood, towering above me on circus stilts, nearly levitating off the ground, faces either masked and unreadable or twisted into bloody snarls or stretched into cartoon-large latex grins. Red lights glimmer, draped across deep forest hedges around me, gleaming like a nightmarish moonlight. I take the monsters in, transfixed, traveling slowly and dreamlike. I am reminded of myths of All Hallow’s Eve, when the line between life and death is meant to blur, and the supernatural may traverse among us. 

Death, here, is not about death – it’s about a doorway. I am not interested in dying, but I am interested in exploring and uncovering. It’s about magic stronger than everyday mundanity. Yet the dead maintain their boundaries. While these creatures sneer and threaten for instants, they freeze before they touch me, and return to their unbreachable floating. I imagine one might break the thrall, and finish through on that scythe at my neck, or better, lead me somewhere Else. I smile at a devil in a carnival booth. He looks past me, with a gaze I can’t follow. I gape in awe as a towering ragged spirit lurches toward me, then sinks maddeningly away. I’d like to shatter this surreal boundary between us. I’d like to shake off the dreamlike stupor of their slow gaits and either pull them toward my reality, or leap into theirs.

Their presence thrills me with a glimpse of Something More, with a faint notion that this is larger than a transient dream with a looming exit sign. When I finally step out, it’s like clinging to subconscious while steadily waking up: Unfortunately, inevitable.