Closer
Copyright © 1994 Morticia Raven
The dream dripped slowly into the dreamer's psyche - creeping into his flesh like
fresh-laid maggots preparing to feast, preparing for metamorphosis.
The thing drifted closer, reaching for the dreamer with something that resembled arms,
its body shrouded in the ethereal smoke and darkness that hung in the air.
As the dreamer turned to run, partially formed, gelatinous arms crept around his waist.
Held in a death grip, the dreamer was suddenly face to un-face with the gruesome, slimy
specter. It did have a face of sorts, but no features that were quite distinguishable - except
for the deep dark pits of nothing where the eyes should have been. Looking into those
gaping pits was like staring at the sun - after a short time you don't see the sun anymore -
just blinding brightness. All the dreamer could see now was the darkness - an utterly
encompassing void.
The pulsating caricature of a body held the dreamer in a bizarre embrace, pressing itself
against him. His insides churned as a mucous-covered tongue pushed passed his lips, through
his clenched teeth, and slid to the back of his throat. His brain seemed to spin on its stalk, and
he gagged on the slime that ran down his esophagus.
Just as the dreamer was on the verge of a dead dream faint, the tongue pushed something down
his gullet, deep into his bowels. With a slurping sound, the horror withdrew, sucked back
into the void from whence it had come.
Celton Daeg opened his eyes and found himself on the floor, halfway under his bed.
As he crawled out into the middle of the room, a rumbling began deep inside him. Celton
opened his mouth, intending to scream. Instead of a scream, however, words issued forth
of their own accord - erupting from his belly already completely formed.
"You are the Maker. You must make us whole, complete. Do NOT leave us
unfinished. YOU!" The words spewed, and slime followed. Celton watched incredulously
as it dripped down the front of his pajamas. After the slime came what was left of his partially
digested supper. And after the vomit, revulsion and shock.
"Celton!"
Celton came abruptly out of his night-long stupor to find his best friend, and agent, Marshall
Warrick standing in the sunlit doorway, holding his nose.
"Man, I told you not to drink and write," Marshall said.
Celton simply stared at him.
"What's the matter? Don't you have a word for the man who got you such a hefty
advance on that weirdo imagination of yours? Hell, and I drove all the way out from Atlanta."
Celton wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, pulled himself up off the floor, and
stumbled toward the bathroom.
"Take your time," Marshall said. "I'll be out here."
Celton described his nightmare to Marshall, vividly detailing every aspect of its
morbidity.
"And that's how you came to find me lying in a puddle of puke, my friend. You think
I'm losing a grip, or what?"
"Actually, I think you've just been pushing too hard. You've been doing your
homework on this pagan stuff - I toured your notes while you were in the shower."
"I knew I shouldn't have given you a key to my house!" Celton said with mock
indignation.
"Look, Celton, you've got a great idea here with this DRUIDICA novel, and I can
get you an extension on the deadline. Why don't you just take it easy for a couple of days?
Maybe all this stuff about Druids and Celts depressed your subconscious mind and caused
the nightmare. It's pretty obvious - your name -- Celton Daeg, and all the research on your
probable ancestors -"
"Thank you, Mr. Freud!"
"It's true! The subconscious mind is a strange thing! Besides, you always were prone
to lucid dreaming."
"And thank you, Mr. Jung!"
"Look, -- you'll get this book finished a hell of a lot quicker if you don't spend all your
time lying around in a pile of puke!"
Celton looked like a scolded puppy.
"okay , Marshall. I'll try to take it easy. All right?"
"Yeah - you get some rest, dagman. I'm going to the lake house for a couple of days.
Come on up if you want. It's peace and quiet."
"Nah. Thanks, but I think I'll stick around here."
"Well, if you change your mind, you know where it is. See you later, dagman! Take
it easy."
Celton watched Marshall leave, and for a brief second, wondered if he would see his
friend again. Shaking his head to dismiss the thought, he went to his stack of papers, and began
the task of reviewing his research on ritual sacrifices performed by the Druids. This aspect of
Paganism disturbed him somewhat, even though he was well aware of the fact that the Celts
viewed sacrifice as necessity, to placate the gods and thus insure good health, weather, and
food supplies for the people. Sacrifices of gold, bronze, silver, meticulously crafted into suitable
gifts were the order of the day, and human sacrifices were rare - performed only during extreme
famine or other such circumstances. Still, it fascinated him, which disturbed him even more.
As he pored over his work, his eyes became heavy; gradually his head met the desk,
and he drifted off to sleep.
They stood in a circle around the pitiful fire. The old man opened a leather bag and put
the small flat cakes into it. His hand snaked into the fire and plucked a blackened cake from its
heart. Wisps of smoke escaped from his long, white beard, slightly obscuring his eyes as he put
the scorched cake in with the others. All those who gathered in the circle knew the prophecy.
All but the dreamer. The old man's eyes met the dreamer's with a liquidity that reminded the
dreamer of a vast ocean.
One by one, each cloaked and hooded figure in the circle came forth to draw a flat
cake from the bag; the dreamer was compelled to do likewise. He knew even before he
looked that he held the charred, blackened one in his trembling hand. The old man's liquid
gaze turned to fire; it seared the dreamer's very soul.
"You are the one, Dreamer. The fates have chosen you for the supreme sacrifice,"
the old man whispered.
Then the ethereal smoke and darkness descended, engulfing the
circle.
The uneasy transition from dreamscape to waking left Celton somewhat disoriented.
When he finally realized where he was, relief flooded his weary mind. It was short lived
relief, for there, clenched tightly in his hand was a small burnt lump of whole grain destiny.
The blackened flat cake sailed across the room as Celton lurched to his feet, knocking
over his chair and scattering his notes in the process. A long list of explicatives echoed
throughout the house, carrying disbelief and anger to every fiber of carpet, wood, gypsum,
and dust.
"Goddammit! Why couldn't you just listen to someone else for once in your life?
No! You just had to get the next chapter done! And you didn't even do that!" Celton
raged at himself. "Now what the fuck are you gonna do? Dreaming things into existence.
Why don't you dream a finished novel with a big fat advance? No - you have to dream
burnt fucking cookies!"
And so it continued as he marched out the door and stomped off down the street
toward Tooley's Corner bar & grill.
Around 2:00 am, Celton stumbled toward home, wrapped securely in an alcohol -
induced haze, whistling to the rhythm of the emptiness in his mind, the dreams and the portent
forgotten...
He managed to reach the edge of his yard, and decided to cut through the little copse
of oak, pine, and scrub, the back door being closer that way. The porch light didn't quite
penetrate the woods, and in his drunken fog, Celton promptly tripped over a large root. He
struggled momentarily, feeling around for something to hold onto. But the cool air, the soft
earth, and the song of the trees served only to intoxicate him further, so he ceased his
floundering and passed out.
The dream came gently this time, caressing its way into the dreamer's fuzzy mind like a cloud
drifting into a mountaintop fog. Celton knew he was dreaming, but somehow it seemed real,
as if this were his secret life.
The fog began to dissipate, and he found himself in the clearing again, surrounded by the
whispering, all-knowing trees. From behind an ancient, gnarled oak, the old man appeared,
his robe rustling like winter leaves, his long white hair hanging loose down his back. His beard
brushed the ground as he sank to is knees beside the dreamer.
"There is much to know, and many lifetimes in which to learn. But for death, we
could not live," the old man said.
"Who are you?" asked the dreamer.
"'Tis not I, but yourself you must seek to know. You are your past, present, and
future. I am simply a vessel."
"I don't understand. This is all just a dream."
"Where one dream ends, another begins.
So it is with life," the old man said. "Like a circle in which all things are connected to each
other. Linear perception obscures most of the web, and thus the strands are broken."
"You speak in riddles old man. What does all this have to do with me? And what
did you mean when you said I had been chosen for the supreme sacrifice?"
"What you give up now will always be here. You, dreamer, have dreamt a different
world, and you have chosen to create it with ink and paper. You must now complete the
circle with your blood and your brothers. Though you have tasted what you have made, 'tis
not yet whole. Each small circle forms the sacred circle of eternal life." The old man rose from
the dirt. "I have said enough. You must now finish what you have begun."
"The fog returned, and Celton sensed the change. As the mist began to dissipate, he
found himself surrounded by a circle of chanting people in robes of sackcloth, hoods pulled
over their faces. He recognized them from the cookie party, and as he looked around, it
became clear what the old man had meant about him being a sacrifice.
Celton, now kneeling in the middle of the circle, was naked except for a fox fur
armband, and a collar made of twisted bronze and gold strands, braided into three ropes
with looped ends. Even as he knelt there, his mind's eye watched from above, and he was
astounded that he could be both participant and observer.
He watched as the old man moved to stand behind Celton's kneeling, sacrificial
self. He felt the wind chill him as he waited patiently while the old man began the incantation
to call down the moon. His spine tingled with anticipation, even as his scrotum drew up
tightly when the old man held aloft a gleaming gold axe and whispered for blessing from
Taranis - the Thunder God. He felt the axe connect with his skull, his bladder emptied,
and his mind vacated the falling body.
He could still see from above, however, and he watched as a gleaming silver dagger
painlessly punctured his throat, the blood streaming into a silver chalice, which, when full,
the old man offered up to Esus - the Lord and Master.
Then the old man took up a silver rod that sparkled in the moonlight, and slipped it
through the loops of the torque around Celton's neck, twisting sharply as he called upon
Teutates - the God of the People. The crunching snap of bones
echoed throughout the night.
The aether mist tried to lift the dreamer away from his watching place, but he
resisted. The circle was chanting again, placing the sacrificial body in the bog on the other side
of the giant white oak. The sodden earth swallowed its gift greedily, as if its bowels had long
been empty. The mist grew insistent, and the dreamer was borne away from the tribal circle.
He drifted awhile, thinking he was a cloud. Flashes of lightning darted around him;
thunder gave ominous warning which he did not heed. After all, he was a cloud, safe, a part
of the storm itself.
The cloud dreamer began to pick up speed, carried faster and faster by the energy of
the tempest until suddenly he was in the very heart of the storm, and no longer a cloud,
but himself. There, lurking before him was the horror that had kissed him so bizarrely in that
first nightmare. He could see it more clearly this time and was all the more repulsed, for it was
growing more human-like. Its flabby body pulsed like a giant heart straining to pump life,
its mouth gaping, its eyes pleading, arms outstretched to embrace the dreamer yet again.
From behind the clouds came smaller versions of the unfinished nightmare. The storm
raged around them, it seemed they came from the fury itself. With every blaze of flashing
electricity, more of the tiny specters appeared until the entire sky was filled with premature
abominations.
And here, the mother of them all, caressing the dreamer with groping arms like
tentacles, pressing herself against his naked body. Her slimy tongue entered his mouth, and
meeting little resistance snaked its way down, deeper and deeper, filling him full of her.
Horror and pleasure battled in his nerves as her tongue slid through his intestines and found
an exit. She pried his legs apart with her powerful, slimy arms, and she teased his sphincter
from the inside with her tongue. He shivered as her tongue caressed his balls and cock,
wrapping itself around him. Almost delirious now, he gave up his seed to her, and she
lapped it up, then withdrew her tongue. Celton, thus raped, began
to sob.
She held him a long while before he realized that her body was not as gelatinous as
before. Her grip felt more like the grasp of normal arms, and there were breasts pressing
against his chest. Soon, a warm breath entered his ear - a warm, sensual breath.
"I am Druidica. The circle is complete. Perhaps you should see our children,
the fruit of our dreaming."
He opened his eyes, and through his tears he saw the transformation of the baby
monsters as they slowly flowed into more familiar shapes. They molded themselves into
animals, insects, reptiles, and birds. And as he watched, he knew that many of these
creatures, bears, owls, turtles, cats, lizards, snakes, snails, and ladybugs, would become
his brothers and sisters.
Druidica released her hold on him, and Celton then witnessed his bizarre lover's
metamorphosis into the most beautiful woman he had ever imagined.
"You are like a goddess," he whispered.
"Yes. And you....you are closer to a god," she replied slyly.
The clouds turned to earth, the lightning became trees, and the
thunder, sky.
Marshall let himself in through the front door. He had not heard from Celton in several days,
nor was there any sign of his friend in the house. There was, however, something that looked
like a burnt cookie on the floor, a little slime on the bed, and a finished manuscript on Celton's
desk.
"Druidica," Marshall whispered to himself. A smile formed on his lips, as he began
to read, and his hand crept up to his face, and he absent-mindedly stroked the soft new
beard he was growing.
Email the Author, Morticia Raven
