Train Station 1 “I Close My Eyes”

“I close my eyes, and all I see is red. I open them, and there is a real world with real people looking back at me, but it doesn't feel real at all.

“Not another crazy woman trying to make up reasons as to why she is distant and out of place.”

That must be what is running through you red...head.

But I am not teasing 9or looking for a way to escape. I already have that, if I wasn't already clear. If I want it, all I need to do is simply give in, and everything will fall away like something out of a storybook. I close my eyes and I see red, and when I open them I see a train running by, cars going clickity clack clickity clack and so on and so forth.

I am waiting for my train to arrive.

I close my eyes and the cars are not moving. The sky is red and the ground is blood. The train is only a train in form, not function. The people inside are not people anymore. They have ceased to have that purpose. When you reach into the red, when you pass through the thin divide into the space between, you see a world that looks much like the one that we are accustomed to.

But that is merely a matter of surface and not a thing of substance. I can hear the cars going clickity clack, but I can see it for what it really is. It is frozen in space/place. There are forms inside that look like people, but they are not people.

They just look like people, but all that they are, and all that the train cars and the street and the sky are, is red.

And it is hidden just behind your vision, if you merely chose to listen.

I am the weakest out of all of us, so pulled away from everything that it is hardly a fitting place for me to be, sitting on the edges of it. I think...I really didn't think I was going to make it this long. The nightmares I have are so vivid, and my mind is so in tune to the rendering of the images of what I see. Spending that much time apart from reality is bound to have an affect on the mind, and yet I am still here.

Three down, and four to go.

I close my eyes, and I look at my hands. Not under any circumstances would I have imagined I would have found a shade of red that I would find fitting on me. But I close my eyes, and I look at my hands, and they are such a wordlessly beautiful shade. By of course, it isn't really my shade is it?

It's the color of veins.

I hear whispers, and I feel alone, but I (know) people are trying to check up on me.

But I am fine.

Re4ally.

I close my eyes.

And I see that I am fine.

Is this the next night, or is this still the same dream?

Scarlet...Everything is scarlet.

It doesn't scare me like it used to. It used to be that these dreams/visions, with the awful, lurking bits, would tear me apart, but they don't anymore. Because I know that where I am going and what I am going to be a part of is not something I should be scared of. The things we should fear are those things that we find most unnatural.

Being alone for me is unnatural.

Being awake feels unnatural.

But the red...it doesn't feel like that at all. If anything it feels like waking up, and that when I see the world the way you want me to, I know that the reality is that I am asleep, even if you aren't/can't.

I am going to fight on. It is what I am supposed to do. But I won't enjoy a moment of it, though I know I have to try. Being asleep is so hard, and the feeling of the world pressing down on my skin, my eyes burning because I have to keep them open even if I don't want to...all those things are the kind of anguish that seems so small and strange to others.

But you know better.

This isn't the way things are supposed to be for us, no matter what the reason may be. They have come to talk to me sometimes, trying to check in and let me know that I am not alone. They are supposed to be my parents, but when I close my eyes I see them the way they really are. The others...the ones like us. I close my eyes, and I look at them...

I look at you.

But you aren't scarlet, and neither is she.

And this world is meant for me, not you.

In my sleep I see a world of blood, the bench I sit on shifting about under my fingers. But, they aren't my fingers really. They never were. When I close my eyes I see me as I am, instead of how I am being forced to be, and I know I have to fight even though it hurts.

It hurts so so much.

Waking up will be so easy. It already is.

But I am not ready yet.

Things have to be prepared. And when we finally see what we have been missing all this time, how the world ceases to be a place that scratches and bites at our skin as we try desperately to get out...Only then will the pain stop.

The red will set me free.

And when I am whole,

I will see that I was fine all along, and that it was world that was sick.”

I went to the Artist's home to check up on her. Her parents are worried, but are at a loss as what to do to help. As I moved about her house, I could see all manner of her paintings on the walls, some clearly from her childhood. Her parents are really proud of her art, and I can see why. When she isn't painting things from her dreams, her art is clear and resonant, taking on an impressionist quality. The colors are dynamic and rich, and when she renders sunlight it feels warm and inviting.

The rain feels cool on my skin.

But then I entered her room.

I expected to see pictures of malformed monsters and the like, but instead all I saw was canvas after canvas of thick blotches of red of various hues, rendering scenes. If you looked at it the right way, you could make out images in the mess of color. Sometimes it was a face. Sometimes I couldn't make it out, no matter how long I looked.

“You need to stand in the right spot,” she said.

We went for a walk, and we ended up at the local train station. She is struggling, and while talking to her, the above statement was what she shared with me. I was carrying the recorder you sent me. It has become a sort of security object for me.

I figured you wouldn't mind.

I knew in a way I can't explain that I simply had to record it, that if I didn't there would be something that I would miss or I would forget.

It is so easy to forget things...

She...isn't wrong. This world does seem to hurt us...at least the Artist and I. The Officer doesn't seem to have a general discomfort to her life, even as a police officer, but the calling she feels is clearly something we all share. At least the three here stateside.

I know you have been resistant to talk about what dreams you had in the past. I think that all of us need that information now...and I won't push you.

You know best how you want to proceed. I will support you even if you choose not to tell me. Just know that you are safe and you are loved and if you are comfortable to share, that I won't judge you for it.

I had dreams of hags and ink, and the Artist dreams of monsters and blood.

Whatever it is that seems to be calling out, we can handle it together.

Or maybe, your dreams will prove this whole thing wrong. Maybe this is all just a natural inclination to one thing or another.

We are all very tired, and we cannot afford to let ourselves go down a train of thought if we don't have to.

I want to hold you.

I know in my heart it won't be long now.