41
“I'm pretty connected to my dreams. They come in and out sometimes and I don't even see em. But I know they're there.”
I turned my head enough to glance behind me. They were staring at the ground behind me, trudging.
“I hate the TSN. Or I hate what they're doing with it. I’ve never seen any of those workers outside of their jobs. Like… where do they go? Are they just robots? I thought that sort of thing was banned a long time ago”
Voice silence, crunching.
“So at work the other day,” I started, then stopped because I heard more than voice silence. They had stopped behind me, no crunches. The metallic boing of water moving back to the bottom of a can after being held up over a face rang.
​
We started walking again.
​
“The other day I had found some good shit in that alley I found you in. That's like… my alley. Every now and again I go and browse. I found a two-tone gaunch claw that would go perfect with this salamic sludge ball I've been cooking up. So far the ball part hasn't been hard because it's really just blooming gelatin in ice soaked salami water melt and forming the sphere in the meantime, which all happens pretty fast. The sludge is from a friend of mine, who tends to visit rivers and collect the algae and treats it somehow to where it's more like a mud than a foamy gumplant full of liquid. The mixture I make gets poured over the spheres I form and that helps it set.”
“So what dictates the shit you make at work?” Their voice behind me asked, muffled for a second by a strong gust of wind.
“Well it's a lot like what you do, getting requests in and also prepping stuff that's generic for people who can't afford requests.”
“Why would you need to request specific food, though? How does that even work?”
“Well… I like to think that people want to feel something, or be reminded of something, or there's something they're drawn to that sounds new and exciting, but really…”
I glanced back again, scratched a bulbous hairlick at the back of my head.
​
“I feel like… ok hear me out, but I feel like people look for things in our food. The people that can, at least. Well. Some of them do. Some of them are really just assholes. But when people save up and have a phrase that's been repeating in their heads as they wake every morning and don't know why the fuck, and they send us their phrase, they're looking to us to help. And for people that I get to help, sometimes people don't have a phrase but they have something else, and I use it. And I make it my way. And something behind their eyes happens.”
I realized I was holding the image of our kitchen lab in my head, waiting for a response.
“Some of my coworkers that I don't like do the shit exactly but there's no wiggle room there, if you just go from the thing you caught for a second in your brain to an exact food. There's no room for their wiggle room to mingle with my wiggle room and… when that's a whole other conversation but. Yeah.”
42
A sentence they said was ringing in my head. Or an image of something. What was it… something about their coworker… and then a droplet sounded in my ears. A cold humidity. Rubber? And then I zoned back into the conversation, interrupting before I even realized it.
“Why did you request ‘faraway walking/water marsh/lapping shitty mold boulders/gasp’?”
They slowed down their pace in order to be moving at my side instead in front.
“Do you remember me?” They asked, sincere eyeballs.
I felt a little embarrassed… part of that dream I had was coming back into my body, turning sensual from my head straight down my belly and through the ground.
“Do you dream ever?”
An eyeroll. “Did you not hear me earlier when I said I’m really connected to my dreams?”
I looked for my metal can of water for long enough to avoid responding.
“Yes, I dream. I dream a lot. Sometimes I see weird stuff. It's crazy to think how hard your brain holds on to things fresh just when you think you've forgotten a lot. I've been to a lot of places and it all jumbles together in perfect details all rearranged.”
I wanted to tell them about how I ate their watch in my dream, but something about it kept preventing me from bringing it up. It kept sitting in my closed mouth. I was afraid to even breathe with it in mind in case it would decide to divulge on its own on an exhale.
They turned their head to face me, both of us still at our sides and walking forward, swaying a little into each others’ lanes.
“Do you ever see… holes? Or feel them?” They asked. I felt like I was supposed to be understanding, or like they must mean some specific type of hole, because… I mean, everyone has seen holes. I was confused.
“Like… sometimes, I'm not sure what triggers it, but I see like… this huge collection of holes or burrows or something, and I feel really scared about it and I feel like it's dragging me in, and the rest I don't know how to explain because stuff gets fuzzy, but it feels… salty. I was thinking about it when I saw you out in that cave place”
A really strong scent hit me and I slowed down, a little disoriented by how sudden it was.
“I kinda knew what your recording had turned into and I couldn't find it so I requested it because I felt like I had to follow this weird coincidence to its fullest.”
They looked around noticing my change in speed, and I noticed in the moment that I couldn't see as far ahead of us as I had thought.
​
I felt the air get weird.
43
After a long time of walking, we found one. It was in chunks like perfect slices from the coldest sheet steel sank through it, dividends. A... machine? That thought triggered a feeling in me, of confusion and watching that wasn't mine. I looked down at my watch, felt it whirring although it wasn't there. And then I caught a thought from a stream of them in passing and asked myself-- when did I have a watch?
I looked over at the Willow Spearer to tell them what I had just felt. They were busy looking up at the sliced creature. Oil was dripping from its living carcass down the pyre it was propped up on, a God’s plate. A fog of mintflies formed a ring around it, just watching it. One broke the formation slightly, floating a little lower than the others, and then another a little higher for a second, and then the ring closed in on it. What was it? A creature? It wasn't made of edible. The flies seeped into it under flaps of loosening skin. The creature gained color for a second, a rosy sort of green, and it's eye coverings were fluttering. First its head began the fight to lift up, pushing against the air above it, neck unfurling, and its fur twitched. It seemed like the opposite of melting, like the reverse of something splatting onto hot concrete from a fall, a jittery reanimation rounded out. A bubbly sort of movement, like its body and lifeblood was a boiling soup, rising. The eyes opened. Its jaw unhinged, fell out.
“Go” it gargled. “Thank you.”
I felt water filling up my fishbowl. A part of my face that didn't exist anymore itched. My arms kept flopping up to my fishbowl trying to cover or reach something. The Willow Spearer put their long sleek fin arm of three fingers on my orb in my stomach area. It was like they pushed a button, sewer-drained my face into my stomach.
Then I saw them.
​
Two lil blobs, disoriented. I heard crying and moved to them with urgency but they weren't even awake. I turned over my right shoulder to call for the Willow Spearer’s help but all I saw now was sand making static; flat cloudy space with no detail but all movement in tiny fast randomized expansion.
​
One of them wore on the watch I had just seen on my wrist.
44
​
“I saw inexplicable things. I felt suffering, and largeness. And I was being led across this reflective yet displective walls showing me this, giving me this experience, pain across dimensions. A zoo of things felt. I don't remember why. I was separate from it, an esteemed visitor to this place, confused by the guide moving their limbs in a show-like manner, and me, just confused and letting it unfold around me, unsure, untold.”
The three looked at me in awe, slight tinges of confusion or worry in their few wrinkles.
“I know you have been brought to us.”
“Actually we were looking for you, on the way to your home where I thought I’d seen it before. We figured if-- or, I figured if anyone knew anything about anything, it would be you. My friend works at an ASMR firm and was asked to--”
“To record Mound and Cathedral, yes. I had asked. I needed to find something, have a certain kind of sleep or awaken a certain kind of connection to whatever those words could bring to me.”
I blinked quickly, ready for responses. I was met with silence, eyelashes. I blinked again slowly, catching myself in my own awe of this situation, of the power of this moment, and softening my presence.
“There are no cathedrals. There haven't been for centuries. Back when our forms were all the same, they existed as places of worship. I don't seek those. I seek what may overlap with ‘cathedral’ and ‘mound’. I believe this is a key part in my search to flood the gates of time within ourselves. To remember what is passed on in our cells, in our DNA, in our collective subconscious/unconscious.”
Something behind the glib’s eyes whirred. My eyes darted to theirs a bit too quickly, and I sighed and lifted my arm weight to pat my covering.
“Do cathedrals have holes?” They asked, accompanied by an earflap twitch.
I smiled.
