Sometimes I see him in my waking dreams, ghostly images in black and white that flutter across my line of sight. He creeps out, as the dawn slithers over mountaintops, and slinks away just as smoothly, in gradients of flesh and blood and breath.
It is winter.
At times he comes up to me, to my face, and looks me in the eyes, and I look back. I am always captivated by his eyes—that funny shade of charcoal gray that implies a vivid, striking color. That indicates a poison, visions and memories buried beneath the surface, smothered so that they cannot smother him.
And the trees are towering skeletons.
When he is so close that I can feel his breath upon my cheeks, I try to shudder away from him. I do not want him to touch me, to burn me and mar me with what he is, what he has allowed himself to become. For that reason I fear his kind, fear him, and the images he brings.
The wind stings his cheeks but does not paint them red.
No matter how quickly I moved or how far away I went, I could not get away from him. Eventually, always, he'd brush his fingers against my arm, my cheek, my lips. Fingertips like frozen marble, fleeting on my skin, freezing and burning me at once. At those times, I know that he is made of ice, that he is my captor, embodied.
Hair like black ink pools on the plush whiteness.
One time he kissed me, on my eyelids as a child kisses a favored doll. He had swooped upon me like a hawk and I had only cowered against the walls, tears rushing down my cheeks and gasping to breathe. I begged him to release me, but he called himself my master and he kissed my eyes. Then, sneaking thievery, stole my pleas from my very throat.
Ears hear not the songs carried by the wind.
When he had my voice, he began invading my dreams, slipping into my mind and haunting me, reminding me that no escape would free me. There, too, he showed me those scenes, painted them upon my vulnerabilities so that I no longer slept. For only waking could I fight him.
This is a different kind of dream.
Now, if he should speak to me, I would listen. Touch me, and I would feel him back. Kiss me, and I would open myself to his caresses. But never dreaming… That I shall never again give to him; my weaknesses are mine. And my wakefulness is my reprieve. Only waking can I fight him. Only waking can I scream.
Poor boy, my master has you, too.