While
I've been sleeping, someone has been creeping into my room and
inserting their hands under my face, pulling the skin away from
my flesh, but leaving it intact on my skull. My guess is that
they have been entering via my eyelids. I have no proof of any of
this, other than their fingerprints showing through the skin on
my cheeks, sore eyes and my face sagging down like a twenty
(oops, thirty) year old peach. The motives for this apparent
crime are somewhat blurry. It could be a vindictive ex-lover
hell-bent on ripping my face off but without the courage of their
convictions, it could be a blind incubus getting the wrong house
and orifice, it could be a rogue element of the CIA sending a
message to dissenters, but my guess is that it's self-inflicted.
The nightmares have been coming back, the pillows have been
soaked with sweat and other, my screaming has been waking people
up - least of all, me - and I've been hearing voices telling me
to stick my hands under my face, via my eyelids. I guess that's
probably where I got the idea that it was me doing it. Sure, I've
managed to exercise my self-preservation mechanisms during the
day and not succumb, but during the night, when all is quiet and
asleep, and my subconscious is left all alone, roaming the
darkened rooms, who knows what he gets up to?
Stranger
still is the voice that talks to me, telling me to do this. I
have never heard the writer Voltaire speak, and yet it is his
voice that I hear. I'm sure of it. It can't be anyone else: he
speaks in French. Who else do I know that would speak to me in
French? Process of elimination. Easy. My French is somewhat weak
though, and the French of my subconscious is even weaker, so I
now carry around a dictionary at all times to avoid the early
amusing misunderstandings. Some of the things he has insisted I
do have been reasonable (digging up Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison
and stage a comeback tour with all profits being split four ways
between Janis, Jim, Voltaire and me), some have been less
reasonable (the face thing, and trying to maintain an erection
for 24 hours). My subconscious, as I have said, has probably
already followed orders and done the face thing, I can only
ponder with extreme paranoia as to what may be next. I daren't
sleep in case I wake up with an erection and two dead heroes, but
this only serves to weaken my rational mind, and assist my poor
deluded subconscious in his bid for power.
I
am somewhat reticent to see off Voltaire with my militant voodoo
(no-one do da voodoo like I do), in case, like Lassie, he is
desperate to warn me of some impending doom that can only be
avoided with a saggy face, Jim & Janis, and a baby's arm with
an apple in its fist, as Lenny would say when flirting with me.
How foolish would I look if just as I see of Voltaire, Joan
Cusack returns from the dead with all her minions and there isn't
a damn thing I can do about it? Yeah... that's it. Spot the
change of heart and win a prize (karma, as always). It's my duty
to keep Voltaire around, and at the very least consider
undertaking his requests, regardless of the consequences to me. I
must be less selfish. The future of life as we know it is in my
hands. I would even go so far as to speculate that a cure for war
has been hidden under my face by a dead French writer, to be
brought out when society is ready for it. Loath as I am to admit
it, my subconscious was right to stick his hands under my face.
There's no need for my nightmares to be scary; there's no need
for me to fear what I don't yet understand. I must embrace
change. I must dig up dead bodies and get hard. I must go and
prepare both mentally and physically. See you round.