[23] Tournelle du Soleil (Patreon)

May 16, 2023

Day 2 at Cirque -

I open my eyes without moving any other part of my body. Taking stock. No headache. No nerve stuff. My low back feels like someone ran over it with a small truck, but that’s something I was expecting.

Slowly, so slowly, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and get myself up to a sitting position. I do the same thing. I don’t move a muscle, internally taking stock of what sensations I can feel in my body. Seems fine.

I roll my ankles. Massage my knees. Squeeze my shoulder blades together until I get a satisfying little pop! in my sternum. I shrug my shoulders up to my ears, rounding them forward, rolling them back, letting them drop. Only then do I slowly stand up.

I shuffle over to the window, pull the curtain aside. 

Sometime during the night, the gusts of wind that threatened to tear the new, bright green leaves off the big maple tree in the front yard worked out their frustration into big fat raindrops that transformed the pavement and asphalt outside to a deep, quiet gray.

I know that I have about 20 minutes until I need to be heading out to the car to make the 40-minute drive north to the Cirque IHQ from this little house in Verdun. Turning away from the window, I continue my geriatric shuffle down the dim hallway to the thing grey light of the kitchen. I snap the kettle on, wait for the water to boil for my first coffee of the day. And I start to remember what I was dreaming about.  

I had stress dreams all night. 

Violent dreams all night.

Dreams of being a witness and accomplice to murder and dismemberment of … someone. 

One of those dreams that escalates every time you turn away and then turn back again. 

Each time I’d turn away, hoping the scene would be different by the time I turned back around – but the violence would simply repeat with a new, different victim. In the dream, I had walked away, into the next room, feeling queasy. Will they murder me too, if I don’t stay and watch? I wondered. I wrestled with my sickness over the violence happening unseen in the room behind me. I was saturated in anxiety and creeping fear: what was I supposed to do? Should I stay where I was? Or should I run? Would they come after me? Would they think I’m going to rat them out? Finally, I returned to the first room. One of the attackers was now hunched over whichever new victim the dream had generated – and the victim was completely missing his face now. There was just an empty oval where it should be. I don’t remember hearing a saw, I thought. From behind, I could see the attacker holding what looked like massive bolt cutters. He was pumping the long arms of the pliers rhythmically. I knew he was removing the victim’s teeth. Dental records, I think in the dream, acid bile rising in my throat. I want to leave, I want to leave – 

And then I wake up.

The button on the kettle clicks and I pour the boiling water over my coffee grounds. 

I guess that’s how this melting pot of stress around this contract chose to manifest in my sleeping brain. I shudder. 

What was that all about … 

Guilt? 

Fear of being ‘discovered’? 

Feeling trapped?

The rich smell of the roasted coffee fills the air, pushing the images of my dreams back with a pleasantness, a presentness. 

I do my skincare routine. 

Shove an english muffin, toasted, with raspberry jam on it, into my face. 

I grab my pre-packed bag and rush out the door to my car. The clean, wet smell of the world outside starts to wash away the rest of the uneasy, grimy feeling left over by my nightmare.

It's time for Day 2 in the tower. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Your next instalment of Tournelle du Soleil arrives tomorrow at 7am EST / 1pm CEST. Until then, stay strange and wonderful - XO, ess