For Girls

Like a large setup and dressing room at a fashion show the carpeted room was filled with bustling people, the make up artists, clothespeople, hair stylists and those who had come to let them work on them. A short grey haired man I should have known from TV greeted me very politely and took my jean jacket to a room with racks of jackets and other apparel of visitors. He gestured to the chair in front of a large mirror, his work space apparently, for me to sit down, and asked me what I wanted for my hair. I had neither the money not the wish for a new haircut, so I refused and went to the racks to get my jacket back to leave. I picked it out among other jean jackets and found something that didn't belong to me but I wanted to take as well. So I waited a little and looked around for witnesses to take it nonchalantly when no one was looking. I was eager to leave, but still took my sweet time with this.

I don't remember if I did take it, though. Because I ended up in a room not far from there (without actually moving there), part of that place apparently, which was exactly the room I live in in reality right now. A strange woman was in bed with me. I had nothing to do with her, she was just there, sharing it, awarding me only the simple, quiet kind of attention you would pay a fellow train seat occupant, without any talking. I was going to leave but it was not quite the right time yet.

So in that idle moment I peeked into the nightstand and saw a small but colourful collection of dildos and vibrators there. I recognised one of them as my own, and as moans and gasps of an unmistakable nature faded in and wafted in through the open door, the realisation dawned on me that I had brought the toy here to use in ... some action. I suppose I was in a brothel or swinger club of some kind. I took the vibrator back, knocking it against the nightstand door and the door against the bed, and apologised to the occupant, the stranger who kept looking at me with only very mild interest. ... And I suppose I packed it up somehow and was ready to leave then, because I stepped halfway through the door of my actual room into the corridor of my actual house, looking straight into my father's room, where a girl was positively nailing another with a strap-on on my father's desk. The blond woman lying on the desk moaned quite deliciously. I gaped for a few seconds until the strap-on girl noticed me and broke her rhythm. I tried to mitigate my staring intrusion by giving her an awkward thumbsup accompanied by a rather confused embarassed smile, and she smiled back a bit proudly and I think she was panting, and then she turned her attention back to her ... uhm. Work.

I turned away, trying to give them their space, and found myself at a hotel strip on a beach. This part  is patchy and boring, involving buffet food, a cute trannie woman and derelict beaches, but it goes over into a dark chase.

Some kind of sci-fi agent woman was looking for someone, she told us. My vague friend and I became curious at her waterspeeder vehicle and got a pair of our own to plow the seas. We had only to start them and zoom out to open sea when she began following us. We rode through black glittering, roiling water with no land in sight, into gloom that gradually but quickly turned into night, and managed to evade her with speed.

We reached a white-lit, open platform out on the ocean, that had two walls like a shop showroom and two tiny helicopters on display. It sat fast just above the water's surface, so it must have been built on poles or stilts. We might have remained camped out and hidden there, but I itched to try out one of the mini helicopters. The black one, to be exact, that looked like it might have weapons on board. Indeed our enemies did come closer and into view and my friend and I each squeezed into one of those toys. You really had to fold yourself into it and zip it up around yourself like a shaped sleeping bag.

I never learned if I fit, though, because then I stood at a terminal door to Arabia.

Barefooted with only my wide cargo bermudas and a long t-shirt, I stood before a stunningly beautiful girl with long black hair, and I smiled at her hopefully. She smiled back and lowered her head a little as if she were flattered, then gestured for me to step through into her home country. I was grateful that she allowed me to enter (after all, that's what I was standing there for, right), and understood somehow that she also let me know I should wander around the city for a while and then find her. We would be each other's destination.

So I stepped through the door and found myself in a short brickwork tunnel. Well, this wasn't very Arabian. It looked rather German. I took it as it was. So I began to wander. Exiting the tunnel at the end I had faced, I looked around and saw a city around me, a very German-style one, not at all Arabian... the right side had some higher buildings and one with a big clock on it, so I took it as more central and more likely to lead me to the girl, so I wandered in that direction. I padded around on my bare feet very dreamishly, deliberately naive, and it felt really peaceful.

However, this was supposed to be Arabia, so maybe it was smart to hide somewhere? Given my attire, looks, nationality, and everything?

I passed a kind of open stall which was very tall, like an insanely huge shelf, where there were old records (also big) and old Donald Duck comics. I liked it. And it had a convenient hollow space behind the first row of records on the very top. I jumped up there and curled up in it to hide and sleep a little.

The rest about people coming to watch me, purple crisps and pancakily flattened children's corpses is too muddled to recount, which is a shame. It was quite fascinating.

Oma

My Oma was telling me something and I listened with a specific but undirected sense of seriousness. She was right, of course, but I knew something impossibly important, but she knew it, too, and she was right in everything she told me as she set the round white radishes into the flowerbed one by one. They had long, entangled, bushy plantwork on top of them. The red brick steps she sort of stood-squatted on and that I sat on were trembling. All the stone- and brickwork here outside of the house was trembling. The house itself was not. I stared and squinted hard at one of its outer wall corners, the one behind my Oma, which was in my view all the time. It stood perfectly still. It had really been built by my family? Half my mind was on the unnamed serious matter with a very vague sadness of loss. Of course she was dead, I knew that, but that wasn't it. It was the other one again, wasn't it, the one I keep dreaming of because knowing and accepting that we're over and I never even had a chance aren't enough. Thick parts of my brain still need to adjust and process it, so they secrete all this moulding jelly night after night to get rid of it. It even crept into this one, a dream about my Oma telling me something important while the humanbuilt world crumbles around the foundations of .... me. My heritage is all that's certain.

The Lizard People

(translation)

In the dream there was a hall
in a mountain
with many colourful boxes and containers
like in Sokoban
my people were led through it
while men worked there
and pushed boxes.
I fell back two paces
and in my way they pushed a wall of open boxes
and cut me off from my group.
I jumped onto a stack that was several metres high
to jump over this wall
behind which my men turned around towards me and waited for me.
It did not work
I took a detour
displaced as a little prank a flat chocolate box
so that they would have to look for it.
That was when the trap snapped shut.
They had ambushed us.
The workers were now lizard creatures
and we had to get out of here
But my men were now in the centre of the hall
cut off from the exit
and separated from me
they were quickly scattered further
But we managed
with good fighting
and a little high wire acrobatics
in the upper half of the hall
to kill several of them
and reunite a few of us.

In a critical moment
the hall trembled
and the lizard men listened up.
They ceased fighting
and tried to leave the hall
Through the windows high up in the walls
a few made it.
I do not know how,
but I was transfigured into a dragon
and was able to carry one of the men outside.
In the snow on the quivering mountain
I dropped him off
He wanted to go back, to fight
I flew without him
back into the hall
it was not trembling anymore
into the leader's room
small again
no one saw me
our captain stood there.
He demanded from the lizard man
to be made into a dragon as well
The lizard leader agreed
I was surprised
because he was our enemy
And at
how something like this should be possible
and watched intently
I remained undiscovered right there in the room
as the leader gave the captain
plates and scales, one by one
sewed them onto his body
He bled and panted
Liquid leaked from him
but he stood still
I watched with fascination
and found it incredible
When every part of his body
except for the eyes
was sewn into stiff carapace
he waited for the transformation
which did not come.
I saw that he could neither breathe
nor move
But he looked at the lizard man with pain
and still much too much hope
for my liking
out of his oozing eyes
He wanted to speak
and surely also move
he fought for it
but couldn't open his mouth
nor breathe
nor draw his sword
nor lift his hand
He would, standing up
with thousands of pinpricks in his skin
imprisoned in unyielding plates
suffocate miserably.
The lizard leader laughed at him.
I was annoyed by the captain's stupidity
and became angry
I approached him
to tell him that I would defect
but noticed the sun
and woke up.

Die Echsenmenschen

In dem Traum war eine Halle
in einem Berg
voller bunter Kisten und Container
wie bei Sokoban
meine Leute wurden hindurchgeführt
während Männer dort arbeiteten
und Kisten schoben.
Ich blieb zwei Schritte zurück
und vor mich schoben sie eine Wand aus offenen Kisten
und schnitten mich von meiner Gruppe ab.
Ich sprang auf einen mehrere Meter hohen Stapel
um über diese Wand zu springen
hinter der sich meine Männer zu mir umdrehten und auf mich warteten.
Es funktionierte nicht
ich nahm einen Umweg
verschob dabei als kleine Schelmerei eine flache Pralinenschachtel
damit sie sie würden suchen müssen.
Da schnappte die Falle zu.
Sie hatten uns einen Hinterhalt gelegt.
Die Arbeiter waren nun Echsenwesen
und wir mussten wieder hier raus
Doch meine Männer waren nun in der Mitte der Halle
vom Ausgang abgeschnitten
und von mir getrennt
sie waren schnell weiter versprengt
Aber es gelang uns
mit gutem Kampf
und etwas Hochseilakrobatik
in der oberen Hälfte der Halle
einige von ihnen zu töten
und ein paar von uns wieder zusammenzubringen.

In einem kritischen Moment
bebte die Halle
und die Echsenmenschen horchten auf.
Sie hörten auf zu kämpfen
und versuchten, die Halle zu verlassen
Durch die Fenster hoch in den Wänden
schafften es ein paar.
Ich weiß nicht, wie,
aber ich wurde in einen Drachen verwandelt
und konnte einen der Männer nach draußen tragen.
Im Schnee auf dem zitternden Berg
setzte ich ihn ab
Er wollte zurück, um zu kämpfen
Ich flog ohne ihn
in die Halle zurück
es bebte nicht mehr
in den Raum des Anführers
wieder klein
man sah mich nicht
unser Hauptmann stand da.
Er verlangte von dem Echsenmann
auch zu einem Drachen gemacht zu werden
Der Echsenanführer willigte ein
Ich wunderte mich
weil er doch unser Feind war
Und darüber
dass sowas möglich sein sollte
und sah gespannt zu
Ich blieb unbemerkt mitten im Raum
als der Anführer dem Hauptmann
der die Zähne zusammenbiss
Platten und Schuppen einzeln
auf den Leib nähte
Er blutete und keuchte
Flüssigkeit trat aus ihm heraus
aber er stand still
Ich sah gebannt zu
und fand es unfassbar
Als jede Stelle seines Körpers
bis auf die Augen
in starren Panzer genäht war
wartete er auf die Verwandlung
die nicht kam.
Ich sah, dass er weder atmen
noch sich bewegen konnte
Aber er sah den Echsenmenschen mit Schmerz
und immer noch viel zu viel Hoffnung
für meinen Geschmack
aus seinen triefenden Augen an
Er wollte sprechen
und sich sicher auch bewegen
er kämpfte darum
konnte aber den Mund nicht öffnen
und nicht atmen
oder sein Schwert ziehen
oder auch nur die Hand heben
Er würde stehend
mit tausenden Nadelstichen in der Haut
in unbewegliche Platten gesperrt
jämmerlich ersticken.
Der Echsenanführer lachte ihn aus.
Ich ärgerte mich über die Dummheit des Hauptmanns
und wurde wütend
ich trat auf ihn zu
um ihm mitzuteilen, dass ich überlaufen würde
bemerkte aber die Sonne
und wachte auf.