"Dreams are the children of Death".
Papa said once.
The words hung in the air. They weren't meant to be heard. She knew it. The words slipped from Papa's mouth in a whisper. Papa never whispers. He makes his voice heard. As clear as a ticking bomb. Thunder held on a leash.
He had slept on a chair near the open window, and she was – as always - at his feet, folded into herself, ready to be of use.
He blinked in a daze, slowly got up, and left without another word.
She sat there and let his words enter her and mingle with the cooling blood in her veins.
Death has children.
Death is a father.
Her papa declared it, and so it became true to her.
"Be, and it is".
She let the new knowledge enter her and reshape her mind.
The words followed her down here, as they had once followed her above. They whispered themselves in as she slept, and bled across her mind in vivid colors.
Papa had called the spawns of death "children", but the dreams told her they are servants (is there a real difference?).
Death sent a siren to her — one of His children-servants, and their message for her was:
"Remember".
The word flashed in sizzling red. The girl kept the red command to herself, pulsing like a countdown in her veins.
The dream whispered the message again, and the demand was the same:
"Remember".
*********************
Can you dream in words and colors alone?
"Papa", "chair", "window"… they all appeared to her in words. Living words. Each with a distinct color.
"Chair" is brown—rooted, heavy.
"Window" flickers: blue, orange, black—time folding in.
Papa is…..
A name takes shape before her.
Its colors won't settle.
Blotches of raw, fleshy pink. Swirls of white drift across them — the kind that clings to bone after a fire.
The letters are edged in obsidian-black, slick and sharp.
And deep beneath, something stirs: bubbles of magma-orange — boiling, choking, rising and bursting, bursting and rising.
The rest is an ashy blur.
Lo...la.
Lola.
Her name.
Is it?
Or rather... a nickname?
Not the one that marked her birth, but the one that eclipsed it.
The one that branded her.
The one her Mama gave her.
She surrenders.
Lola—Lola, it is.
Dreaming in images is harder than dying.
Like giving birth to yourself.
The images do not drift and form like the colored names.
They explode into existence, shattering Lola's mind into a universe of one, and then....
A dream?
A memory?
Maybe something sewn from both, bleeding at the seams.
Little Lost Lola…
Gut-deep in her own wonderland —
A maze with teeth.
************************
When she couldn't sleep, she liked to imagine herself as a wild pony. Slender and small and beautifully grey.
In those untethered daydreams, she would wander breezily through the family's farmhouse but always stop just outside the gate.
Even in her wildest imaginings, the Lola-pony moved with a lazy, flowy stride—leaf-like in its lightness, untouched by conscious thought. She had no need or desire to control it. Her mind drifted, and the current took her where it pleased.
The visions followed her into sleep.
The family's farm looked unnaturally wide—a picture book stretched too thin, its colors washed in deep green and faded shades of brown and yellow.
The sky hung low, nearly ink-black, lit only by a faint, moon-like glow.
Her dulled senses couldn't recreate what the family farm smelled or sounded like. Her only distinct recollections were the rhythmic buzzing of fireflies glowing in the distance and the rich, earthy scent of rain-fed grass.
When she stepped through the gate, she briefly wondered if the well still lay beneath the thick tree or if the dirt road would stretch on forever.
The starless sky is indigo now. The color of Papa's veins. The fresh bruises on Mama's face.
The Lola-pony kept walking.
Massive barns flanked the road on both sides, identical in size and shape. They stretched along the horizon, blurred at the edge of her vision— like a map drawn by a child's unsteady hand.
Candlelight pooled through their cracked-open gates— soft, flickering, almost inviting.
The air thickened like syrup in her lungs.
She kept walking.
Faster.
Lola the pony bounced and bounced, eyes fixed straight ahead.
Ponies weren't cowards. They are small and weak, but they'd kick anyone who dared to approach uninvited. One of them had kicked Papa once. He got too drunk, too shouty. The small, pretty, grey pony lifted a slender leg and— with lazy, precise effort— sent Papa rolling like a gutted pig, clutching his stomach with both hands, gasping, grunting, too winded to shout.
The pony was shot.
It died screaming.
A hideously slow death.
(Why can't you stay dead?)
There was a memory curled up inside each barn. Tiny leering monsters in wait.
She didn't question it. Some truths grow in the marrow before the mind can form.
She drifted into one barn—barefoot, blinking, her balance tilting as if the ground was yawning beneath her.
A memory greeted her with bared teeth.
The hands... The hands that pushed her bore the scent of home.
In that isolated farmhouse, only her family stood close enough to push.
Her would-be killer wore the skin of kin.
The memory-creature devoured her in a swift gulp.
************************
Lola remembered Mama's hands—wet, buttery soft—wiping mud and tears from her puffy cheeks. They smelled faintly of lemon soap.
Papa's hands were long. Spidery. They would hook under her chin and force her to look at him, eyes locked, digging for an answer to a question she couldn't remember him asking. His fingers reeked of gunpowder.
Would it make her dangerous? Special? Important? If one of these hands had to push her?
But it only takes one hand to push her.
Just one.
The thought gutted her.