It Was All a Dream

I deliberated for a long while, that morning I died. In a plush king bed, I battled the wants of an orange tart and a macchiato versus a lazy morning slumber. The sun pierced through the blinds of my hotel room and cast its vote. The scorching wet heat of Barcelona was coming, and I had scarce minutes of cool calm left for a stroll. The cafe wasn’t far, and I followed pink and purple bougainvillea bushes, and gave my friendliest buenos dias to a passerby in yoga pants. Her yorkie snapped and cursed at me, begging me to stay away. I should’ve listened.

I was well into my vacation haze, where my normal cautions and narrow preoccupations were supplanted by wide-eyed wonders. I lingered at a Greco-Romanish building with an awning that read El Batlló Brasería. I stopped in for a pint the night before, but the stonework was even more splendid in the morning light.

"¡Cuidado!" came a shout from behind me.

I saw orange pylons and knee-high yellow tape. Had I crossed over that? Or had someone put it up in haste behind me? It didn’t matter, the scaffolding came down and crushed me all the same.

There was no pain. And the blackness didn’t last long, or perhaps it did, but it felt like a blink. When I opened my eyes again, I was on a raft floating on a wide river. I sat up in fright. Where am I?

The ferryman was like a gray candle, flickering, and unmoving, save for his paddle arm. His light spread over the water, and in all directions it was mist and gloom and finally black. The only sound was the splash of his oar.

“Where are we going?”

The ferryman’s eyes moved but his face did not. He lifted a stiff arm and pointed his paddle toward a shore with dim shapes upon the banks: one like a large teapot, and the others like animals, dogs or cats perhaps - three that moved on all fours around the vessel.

As we got close, the animals hid, and the teapot waved. The raft stopped at the bank, and the ferryman poked the blade of his paddle into the mud, holding us in place.

Out of a large ceramic urn, came the shape of a man, as if the planter had flowered a person.

“Come! Onto the shore. Nothing to fear.” The man said. He was naked from the waist up, with the rest of him, naked or not, still inside the jar. He had an unruly brown beard and wild white hair flowing from his ears. From behind his abode, came the head of a yorkie, and then and another, and then another. Three little heads on one furry body came round to see me, with tongues wagging.

“This is a bit silly,” I said, hopping onto the bank.

The three-headed dog pattered up to me and gave me three licks. “I’m supposed to take this for Cerberus? The hound of hell? And who are you supposed to be?”

The man stretched his arms up and gave a yawn. “Dio,” he said.

“Well Dio, I’m quite obviously in a dream.”

“Obviously,” Dio said. “But are you the dreamer?”

“What do you mean?”

“Before you came here, you decided to create this all?”

“Well, no, not exactly. My brain is processing things. Collecting and sorting rubbish thoughts so that I have room for fruitful ones.”

“And you willed it so?”

“No, there’s no will to it. It just happens.”

“How?”

“I don’t know! Evolution, nature. What are you? A Socrates?”

Dio slapped the lid of his jar and laughed. “Very close!” he said. “But we can talk about our dreams another time. As for now, I’m your representative here, and we must prepare for your trial–”

At that moment, a woman, dirty and dressed in rags, sprinted by us. “Take me back!” she screamed. She plunged into the river, thrashing toward the ferryman. The three-headed yorkie sprang up and gave chase, diving in after her. Two of its heads clenched her ankles while the third growled, in as fierce a way that a yorkie can.

“My my, Lizzie,” Dio said. “Come now, you know there’s no escape. Abandon any hope for that.”

“I’m innocent,” she cried. The yorkie-heads had her flat on her back and they dragged her past us. “You! This is your fault.” she said to Dio. “Please, I don’t want to go back there, please.”

Cerberus pulled her to a large iron gate shrouded in a black mist. She was shrill and shrieking. My arms broke out in goose pimples. It’s a dream, it’s a dream, it’s a dream.

The gate slammed shut and all was quiet again.

“Where did she go?”

Dio leapt out of his jar and I saw him in all his naked, sagging, glory. “Where we are headed,” he said.

***

The gate opened for us and the mist cleared. Ahead was a palace, with stonework much like El Batlló Brasería. The battlements, some thirty feet up, were arched and windy, like the back of a dragon, while the masonry of the tower was curved and interlocked like ribs, giving it all a fossilized, skeletal look. The facade was covered in oval windows that bulged outwards like a hundred eyes, each a colored stained glass, with flowers and green vines, and vivid starry patterns adorning them.

In the forecourt, sat a long table with three men behind it. The middle one, thick in his arms and chest, wore a silver crown with brown bull horns set across the band. A hooded man to his right, thin and the tallest of the three, sat in front of a scale, flicking the chains of it. And to my leftmost, sat a small and stout spectacled man, flipping through reams of paper.

“State your name,” said the middle one. His voice was flat and bothered, like a tired postal clerk at the end of a shift. I expected him to sound a little more regal.

“Alright,” I said. “It’s quite time for me to wake up.” I gave myself a pinch.

“Don’t be a fool. They don’t suffer them here,” Dio whispered.

“That’s a funny thing to say for a naked man who lives in a jar.”

“Your name!” The lanky one boomed. It was a kingly command.

“Fine, I’ll play along. My name is John Frederic Forrester. My gran calls me Jeffy and my mates call me Woody. Whatever pleases the court. And what, may I ask, am I on trial for?”

“Wantonness, deception, and malice,” said the spectacled one.

“Excuse me?”

“We shall commence.” The little man heaved a big book from the top of his pile and opened it. “Six thousand, eight hundred and fifty four counts of wantonness. How do you respond?"

“Wantoness? What do you mean by that?”

“A directed desire, that if allowed to culminate, would result in either deception or malice,” the middle one said, like a tired student reading out a drab textbook.

“Six thousand? You’re wrong. I’ve had no such intentions.”

“Let’s see… well for example,” said the spectacled one. “It seems you had a particular fascination with one Lilly Robertson, your wife’s…ahem…first cousin. Fifty seven times you–”

“That was all private. And I never expressed any longing. And nothing ever came of it.”

“Yes, as fate would have it, Miss Robertson didn’t hold any similar desires. Her repugnance saved the whole ordeal from these charges being brought under the purview of deception.”

“Repugnance? She was quite the flirt at that New Years party.”

“Friendly, not flirty. I assure you, she was disgusted.”

“Well fine. How’s that a crime?”

“We are not convicting you of a crime, only judging your actions.”

“And I did not act, so there’s nothing to judge.”

The man pushed up his glasses and flipped his book around. The page swirled, like stirred paint, and a couch took form, my couch, and box of tissues and–

“Alright, stop. That’s enough!” I said. My face burned hot.

“Honorable judges, may I speak,” said Dio.

“Yes, speak some sense into them. It’s all perfectly natural anyhow.”

The middle one nods.

“I would like a recount. I think you missed the whole ordeal with the research group, circa two-thousand six. You’ll find four more counts, whereby Mister Forrester nearly claimed an exchange student’s work as his own.”

“Amit? He’d already left the school.” I said. “And besides, Julie talked me into putting his name on the paper. And wait! Aren’t you supposed to be my counsel?”

Dio, and all three judges laughed. “I am your representative," Dio said. “Defence and prosecution are all the same here.”

“Your evidence is permitted,” the thin man said. He then dropped a ball bearing on one of the scales.

Dio held up a thin book titled The Virtues of J.F.F in gold lettering. Where he pulled it from, I could only guess, or perhaps it’s better not to.

“I submit to you the matter of Mister Forrester's tutoring of Peter Horvat.”

“Noted,” said the middle judge. “That will bring the count down to five thousand and twelve.”

The thin man plopped a large bearing on the other scale plate.

“What’s he doing?” I said to Dio.

“Weighing your virtuous acts against the charges.”

“One tutorage crossed out a thousand acts?”

“Yes. That’s all it takes.”

“Well I’ve tutored hundreds. Toss the counts out!” I said.

“All for money, and all with gripes. Except with Peter.”

I nearly forgot about Peter Horvat. He was a bright student, eager to learn, but the boy’s parents could barely afford shoes, let alone extra education. I taught him for free, and in fact, when I look back, it was one of the most joyful times of my career.

I felt embarrassed. Much more than when they called me out on my…acts. I still didn’t believe this was anymore than a dream, yet it felt like more than sorting rubbish. I stayed silent as the trial went on. And it went much the same, with the judges reading out charges, and with Dio countering with events that I considered trivial, but had grave importance before that court.

Three times he wanted to ram his shopping trolley into the ankles of a slow customer.

Seven times he nearly pushed over a shopper who stopped in the middle of the aisle.

Yes! But recall the time he helped that grandmother reach for the last package of macaroons.

And on and on they went. The details of which I will spare the reader, and I will plead to you to imagine if all your `moments` were laid bare upon the page.

After what seemed like hours, the last charge was levied. One count of malice.

“And on the matter of Jimmy Ryes, how do you respond?” The spectacled one said. His voice had grown hoarse from the hours of argument.

Jimmy Ryes? Oh, that name does haunt me.

“I uh…well, you see…may I have a moment to confer with my client?” Dio said.

“Granted.”

Dio took me by the shoulder and led me away from the forecourt. “This is bad, very bad. The most terrible.”

“Yes, I teased him. But I was a kid.”

“You called him Jimgivitis”

“He had horrible teeth.”

“And More Pies Ryes.”

“He was a tad chubby. And as I said, I was a boy!”

“You were old enough to know better and young enough to have plenty of time for an apology. But the names are not the issue, it’s the time when you and your mates made a sport of–-”

“Making him cry. I know. I felt horrible during and after. Some nights I still think about it. I told him his father left his family because of his rancid breath.”

“Malice, pure unadulterated malice, ” Dio said. “And the trouble is, I’m all out of your virtues.” He shook the book in his hand. “There must be a good deed you’ve done that I haven’t tracked. There must be!”

“You’ve brought up a hundred things I’ve forgotten. There’s nothing more,” I said.

“You must think. You don’t want to go to Tartarus do you?”

“To where?”

“Tartarus. Flaming rivers, and gnashing of teeth and whips and chains and all that lot. Where the condemned go.”

“Oh this is bollocks. I will wake up soon and have a laugh about all this.”

Dio slapped my face.

“Ow!”

“Did you feel that? Think of that a thousandfold, for a thousand years, until the chance of waking comes. An hour, an eternity, it’s all the same down here.”

“You mean I’m going to Hell?”

“If that’s what you wish to call it.”

A cold, feeble feeling rose from my gut. Like I was handed a failing grade, a termination, or divorce papers. Like any choice in the matter was far in the past.

“Wait!” I said. The marvelous idea dawned on me “That’s it. I had no choice.”

Dio hurried to catch up as I rushed back to the judges. “Come back. This is not a good idea.”

“Of course you’d say that. You are my prosecutor, you said it yourself.”

“Of your actions, not of you,” Dio said.

I turned from him and faced the judges. “I wish to respond to the charge of malice.”

“Yes, yes, go on,” said the middle judge.

“Well, you see, it’s all very simple. We have heard many times today the phrase, as fate would have it. Many times! And there you are. As fate would have it, I was put in that school, I was in Jimmy’s class while the hormones and pressures acted on me. In fact it was never my choice to be born at all.”

“You wish to appeal to fate?” The lanky judge said.

“He does not,” said Dio. “Give me more time—”

“I do!”

“Very well.” The judge tilted a scale plate and dozens of bearings spilled onto the table. The other side came down with a thud.

“What are you doing?”

“We are rebalancing,” said the spectacled one. “And we’re back up to four thousand fifty six counts of wantonness"

“What? We’ve been through all that. My virtues covered them.”

“Yes. When we included the clause of free will, we gave extra weight to each virtuous act. But as you say, there was no choice in those matters, so they have no bearing.”

“No, I chose to be good then.”

The judge removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “So you are saying every time you were good it was a choice, and every time you were bad, it was fated?”

“Well…yes.”

They all broke out into a raucous laughter. Dio was doubled over beside me, and he slapped my side. “Oh you are too much, too much!” he said.

The lanky judge wiped a tear. “Thank you, I needed a laugh today.” Then his eyes set on me, white and stern. “One hundred and seven years in Tartarus is the sentence. Goodbye!”

The judges stood and departed from the table. From the palace doors came a huge beast, with the upper body of a woman, and thousand serpents where her legs should’ve been. Her face was like black stone, set with blazing yellow eyes, and around her neck she wore a garland of skulls.

“No, no I take back my appeal.”

“There’s no avoiding fate now,” Dio said.

Behind me, the three-headed yorkie nipped at my ankles, prodding me forward. “No! Dio, help me. I can’t go there. I’m a good man!”

The beast lumbered to me and reached for a writhing serpent-whip at her waist.

“Wait,” came a weary cry from the gate.

The beast stood at attention, and the judges turned to the voice. “Oh what is it,” said the middle judge.

The flickering gray light grew larger, slowly. Dio came beside me.

“Well? What is it?” I said.

“The ferryman has news.”

We waited, rather awkwardly, as the ferryman shuffled forward at a snail's pace.

“So why is it that you live in a jar?” I said to Dio, breaking the silent tension.

“I haven’t urned enough,” he said. He poked my ribs with his elbow, in anticipation of a laugh. With the prospect of Hell looming, I wasn’t in a humorous mood.

“In truth,” he said. “I call the cosmos my home. And whether we sleep in a palace or in a planter, our security is within. It’s an abode that’s quite easily disturbed, and believe me I have been rattled countless times. But if you truly choose the good, then no possession, no pleasure, no indulgence, comes close to the delights attained.”

“Right,” I said, only half-listening to him. The beast’s hot breath on my neck commanded a fair bit of attention.

“He’s to wake up,” said the ferryman, finally.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” said the middle judge. “What a waste of time.”

“I’m free?”

“In a way,” Dio said.

The ferryman turned back to the gate.

“Off you go. Goodbye for now,” said Dio.

I felt a relief so powerful that my knees shook and a strong desire to skip like a schoolboy overtook me. And I did. I skipped all the way back to the ferry, dancing around the ferryman and singing songs from my youth: Little Tommy Tucker, Little Jack Horner, Little Miss Muffet. I sang all the praises of all the littles.

And soon after I was in a hospital bed in Barcelona, having a laugh at that dreadful dream.