From my collection: Death by Design

He enters a black forest. Perhaps because he tried to read Freud.
Narrow path.
Some sort of enchantment. Is he flying or falling?

A girl’s off-white spring dress crosses the twilight path before him. Pigtails bounce as she bubbles. She looks left, quick as a blink, smiles and then thin air, although her sound lingers like a merry brook, and then fades.

A bent, wild-haired woman’s black frock shuffles across the misty path. Her trembling face moves him. She looks through him with silver, marble eyes. Disappears in slow motion.

He drops his eyes.

He raises them, as a naked woman with strawberry blonde hair, dropping down to the small of her back, waddles across the dimly lit path. Belly bulging to bursting, and instantly it is replaced by a wriggling blonde baby, who chuckles and then suckles while grabbing, grabbing. A knowing smile forms on the mother’s moon face. She flicks her hair behind her ear, looks at him and closes her eyes to release a single tear.

One by one they parade across his path. Each engaging this flying, falling man as he drifts forward, in a state, not unlike REM paralysis.
The action stops as the forest darkens.

He rises and walks deeper. A clearing …
What looks like gigantic spotlights from above reveal all the females he saw, and more. Dancing. Laughing. Easy-going. Screaming. Struggling. Singing. Changing. Crying. Dying.

Two children grow as they dance, bubble and weave through the gathering of women and girls. Lightning guillotines the earth. Envelops the group in blinding white which rolls up into a shiny ball. It hovers at eye-level. The forest and everything drop away.

*******

The glittering white ball disappears into your left eye. A momentary sparkle as you stand behind the stove, stirring the oatmeal of our lives.
“So, what’s your answer?” you ask. Your eyes look tired as you turn a knob down to 1.
“S-sorry, Love … w-what were you saying?”
“Will you set the table, please, Werner, and call the kids?”