Nightmares in the Valley

DALeast in Vienna

1. No visuals can be recalled but "She fights in the dark" repeats in your mind.
   
2. A clearing at night in the snow. Five white skulls, each mounted on a black spear, stand at the five points of a pentagram made of blood. Long gold "hair" grows from each. The first is golden flowers. The second is yellow aspen leaves. The third is gold pine needles. The fourth is wrinkled, honey colored fungus. The fifth is your flesh, as is the blood.
3. It is sunset in the pines. The ground is their rust colored needles. The sky is golden through the trees. You hear a baby crying. You cannot see it but know you must find it. You run and the rusted needles stab your feet and tear your naked body as you fall.
4. A male elk with large antlers and no flesh oozes black. It eats a faceless man you recognize as your grandfather and births you in black blood. Gold ravens scream from the trees.
5. Owls hang upside down from tree branches. Burdened by the weight of their antlers. They screech and fall. Piercing hands and feet. A skinless elk watches from afar as you struggle and rip your flesh.
6. A giant man with a red beard of soft wavy hair kneels in a clearing as if in supplication. Ropey black ooze restrains him. He rips out of his body to be free. Skeletal hands tear off the beard and face, and it explodes into blue flowers.
7. Red foxes with gold eyes run through summer meadows carrying fluffy yellow chicks in their mouths. White foxes with black feet bring the snow as they run. White swallows red with a single gulp and grows antlers.
8. Wind moans and sings out of cracks in the ground. Black gashes on pink fleshy granite. Yellow aspen leaves spin in a whirlwind from the cavern maws. They cut your face as white trunks splinter around you.
9. A naked man wears a black wolf's head on his own. It's fresh blood paints his chest and shoulders. His stomach smiles red and spills his guts to hide his nakedness. Sun melts from the wolf's eyes.
10. She was there behind the stone turned flesh without the skin, but ran. The meat grew thorns of rot and bullfrogs vomit clouds of flies to hide her from you.
11. White pinpricks in black pits. The fleshless elk keeps his eyes locked on yours as you keep your antlers locked with his. Your velvet itches with fever and your hands claw at it blindly. Bloody fuzz sluffs off and into him. White pinpricks in black pits.
12. The bear that drank the river lies bloated in the winter sun. Brittle in your hands it cracks and spills it all back out again. Gold fish in blocks of ice drown you as the leeches suck your blood. It tries to save you again. Tries to plug its shattered self, but the light wanes from its enfeebled eyes.

• Positive symbol fragments: gold, yellow, blue, flowers, aspens, bear, ravens, wolves, "her", "she"

• Evil symbol fragments: black, snow, stone, elk, skinless, frogs, ooze, pentagrams, "him"

• Can go either way: owls, foxes, pines, wind, bones, pain, blood, antlers, maleness, femininity

Alfonso Casas Moreno - Yellow (throwing up butterflies) - 2013