“The People”

This blog is third in a five-part series titled “The Dream”, a write-up I did of a very vivid dream I had. Even though it wasn't specifically about the Disease, the dream’s subject—feeling  different, inhuman—is something all those of us who suffer from addiction can relate to.

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The party raged on, but stayed true to its good nature. No fights broke out. No egos clashed. I’d been watching the women there all night, and definitely noticing some more than others. It was clear that I’d caught a few eyes as well.

Some of the women were more aggressive with their affections than others. Crossing into another room, I got grabbed from behind by one. She turned me around and started kissing me. I enjoyed it until it became clear she wasn’t a woman at all, but a man in the process of becoming one--and yet there was more to it than just that, a more that I couldn’t put into words or explain just yet. And as startling as all that was, it was nothing compared to what more was to come.

Soon after, I found myself encouraging one of the other guys to make his move on a gal he fancied. He declined and then confided in me about why he couldn’t get together with her. He lifted his hand and showed me his deformed fingers--like claws, with several additional digits protruding further up his arm. He wasn’t angry with me, but bitter and embarrassed at my trying to convince him there wasn’t a problem when there so clearly was. I hadn’t even known about his deformity.

There was a gal there, [woman], who had practically never left my side all night. She was crushing on me pretty hard and why I wasn’t interested in her, I don’t recall. I made a few more attempts to hook up. Each failed for one reason or another, all of them because the other person was flawed in some way, in some way not exactly human or ‘normal’. Then the veil fell and I saw with new eyes.

Something was wrong with everyone there. Each of them was in some way inhuman. They were outcasts, freaks who weren’t accepted in life because of their differences. They weren’t human, and yet somehow were, as though they were some other kind of beings who had been forced to be humans. For whatever reason, something had gone wrong with each of them. Something had gone wrong when they were created as humans, but were nevertheless trapped in that state. They were a clan of sorts, and had been around as long as humanity had.

This was their party, the one they held once every year, where they could get together and enjoy just being without the pressure or feelings of judgment. It was the time and place for them to let go and forget about all the horrors of their lives, even though to any other human being, they were seen as the horrors. They created the place for the party themselves each year, created it outside of space and outside of time, on another plane of existence. Here, they didn’t have to hide. But, as I saw in my friend with the deformed hand, the habit of doing so stayed with them, even here.