Glitter & Mayhem Read online

  I still died, just a little, as I walked through the doors.

  §

  What do you dream, when you are alone in the dark? Be honest, now. Take out those secrets, those velvet wants, those blood–drenched desires. You need not show them to anyone else, but look at them. Know them. Roll yourself about in them until your hair is mussed and your skin is sticky.

  Now, imagine you could have that dream always. Whenever.

  Imagine.

  And think about what you might give to have it.

  §

  Clear your mind of whatever you think of when you think of Hell, because if walking into Hades were like walking into some medieval Inferno, Virgil or no Virgil, no one would go.

  Or maybe some would. There will always be some who will revel in feeling that they are the apotheosis of evil and ought to be either punished or celebrated accordingly, in screams and agonies, even if those screams and agonies are their own. But there wouldn’t be lines down the block, even with the Greek name slapped on the sign and myths as bouncers.

  No, walking into Hades was like walking into a live performance of all of the sin you were told would send you to Hell. It was the opulent decadence of a Renaissance palace, the wildness of a bacchanal. It might be Hell, but it’s also a nightclub.

  I paused at the edge of the dance floor, let the music sink into me, slide under my skin, and course through my blood. The hanged man spun from the ceiling, crooning about being undead, undead, undead to the dancers below.

  The pieces of the dream had held together well, though I thought he would be sore when it wore off.

  That was the other reason to come to Hades. To live, temporarily, in a dream. Here, you could dream whatever you wanted. They were made for you, little faceted jewels that you swallowed like Alice drinking and eating in Wonderland. And for that space of time, here in these walls, the dream was real. Tangible. Yours.

  That was a thing worth dying a little bit to have.

  That’s why I don’t have to stand in line, or trade a pomegranate seed to get in. I dream those dreams, collect all the fractal pieces of them from myself, so they can be shaped into whatever the current desire or fashion is. So long as I come here to dream, I can blacken entire calendars’ worth of nights in Hell.

  I walk past the bar, the edifice of glass, all edged and polished to glitter in the lights of the club, to better reflect the dreams and desires of those who spend small deaths to be here. As I pass, I nod at the bartender, Tantalus, who can neither eat nor drink from what he serves. Please. Don’t look shocked. You read the name on the door when you walked in, and if you think there aren’t those who came here to watch others suffer, you haven’t been paying attention.

  Behind the shine and the lights, there is a door. The man with coins for eyes opens it for me, and I step into the shadows. I walk down until I can no longer hear the bright discord of the club, walk further until the bass no longer thrums through the soles of my shoes, walk until there is only silence and darkness.

  §

  A dream can be given to someone else. Of course it can. Here. An assortment, each designed to exacting specifications. Reach in and take one. Oh, and you don’t have to give it away if you don’t want to. Keep the dream for yourself. Just swallow it down. Perhaps you’d prefer it mixed into a drink.

  No?

  Something specific, then. Well, there are certainly the usual flavors. Flying is popular. A visit from someone long–missed, either living or dead. Sex. Nightmare. Both together.

  More specific even than that? Well. Possible. Anything is possible. But it will cost. Be certain of what you want, and be more certain still of what you are willing to pay.

  §

  I don’t sleep when I dream, not here. I have to be awake as the dreams unspool so that I can collect them. It’s not painful, not really. Imagine the drawing–off of poison. Any pain there might be is overwhelmed by the feeling of purgation, the knowledge that when this is over, things will be better. That I will be clean again.

  When I had walked far enough, I sat before Mother Night. This place, like all undercrofts and hidden spaces, was hers, and the dreams born here became hers as well. She was the one who told me what to dream, who gave me the list of what the dreams required.

  I say list. It was never written down.

  Today it was a key, and a scrap of fabric, lush red satin. I drank, as I always did, from her offered cup, and it tasted like wine, like cinnamon, like rue.

  I curled into a hollow, and I dreamt. The dream fell in pieces from my eyes, like tears, and I collected it in the cup from which I drank.

  “Is there another dream?” I asked.

  Mother Night leaned forward, close enough that her hair brushed my skin. It smelled of winter, of midnight, and of the cold light of the stars. It felt like secrets. She angled my face toward her, and looked into my eyes.

  “How many deaths have you spent at the door?” she asked.

  I knew. I knew to the exact number, and I suspected she did as well. Too many, and I could die permanently. Or the dreams could change again. The connection between both was too close to see the boundary separating them.

  So I did not lie. But I thought of my bed, covered in bees, in butterflies, in the velvet and leather of bats. There were things I needed to atone for.

  “Not enough,” I said.

  “For now, it is. No more dreams tonight.”

  §

  The walk back up from the underground at Hades always seemed to take longer than the trip down, as if the mythology had been invoked so many times that it overrode the physics of the space. There were times when it felt I walked ten minutes down, and a hundred miles to return.

  Still, there was only one way out, so I walked back to the light, the music, the crowd of people who had died, just a little, to be there.

  §

  No. There are things that cannot be done, even in dreams.

  You think you are the first person to ask? To come here, to this place of all places, and ask that question? Console yourself at least with the knowledge that you will not be the last.

  I can give you a dream with her in it. But it will be a dream. There will be nothing of her beyond that dreaming, neither here, nor elsewhere, whether you look back when you wake up, or not.

  §

  The door to the underground of Hades slides shut behind me, and I kiss Charon on the cheek as I walk past him back into the life of the club. He doesn’t react. He never does. Just once I’d like to see if he could blush, if it were possible to knock the coins from his eyes.

  There was a glass waiting on the end of the bar. There was always a glass waiting on the end of the bar. Ambrosia and pomegranate seeds. Six of them. He was waiting as well. Hades, who collected deaths, even the small ones that came out of dreams. “Your dreams would be yours again.”

  I met his gaze, and touched the rim of the glass to my lips, as I always did. The air in the club paused. Then I set the glass back down.

  “They already are.” Most days I called them a curse, but they were mine.

  “As you say, and so it must be true.” The glass disappeared, replaced by an Archangel, tasting of ice and hazelnuts, and this time when I toasted Hades, I did drink. Then I leaned against the bar, and watched bits and pieces of my dreams come to life.

  §

  That night, I dreamt while sleeping. When I awoke, there was a pile of feathers at the foot of my bed, and I knew what my dreams had killed.

  If I dreamed sleeping, there was always a small death when I awoke. I gathered the corpse of the sky–colored bird. For a moment, there was the sensation of air through feathers that weren’t mine. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I was. I was sorry every time it happened. Working at Hades helped, bled off the worst of the poison in my dreams, the thing that made them fatal, but I couldn’t control them. The deaths still happened, as if death and sleep had somehow become confused in their roles, and were sending me the wrong gifts.

/>   When I climbed out of bed, I discovered I was wrong. It was not just one bird.

  Small, feathered bodies, flightless now, littered my floors. An entire flock.

  §

  It was a thing done in the dark. Such things always are.

  “What sort of dream is it you want, hmm? Something to make someone love you for the night? Or a night of terror for the lover who traded the scent of your skin and the sound of your breath for someone else?”

  “Death. A dream of death.”

  A hiss of breath being drawn in through teeth, and a rustle of fabric. “Such a thing will cost.”

  “I will pay.”

  “Very well.”

  No noise in the darkness then, but scents. The sweet rot of overblown roses, the thick dark clots of earth, the warm iron of blood, so fresh the very air smelled red.

  Red was the color of the small, faceted stone that dropped into the outstretched hand. “There is your dream.”

  “And the cost?”

  “You will know it when it is asked.”

  §

  Hades looks different in the light of day. It looks less real, without the artificially lit darkness to give it dimension, like a film set after the production is over.

  Coin–eyed Charon guarded the door. As he always did, as he had everywhere this threshold existed for the crossing. I passed through it into darkness, and I did not look back.

  I walked down and down and down, and waited for the shadows to embrace me, to cast their cool fingers over my skin, to veil my eyes from the deaths in front of them. All I saw was thousands of feathers, wings that would no longer fly.

  “Give me something to dream,” I begged Mother Night.

  She held silent, immobile.

  My eyes burned with salt. “Please.”

  “Very well,” she said, and the serpents came.

  They wound around my hands and feet, slithered through my hair. I drank from her glass, and it burned like acid and tasted like bitter almonds. I drank it like it was champagne.

  I had just drained the dregs from the cup when the dream exploded from me, flinging me backwards. My head cracked against the wall, and I dreamed someone’s death.

  The snakes moved beneath my skin, and fell from my retching mouth. I crawled to my hands and knees, and vomited the dream in the shape of serpents.

  When I finished, sticky with bile and vomit, I handed her the dream, safely in the cup. She tucked it on a shelf behind her, then said, “Again.”

  I took the offered cup.

  §

  By the time I stumbled my way back out of the underground at Hades, night had fallen and the club was full of beautiful people. At that moment, I was not beautiful, and I did not care.

  The glass, as expected, was on the end of the bar. Ambrosia and pomegranate seeds. My mouth was rancid with my own bile, my throat raw from vomiting snakes and worse. I picked up the glass, watched the light turn the contents neon colors, and thought about drinking.

  “The dreams would stop, if you drank.” The air around me darkened at Hades’ words, and there was comfort in the darkness.

  “Because I would be dead.” That was the choice, and the peril. Back before stories began, Mother Night had two children. Death, who named himself Hades, and an incarnation of Sleep, whose name is no longer spoken. The incarnation can be filled, of course. You know the stories.

  Six seeds from a pomegranate. Don’t look back.

  People always do. They think they know what they want, until the moment of change stands before them.

  Still, right now, my own blood under the nails I hadn’t torn from my fingers, vomit drying in my hair, and an apartment full of small deaths to return to, my own death sounded momentarily tempting.

  “Life ends in death. For everyone.”

  “Yes, but not tonight.”

  I didn’t stay to drink, or dance, or watch other people have my dreams. I just went home.

  §

  I don’t think about what I would dream if my dreams were my own. If sleeping and dreaming didn’t mean waking up surrounded by death. The very idea struck me cold — what if dreaming about something, someone, on purpose made the dream reach out to them? Dream of a lover, and it would not be dead birds I would find in my bed.

  I have never wished anyone sweet dreams.

  §

  I woke with the sheets sticky with sweat, wrapped around my legs like ropes. A small green snake slithered from my hair. I sat up slowly, unwinding myself from the tangled sheets, expecting to see a massacre of serpents scattered about the room.

  Nothing.

  My throat was still ravaged, and the inside of my mouth tasted like scalded honey. I gagged, retched, and brought up another snake, the color of poison. It braceleted itself around my wrist.

  A knock on my door. I ignored it — I was in no shape to see anyone. I wasn’t even sure if I could speak without snakes dropping from my mouth.

  The knocking came again, louder this time. Robe clutched around me, I opened the door.

  Tisiphone, clothed in vengeance.

  “Morain, I am charged to bring you to Hades.” No glamour to soften her voice now. This was one of the Erinyes speaking. Her voice rang like bronze, and I had to will my feet to remain unmoving.

  “What is it?”

  “Better that you come,” she said.

  “Can I change?”

  “Better that you come now.”

  §

  The other Erinyes, Alecto and Megaeara stood just outside the door of the club, faces as dire as Tisiphone’s.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  They said nothing, but opened the heavy door. “Go inside,” Tisiphone said.

  The death of the door sucked the breath from my body, but it was what I saw inside that dropped me to my knees.

  Hades was full of the dead. The corpses of all of last night’s mortal revelers littered the floor, their finery tatted and dull in the pale light of morning.

  “Is it you, Morain, who has done this?” Tisiphone asked, her voice like a sword, like a scale. It fell on me, and I could not have spoken false, even had I wanted to.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I can tell you.”

  They nodded permission, the three avatars of vengeance, and I began laying my hands on the bodies. As I touched them, their final dreams filled my head.

  Some I recognized because I had birthed the pieces of them — love, sticky like cinnamon hearts; fame, all lights and leather and a rock song for a soundtrack; dancing, naked and glorious, in a green wood. Some dreams were things I recognized not at all, just bits and pieces of lives filtered through night and sleep.

  Fragmented as the dreams were, they were what I tried to concentrate on. To see only those images, to not think of skin too cool beneath my fingers, of eyes that fixed on nothing, of the stench of a room peopled with death.

  There was a noise, as I worked. A clinking that I couldn’t place. Too irregular to be a machine. I looked around and saw Charon, weeping. The noise was the coins that fell from his eyes.

  Then. A man. Like any other who came to Hades, and like none of them. I didn’t recognize him. But oh, I recognized the snakes and the poison that poured out of his dream.

  A dream of death.

  I could not move my hands. My skin went numb, too–hot, as if I had been bee stung, and my vision as red as the heart of a pomegranate.

  As red as the seeds in the glass that was pressed to my mouth.

  I drank.

  §

  Death was a lot more like a nightclub than I expected it to be. Somewhere in the back of my memory, Bowie was singing about the heart’s filthy lesson, and I wanted to tell him I had already learned that. I was ready for the exam.

  “You’re not dead, dear. Not yet. Open your eyes and have a drink with me.”

  It was a voice I was used to obeying, so I opened my eyes, and reached for the glass. Mother Night, who looked nothing like I had expected.

  “I
was dead.”

  “Perhaps. You can be, if that’s what you choose. Or you can be something else.”

  “I ate the pomegranate seeds.” A dream or a death. That was the choice of the drink, and if I was here, it wasn’t a dream.

  “Which means only that you ate them. Ravaged maidens and endless winters make for good stories, true, but for bad lives.”

  We finished our drinks. My mouth tasted of honey. “Thank you,” I said.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “The dreams.”

  She smiled. “The dead don’t dream, Morain.”

  “I know.”

  When I left that place, to walk back to my dreams, I took the longer path. I did not look back.

  Star Dancer

  Jennifer Pelland

  IT WAS THE SUMMER OF 1984. I’d just gotten out of college and had moved back in with my parents in Chicopee. If I wanted to hang around with fellow lesbians, the only ones around were the Smithies up in Northampton. How bad were they? They used “Sapphic” unironically.

  Don’t judge me. A girl gets lonely.

  I was desperate to leave. Go to London. Maybe San Francisco. Or I suppose New York City. Somewhere where my taste in music was more interesting than my taste in sex partners. In other words, anywhere but Chicopee.

  But for now, I was stuck with the Smithies, heading to a party that was going to have a bellydancer, of all things. She called herself “Shahrazad the Star Dancer”. I was pretty sure that was a stage name, although in Northampton, one couldn’t assume. The Smithies were all twittering about how she represented female empowerment and the reclamation of our bodies or some such shit. I was just hoping to watch a hot babe writhe around some stranger’s living room and then go home with a raging case of metaphorical blue balls and enough masturbation fantasies to get me through the rest of the month. With any luck, she wouldn’t dance to Duran Duran. I fucking hated Duran Duran. The music coming out of London had been so much better before they’d gone all Tiger Beat and dragged everyone else along with them.

  Yeah, scratch London from the list.

  So here I was, in that aforementioned stranger’s living room, surrounded by hairy–legged hippies who were passing a joint around. As usual, I stood out from the crowd in my Alien Sex Fiend t–shirt and thick black eyeliner.