once upon a time i had a dream––tell me what this means..

we are upon a bleak alpine plateau suspended amidst the mountains––panoramically surrounded by austere glacial terrain and thin, biting air. dispersed across the plateau are enormous feeding troughs––long mangers reminiscent of those used for livestock, but grotesquely magnified to cyclopean scale. i find myself ensconced within one of these alongside other children and friends––all of us inhumanely crowded together like animals awaiting slaughter..

towering above the plateau loom colossal giants––their compromised physiognomies grotesquely clown–like, their countenances slick with blood and sweat––like monstrous anime caricatures somehow rendered into flesh, à la attack on titan..

from time to time, their gargantuan hands descend from the sky––their vast, probing fingers sifting through the trough as though extracting morsels from a dish..

one by one, they curate someone from among us, lifting them into the air between their fingers and devouring them––whole or piecemeal. i watch as my friends are seized and consumed as we maneuver impotently within the trough, acutely comprehending that at any moment those monstrous fingers may descend again and select me next..

then suddenly, a military detachment descends upon the plateau..

they strike the giants down and rescue those of us who remain alive. for a moment, i collapse into overwhelming (evanescent) relief––having escaped the unaesthetik™️ fate of being harvested like livestock lolzz..

but the reprieve is only provisional..

the soldiers tell us that the only way out is to descend the mountain along an extraordinarily perilous escarpment carved into the side of a sheer rock face. the path is attenuated––sometimes scarcely wider than our boots––winding for miles above a vertiginous drop into an immeasurable abyss..

we begin the descent..

the rock wall rises sheer beside us while the void opens endlessly below. as we traverse the exposed ledge, i watch friends––teenagers and children––lose their footing and disappear soundlessly into the abyss..

at last i reach a section where the escarpment tapers to mere inches of stone beneath my feet. i stop there in a state of quiet abeyance––pressed against the mountain, suspended above the abyss––seized by a profound and paralyzing dread amidst a preternatural silence..

and in that suspended moment––poised precariously between ascent and fall, between terror and resolve––i awaken out of and into disconsolation..

where are you..

LS