SULFUR EDITIONS

On the outskirts of the melatonin ghost town,
So its inhabitants named it nearly 700 years ago
She placed her red suitcase, not as heavy as her dreams.
She lifted the hem of her dress, embroidered with yellow flowers, the color of the sand she stood on.
She sat on that rock, a sitting of the last wait
As if she was rearranging her memories to fold them in her bag.
For she was not burdened with dreams
But she carried memories heavier than the weight of her head. The view from the sky above me
Draws beginnings and ends intersecting, At the bend of a forest of unfulfilled desires
She closed her eyes for a moment, And the effects of fatigue and collagen deficiency, Played a masterful role in carving her features.
That dark area under her eyelid was a barren sky devoid of stars.
The silence is broken by the voice of a person
Wearing black clothes with a paper.
“Hello, madam,” he says, “are you ready?”
She replies with a trembling voice, “I think so.”
“Would you mind signing here?” he asks.
She pulls a red pen from her bag, pulls the paper from his hand, And signs below the client’s name.
For a moment she feels a heaviness in her head
As if her memories have decided to sleep
At the bottom of her brain. Her heaviness is interrupted by his question
“How long have you not slept?”
She looks at him and whispers, “I don’t know
But I don’t have dreams here,” she points to her head.
“Just a head burdened with memory.”
He takes the paper from her. He takes off his black glasses And puts them carefully in the pocket of a long coat. Nothing distinguishes him except for the absence of buttons. He takes out a magnifying glass
And looks at the bottom of the paper slowly.
Then he takes out a horn and blows it
And the door to the entrance opens.

Entry Permit

The Inspector: Entry permit.

The man in the coat hands him the paper.

The Inspector:
She must go in first to measure the melatonin level in her dreams. She puts her suitcase down.
A curtain opens to reveal a dark room.
Music swells, then images flow on the wall, and colors and an empty canvas appear before her.
She stands there, staring with open eyes at the heaviness she feels in her head.
She doesn’t move a muscle.
The Inspector:
The level is zero.
The man in the coat pulls her to cross the gates of the city. But at the door, an alarm goes off.
She sat on a metal chair that looked new, shining in the darkness, and stared at the ceiling of the room, which was lit by a weak bulb that was not enough to see the palm of her hand.
One of her hands was weighed down by iron bracelets that linked her to the arm of the chair like the bonds of atoms in a molecule.
She leaned her head back and sat there, remembering what happened before she decided to flee to the Melatonin Ghost Town:
They came to her in the middle of the night, while she was sleeping.
They were dressed in black and had no faces.
They took her to a room with white walls and a single chair. They told her that she was being accused of dreaming too much.
They said that her dreams were dangerous and that they could destabilize the city.
She tried to tell them that her dreams were harmless, but they wouldn’t listen.
They told her that she would be sent to the Melatonin Ghost Town, where she would never dream again.
The journey to the phantom of Melatonin Town was long and arduous. She was transported in a windowless van, handcuffed and shackled.
The only sound was the engine of the van and the occasional bump in the road. She didn’t know where she was going or what would happen to her when she arrived. She was only sure of one thing: she would never dream again.
She arrived at the Melatonin Ghost Town at night.
The city was dark and silent.
The only light came from the moon and the stars.
She was led to a small room with a single bed and a single chair.
She was told that this would be her new home.
She was told that she would never be allowed to leave. She was told that she would never dream again. She sat on the bed and stared at the wall. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to live without dreams. She closed her eyes and tried to dream, but nothing happened. She was trapped in a world without dreams. She was trapped in the phantom of Melatonin Town.

This city seceded from the Bat State after a violent struggle to become independent. It happened twenty years ago when the President of the Bat State, Kerambooz, ordered that dreams and desires replace currency. The official currency of the Bat State became a dream or a desire, depending on the value of the item. For example, you could pay for your coffee with two dreams and half a desire.

President Kerambooz held a press conference in which he explained that dreams and desires were leading his people to hell and that he was the savior who would save his people from eternal torment. His language was crude, and his appearance resembled a penguin with legs shorter than his torso and large feet. He had short arms, a short neck that was so fat you could barely see the folds, and dark, long clothes. He always wore concave glasses that never left his eye sockets.
He hated music and art except for the academic kind. He also ordered the execution of any artist who practiced art without attending the Bat State’s art colleges or obtaining a government permit to practice art. Art was banned in schools. Kerambooz would often say, “I am the father who protects your children from what imagination does to them when they are young.” Imagination will bring many dreams and desires, and your children will not be able to exchange them for goods. Perhaps a destructive generation will grow up, burdened with dreams and desires. Do you want that hell for your children?”

And the crowds would chant, “Long live Kerambooz, the Bat Man!”
After a while, a group of people rebelled against the theft of their dreams and desires. They evaded paying taxes and services and tried to grow vegetables at home to avoid paying because they believed that without dreams and desires, they were like the dead, walking corpses. They were called the Melatonin Ghostly Group.
The Melatonin Ghostly Group was a ragtag group of rebels who believed that dreams and desires were essential to human life. They lived in the shadows, always looking over their shoulders, lest they be caught by the Bat State’s enforcers.
The Melatonin Ghostly Group carried out a series of daring raids against the Bat State’s infrastructure. They sabotaged power plants, disrupted communications networks, and even managed to steal a few nuclear warheads. The Bat State was furious, and Kerambos vowed to crush the rebels once and for all.
The crowds feared for their children, and if the matter of one of them was exposed, he would be handed over to the authorities who would distill his dreams on a dream distillation device until the last dream and desire, then he would be executed in the public bat square.
And the crowds chant, “Long live Kerampus, the protector of our children from the hell of imagination.”
The girl remembers the day her lover, one of the leaders of the Melatonin Ghost group, was publicly executed. She stood among the crowds, looking at him for the last time, trying to hold back her tears so as not to expose her affair. Especially since she was a girl, and if her affair was discovered, she would be branded a harlot, her family ostracized in a small prison, and she killed. Because Krampus also believed that women are the root of all evils and desires. So her punishment was harsher and reached her family for fear of spreading the matter.
As for sex in the state of the bat, it was allowed two days each month for each couple, and the couple was injected on those two days with a drug whose effect lasted only three hours. To give them the desire to practice love for the continuity of the offspring of the bat people.
And it was not allowed outside the scope of marriage.
As for choosing a partner for each person, a committee called the Bat Progeny Committee was assigned to him, which takes the names and records of the girls and boys who have reached the age of 21 this month and chooses a girl for each young man. A representative is sent with an answer to the young man and the girl to inform them that they will be spouses this month.
Whoever did not agree with the state’s choice was punished with life imprisonment.

The girl wakes up to a voice outside, trying to understand what the voice is saying, but she fails because she is exhausted to the extent that prevents her from distinguishing what the voice contains.
She went back again, then closed her eyes and continued her memories that weighed heavily on her:

The Melatonin Phantom Movement decided to declare independence after the execution of her lover. But first, they had to agree on land they could take and establish their independent state, separate from the Bat State. They agreed to call it the City of the Melatonin Phantom.
But the question remained: where, when, and how?
She remembered that one day she had felt dizzy and feverish, and had to be taken to the hospital. She stayed there for four days, living among the inhabitants of her state who were empty of dreams, devoid of desire and melatonin. In the first few hours, she was able to see how they moved and spoke like automatons, slowly and clumsily, with their speech devoid of passion. At night, they would stare at the ceiling of the room until morning. But after the first night, she no longer realized that she was different from them. She had paid for her first night’s stay, and so she lived for four days without dreams or melatonin. She was forced to do this to get a discharge permit.
But she was recording the difference in her nature during the four days.
On the first day, she wept secretly and tried to close her eyes to dream. On the second night, she stared at the ceiling of the room aimlessly until morning. On the third and fourth nights, she felt nothing.
She left the hospital for a friend’s house in the group and asked him to inject her with a sleeping pill that he was secretly buying from a dealer on the border of their state. He injected her with it and she slept for three consecutive nights. She remembered the sequence of her dreams well.
The first night, she dreamed of a field of flowers that stretched as far as the eye could see. The flowers were all different colors, and they swayed in the wind like a sea of waves. She ran through the field, laughing and singing.
The second night, she dreamed of a city made of glass. The buildings were tall and slender, and they sparkled in the sunlight. She walked through the city, marveling at its beauty.
The third night, she dreamed of a flying carpet. She rode on the carpet, soaring through the air. She flew over mountains and valleys, rivers and seas.
When she woke up, she felt refreshed and invigorated. She knew that she had to find a way to create a new world, a world where people could dream again.
She gathered the members of the Melatonin Phantom Movement and told them of her dreams. They were inspired by her vision, and they agreed to help her create a new world.
They traveled to a remote island in the middle of the ocean. They built a city on the island, a city where people could dream again.
The city was called the City of Dreams. It was a beautiful city, with gardens and fountains, and buildings made of crystal. The people of the City of Dreams were happy and content. They lived in peace and harmony.
The Melatonin Phantom Movement had succeeded in creating a new world, a world where people could dream again.

When she returned from the hospital, she did not feel the air or the sun. She saw the sky, a heavy hat on top of the earth, and her steps were steady and slow. She saw the flowers as if they were a flock of crows devouring decaying corpses, and their scent filled the air.
She remembers when she slept that the first thing she saw was a general in a military uniform cutting off similar heads with no distinctive features as if it were a logarithmic repetition without end.
She was very frightened, and when she opened her eyes, she was reassured that she was in her friend’s house. She went back to sleep. This time, the dream was lustful. She dreamed of a girl she had secretly loved before she got married two years ago. She saw her naked of everything except her corset, which was like two apples that had not yet fully ripened. After that, she was sitting lying on her bed in her family’s house. Before she interrupted them because of her rebellion, they signed a deal with her that she would leave the house so as not to influence the rest of her brothers and that they would remain silent… She continued while remembering her dream that she loved and crying when she remembered it. You see that girl with buttocks that resemble the buttocks of Greek goddesses walking with her, so nothing will hinder you until you reach That bundle that resembles a hole in the middle of the sky… She remembers that she started by kissing it between her thighs until the other gasped, then she began to lick her breasts until her nipples swelled, and she kissed her like she had never kissed before. Her dream continued for hours, and when she woke up for a moment, she found her clothes wet, as her water mixed with her dream, generating a sire-enforced melatonin bed. …
She did not remember the dream the night before, or she did not want to remember a dream after the dream she loved.
The Melatonin Ghost group recorded their dreams in notebooks that were collected for fear that if they were all killed, someone would come after them and read their written dreams and desires so that they would not die. She remembers that she wrote this dream more than ten times, and even her lover became somewhat jealous of this dream, as he knew Her sexual nature, but jealousy struck his heart due to her attachment to the dream, so much so that he thought in vain about making it come true, but it was impossible because here anyone who deviates from the form of relationships listed under the permissible ones will be immediately fired without trial. A woman cannot express her different inclinations, nor can a man…instead of… The girl was married and might be killed immediately, so he coped with his jealousy and sadness for his beloved and told her that she could express her admiration for any girl if she wanted, but she surrounded him with her hands and kissed him until they joined, then she took off his pants and caressed him, and he gasped until the morning.

Sometime after she left the hospital, the movement decided that the time had come for independence. They could no longer hide their dreams and desires any longer.

On the fifth of March, 2095, the Melatonin Phantom Movement chose a remote land and named it Melatonin Phantom City. They agreed to move there after two weeks, as they wanted to build a concrete wall and gates so that no one from the Bat Man regime’s army could cross.

However, March 5th was declared Liberation Day. There were difficulties in finding and transporting the concrete materials, and the members of the movement had to pay for one day of their dreams each to manage their affairs.

The girl remembers well that after she paid for a shipment of concrete, she asked her friend for a sleeping needle and went to sleep. She hoped, between the folds of her unconsciousness, to repeat the ball in her dream that she had always loved. But this time she didn’t dream at all.

She woke up crying.

Her friend was drinking coffee and talking about how to prevent the entry of the Melatonin Phantom City.

He left his coffee and stood up, forgetting about his meeting.

He asked her with his eyes open why she was so scared.

She answered him coldly, “I didn’t dream. I didn’t dream.”

The Dreamless

The news hit him and the other members of the movement like a thunderbolt.

“You never dreamed again,” he repeated to her.

She shook her head in denial.

They sat looking at each other with fear and anticipation, their eyes wondering if it was real. If so, who was next?

Silence fell like a crow waiting for the war to end. But then an idea occurred to her: maybe she should try again. Maybe the medicine had expired, or something was wrong with her brain. It was weighed down with incomplete memories.

Her friend agreed, and they waited until the next day. They agreed to focus on writing down their dreams the following day.

The Committee of Five

The next morning they woke up in anticipation. But things were as usual, and the members of the movement had no dreams.

When she woke up, her eyes were empty and she said in a weak voice, “I didn’t dream.”

Her friend was silent for a moment, then broke the silence by telling the members of the movement that they should set up a committee of five to decide whether to take the girl with them. They didn’t know if this was a virus or an infection that could kill or absorb their dreams. One of them suggested that she might have caught it in the hospital.

She listened to them with hollow ears and a heavy head.

The consensus was to leave her here in the Croombus colony. Her friend was forced to agree for fear of everything they had built collapsing. She nodded her head in agreement.

Fourteen days passed, and the melatonin ghost town declared its independence. Croombus’s position was unexpected for them. He did not pay attention to them but attended a press conference in which he repeated that it was a city of the wretched and the immoral bats. He said that their separation and isolation protected his people from their melatonin diseases.

The crowd chanted, “Long live Croombus, the Batman!”

Alienation

She lost touch with the members of her movement and became isolated in the old headquarters of the movement. She would wake up in the morning and try to shake her head like a soda bottle, hoping that it would fizz with dreams, but each day was a new failure.

So she decided to write down the dreams she wanted to dream. Every day she would wake up and write down a dream and weave it, feeling the rush of melatonin as if she had slept in the dream world for years.

But after years, she decided to find out the secret of why her dreams had stopped at night while she was weaving them on paper in the morning. She had not lost her passion for dreaming or her desire, and her melatonin levels were normal. So why had her brain stopped producing dreams at night?

One day she remembered, as she was weaving one of her dreams, that dream she had always loved and feared would disappear, so much so that she had written it down dozens of times.
But she couldn’t finish the thought. Her body had become emaciated. Her appetite for food had decreased to the point where she ate only crumbs to avoid falling. Her face, which had once been collagen-painted with delicate and fresh features, was gone. Her features now looked decades older, as if she had skipped ahead to the distant future without any prior agreement with her.
As for her young body, it now resembled a cane. Her movements were as rickety as her speech and as slow as her steps.

She vomited most of the time and recounted dreams she had never seen.
An office full of paper and ink. Neglected coffee cups. A dark room. That was her life. Devoid of passion, of the desire for anything except to weave dreams.
One morning she woke up in a panic, having seen her friend’s face in a passing gesture or flash.
She opened her eyes eagerly, trying to believe that she had seen her in a dream, for years of empty dream tapes had exhausted her.
She leaned over the paper and recounted her dream, based on a flash of a face whose features had taken root in the barren soil of her dreams, to sprout images that carried between their folds desire, longing, and memory. Then her brain processed them in time equations led by melatonin in the memory factory.

Passion

Her name was Passion. She thought about her a lot, trying to sleep over and over again in the hope of seeing her face again. Her stomach was filled with sleeping pills. Night after night, like someone waiting to give birth. Yes, childbirth from memory.
Over the previous years, she had accumulated many papers filled with dreams that were never realized or completed.
But on a Tuesday morning, there was a ritual that only men participated in. They would gather to cleanse themselves of any desire that might have grown in their hearts and minds. They would listen to recorded words and speeches of Carambos and weep for sins they had not committed.
It was a very hot day. She woke up feeling disgusted by the emptiness of her dream memory, then felt the heat of the day and took off her nightgown without going to the desk to write down the alleged dream of the day, as if she had decided to stop or repeat a dream.
Under the water, she closed her eyes and the smell of lavender soap filled the air. Then she muttered, “What if it was him?”
She pulled out the towel and tied her hair back, then decided to make breakfast and eat it naked. This was the first time she had had an appetite for food in years.
She could only find a piece of butter, two eggs, and a tomato, as she rarely buys groceries.
She put the pan on the fire and felt the smell of the butter caress her brain cells. She smiled, and it was her first smile in a long time.
She sat down to eat her breakfast naked, just as she wanted.
The text is about a woman named Passion who is struggling with her mental health. She is haunted by empty dreams and a lack of desire. One morning, she wakes up in a panic after seeing her friend’s face in a dream. This leads her to reflect on her life and her lack of passion. She decides to try to change her life by starting with a simple act: eating breakfast naked.
She paused for a moment before the mirror, caressing her naked body. It was wilted, yet she cherished it. She scattered what remained of her clothes, which bore no signs of neglect or wear; for even fabrics, like our hearts, fray if neglected…

There it was, the dress she adored, blazing with yellow flowers like discs of the sun. She donned it braless, with a summer shawl draped over… and concealed the darkness of her eye sockets with black sunglasses. And she wondered, how strange it is to hide darkness with darkness…

But such philosophical questions would not detain her now. There was no more time for them, nor answers…

She left her home, deciding to walk as it wasn’t far, knowing well her fondness for purple flowers, so she bought herself a rose along the way.

Hesitating greatly before the door, she pondered ringing the bell but believed there was no more room in time or memory to waste further chances.

Birth from Memory

A woman in her late thirties opened the door, slender, her echo in her black dress resembling two ripe peaches… Her red hair cascaded back, and she wore mid-length black shoes…

“Passion,” that was her first word. “Don’t you recognize me?”

But she hesitated, fell silent as if digging deep into her memory for that difficult-to-birth fetus from long ago…

She removed her glasses slowly and fearfully, his scent permeating the space.

Passion replied, “You know that I know you well. Where have you been?”

She pulled her inside with a passion surpassing the letters of her name.

Without a word, she kissed her, undressed her, and sipped from her body like a thirst in the desert finding a lone raining cloud…

She sighed and asked her, “Where have you been?”

“A long story and I’m too exhausted to remember it.”

“But tell me, how long have you desired…”

She continued, “Since my husband’s death, I was both sad and happy. Sad because he died despite my intense hatred for him, for he was rude like the rest. But I knew I would not marry again, for you know when you bear a child different in mental abilities, the state of Krampus fears you’ll bear another, so they prevent your fertilization again. So, I bore only him and was forced to remain single for the rest of my life.”

“On one of my days of deep sorrow, I dreamed of you, resembling our current dream. I awoke with my waters mixed with yours.”

The other wept much, regretting not having searched for her all these years.

But Passion told her she must return now and come back tomorrow morning, for after the purity rituals, the males of the family would pass by to check on her and console her in her calamity with her child, whom she says she loves more because he is different and because he is her key to salvation from this rotten system. She kissed her a farewell kiss, let her dress, and left.

“Goodbye,” she said and went away.

That night, she slept profoundly, and her dreams returned once more. She awoke crying and screaming, “I am dreaming. I am dreaming.” Then she realized she didn’t want anyone to notice, so she rushed to her papers to record, for the first time in years, a complete, true dream…

Where Dreams Hide

She hesitated before recalling her dream, fearing it might be hallucinations. But she remembered it well as if she were still there.
On a small hill by a green lake, she found her lover bathing in the lake’s waters, diving in and emerging with hair red like flames, laughing, teasing her nipples as the lake water mixed with red, and from between her lover’s thighs, a dragon emerged, splitting her in two, then flew away…

Her hand trembled as she wrote it down, but she knew well it was a manifestation of her fears of loss. She put down the pen and remembered she was preparing to go there…
She washed her body quickly, took two bites from a buttered loaf, put on her glasses, and left.
She opened the door to find her, the purple rose in her hair and smiled…
They went to her bed, found it filled with roses, embraced, and gasped repeatedly until they were exhausted…
Passion said in a tender voice, “Sleep here tonight, no one is here.”
She nodded as if to affirm her words.
But she woke up startled by the recurring dream of the lake, looked at her, and kissed her.
She dressed and left, for she feared new places, especially with a recurring dream like this.
She returned to her home, feeling an odd heaviness, like a she-wolf anticipating an earthquake or a new cosmic explosion.
She wondered, where do dreams hide and return? But she preferred not to think, for she was exhausted.

Absence

Days passed in successive bouts of aimless sleep… But she decided to buy the newspapers; perhaps she could sketch the contours of a reality she was unaware of.
She went to the news vendor and paid him with her last dream in exchange for the newspaper, wanting to rid herself of it.
She returned home. She hesitated a lot before opening it, but she wanted to settle her reality.
She opened it very slowly as if fearing a bullet would fire from an old gun…
But reality was drawn and dictated with all absurdity and precision…
The page of Bat Morality published her picture with the following writing:
During a neighbor’s nightly stroll, he saw a girl with this lady in her bed, ablaze with desire.
He kindly reported to the Bat authorities in the morning, and the accused was arrested and executed by firing squad, but the other woman was not identified.
The news ended there.

And when her tears wet the newspaper, she saw the purple rose blending with the red next to it in her picture in the newspaper.
She tore up the newspaper went to her sleeping pills and slept for three more nights.
Days and nights passed, and she had frightening and flimsy dreams, but she did not write any of them down and burned all the papers of her dreams except for the one she loved, she left one copy of it because she no longer needed to complete or repeat it.
The doorbell rang softly at first, but she laughed at herself because she wished in her heart of hearts that it would be the Krampus forces to get her out of this gray spot.
She opened the door with eyes staring into the void. “Who are you?” she asked.
With your permission, lower your voice. I am from your friend A in the movement. He heard about the execution of a woman you knew from a long time ago, so he wanted to ask about you.”
“I am a driver on the outskirts of the cities. I joined the movement after their independence, but I preferred to be a liaison between here and there.”
She replied coldly, “But this work could cost you your life, young man.”
He answered, “Yes, but I must do it. The city of Melatonin Ghost must grow and expand.”
She laughed sarcastically and said, “You all create the same fate.”
Then she said, “Never mind, what do you want? I’m fine.”
Friend A wonders if you are dreaming,” he repeated.
Yes, I dream. Tell him that my dreams have returned so he doesn’t worry.”
Yes, I will tell him and get back to you with the answer.”
She didn’t care and said, “Yes, yes.”
She closed the door and went to sleep.
Weeks passed, and flimsy, she felt that the world was without weight, without color, without smell, she had become like the crowd despite her dreams continuing.
In the morning she enters the bathroom to take a shower, she does not feel the rhythm of the water drops on her thin body, although the water drops are stronger than her, because the dreams had eaten her up, as if she were the winged dragon that had torn the body of her beloved purple.
She tries to retrain her senses but fails. She holds a guava fruit that has always aroused the cells of her mind and aroused her desire, but she cannot find its smell, as if the loss has erased the smell of the world in her nose.
She rearranged her room as she used to love it, and put on her favorite perfume, but life was without weight or color.
She tried to write her dreams but they were without destination, incomplete, like a fetus that was miscarried after its first heartbeat.
One day she decided to write her story, it might be the only thing left.
She continued for months writing it until she reached the gray point that she lives in.
She could not overcome it even in her imagination on paper, as if the loss was a silkworm that fed on what was left of her imagination to weave a funeral dress that she would wear in the remaining time she had in the gaps of time.
The sound of the door broke her silence.
She walked slowly, a prisoner of war afraid of his turn to be shot, and muttered, “Oh, Lorca, how were you before that stupid bullet?”
If that bullet had a memory, it would have turned away before hitting him.
She opened the door quietly like the dead to find the messenger from the Melatonin Ghost City.
Madam, friend A sent me to tell you that you will be taken there on the coming Thursday night.”
He left her an envelope and left.
She did not utter a word and did not open the envelope. She put it on a desk filled with the paper of her unfinished story and her expired dream.
She sat down, puffing cigarette smoke into the air with her eyes wide open, wondering if she would leave the only place that carried the memories of incomplete dreams in the atoms of its air.
She slept a long sleep like an animal in winter.
She woke up with many overlapping pictures and dreams, she could not focus on their features.
She opened the envelope to find in it:

From friend A

Welcome to the Melatonin Ghost City.
She dropped it from her hand to fall into the trash can as if it had chosen its fate without being guided by a human hand.
And she returned to her slumber Doll house

She woke up on the appointed day and immersed her body in water with lavender soap… Ha ha, the scent has returned once again. She closed her eyes, and all the memories passed by her like a professionally produced film reel.
She sipped her last coffee here in the dollhouse, as she named it in the recesses of her mind. She considered the memories as dolls, with her subconscious playing with their strings in the theater of memory.
She pulled out her red bag and placed inside it the papers of her story and dream, a purple rose she had bought days ago to place on her friend’s grave whose location she did not know, and a guava fruit.
She wore her dress with yellow flowers and waited.
The doorbell rang, and she headed with her bag and opened it. She did not speak to the messenger who led her to the truck and they departed.
The silence was broken by a voice from behind the door.
Friend A wants to meet you.
He pulled from her hand, which was cuffed to the metal chair, the bracelets that bound her to it.
She felt a strong headache but did not feel the weight of the memories that used to exhaust her.
“Welcome to the city of the melatonin ghost, how do you feel?”
“I want to sleep,” she answered.
“You will sleep here, and you will dream,” he replied.
She smiled a sarcastic smile as he puffed his hookah smoke in her face.
“Just lead me to where I can sleep,” she repeated.
“You will sleep. You will dream,” he echoed.
The sound of a crash on the floor woke him… There was his cat, Lorca, knocking the vase off the table once again.
“Here you are again, cat.”
“Now you’ve cut off the end of my story…”
He went to prepare his coffee and continued writing his long dream before the details were lost, as he had spent the last of his money on those pills to enter the world of his dreams, which had been feeble lately. The publisher wanted his new story, or else he wouldn’t pay this month, and consequently, he and his cat would be on the streets.
He kept writing until evening but woke up before the end, and now his mind was empty.
The silence was broken by the phone ringing.
“Hello: yes, I’m finished.”
He hung up the phone.
“You damn publisher, take it without an end.”
Insomnia returned, and he couldn’t sleep that night, back to futile attempts at sleep and blank papers.
He closed his eyes, hoping to sleep until morning.
He managed to sleep for about an hour. He woke up, quickly drank his coffee, and wore the only suit he owned.
He put food for his cat, closed the door, and left. Now he would walk for an hour because he couldn’t afford the bus fare. Hunger pinched his stomach as he hadn’t eaten for two days.
On the way, the smell of fresh bread tantalized his nose, which he hadn’t tasted for a while.
He arrived at the newspaper office.
“But the elevator is broken, sir,” the building guard replied.
“Ha ha, objective coincidence plays a great role in my day,” he muttered and scoffed.
He climbed to the sixth floor with exhausted strength.
He went to the boss’s office.
“Please come in, sir,” the secretary said.
He sat in the opposite chair. “The story, Mr. President.”
After ten minutes: “But don’t you think we should cut the pornographic scenes since we address the public?”
He paused for a moment and answered, “Yes, yes,” as he thought about the resemblance between Krampus and his boss at work, how he resembled Friend A, and how the girl resembled his friend who had committed suicide years ago. Tears fell, but he smiled, remembering the money he needed, so he would cut some parts of his dream to avoid homelessness.
“Then where is its end?” his boss interrupted his reverie.
The writer thought of a trick and quickly answered: “We’ll leave the ending for each reader to write one they like and send it to us in the readers’ mail.”
The boss laughed loud, hoarse laughs and liked the idea.
The writer felt relieved; he could eat today and have two glasses of wine after the exhaustion of his incomplete dreams.
He lifted the phone receiver and ordered the writer’s check to be cashed.
The writer sighed and began to imagine the smell of wine and grilled meat.

The Dream Tavern

He returned to his small home, a space burdened with emptiness except for a single room that cradled within its corners a small toilet, a couch, and a desk. He gazed deeply at its corners; he loved it, for it was the haven of his dreams, shielding him from the harshness outside. He feared losing it, but here were his dreams, saving him once again. Exhausted and weary to the point that he lay down on the couch and plunged into a deep slumber, so much so that he didn’t even place his cat’s food in its bowl. But animals have their way of surviving; Lorca, the clever cat, tore open the plastic bag and ate until his stomach swelled.
After hours of deep sleep, he awoke to find his cat stretched out, belly bloated—it had been killed by the gluttony of eating. It had devoured the food bag and died choking on it. He sat beside it, unsure whether to cry or laugh; it wasn’t hunger that killed it, but satiety. What funny equations these were. He gently picked it up and went out to the building’s garden, dug a final resting place for it, and covered it up.
He felt a heaviness in his head. He bathed, but then he sensed the scent of lavender that he had known in his dream. He went out, dressed in his favorite pink trousers and a shirt studded with yellow flowers. He left a note on his desk, “I may be late returning,” and left. He traversed the city’s paths and bought bread, which he hadn’t eaten despite his hunger the previous days, but he had learned a lesson from his cat and now feared satiety—for death by hunger is lighter than death by overindulgence.
At the edge of an alley was his favorite tavern. He entered and sat at his table with the single chair in the corner of the tavern and ordered a bottle of red wine. He sipped the first glass, then tears fell into it as he pondered the point of wine with loneliness. Even his cat had committed suicide with its food and left him there.
His reverie was interrupted by the voice of a girl with red hair and a purple dress asking, “May I have a glass?” He nodded to her in resignation, a being alone except for his dreams. She gently drank the glass and pulled him by the hand to leave together.

Krampoos. The poet. The city.

The sound of rats stirred the wild instinct of his cat, and he awoke to his cat Lorca preying on a rat from the garbage heap. It had been a tough night; he slept here in the city streets, wrapped in his cover, leaning on his bag that contained nothing but his papers and pens. Stories and dreams are unfulfilled. When his editor at the magazine refused to continue his employment because his writings were contrary to the city’s morals and incited rebellion and dreaming. The building owner threw him out after rent for his room had accumulated, and he found himself and his cat on the streets of Krampus city.

He had half a bottle of brandy left, a gift from a homeless man who had admired his hair the previous night. He drank half of it, and here was the other half. He sipped it as if sipping droplets of a dream amidst endless funerals of death and began to raise his voice and narrate.

Outside the colors of music,
We become paintings for strangers,
The scent of dead skins saturated with the harshness of un-lived desires,
An artist’s camera eavesdrops on all those unfulfilled dreams.

The picture has a provocative scent,
Stirring the sounds of our desires.

A man with one leg dances the tango with emptiness,
The alley’s pavement is studded with summer insects.
In the backstreets,
A window onto a room without walls,
The piano doesn’t work,
The pianist’s piece was never completed,
The ceiling’s dampness ruined the last piano.

Life always has another opinion,
The ideas that weren’t written were killed,
Lorca wanders the backstreets with the head of a dead dog,
Repeatedly trying to see his face in the broken glass remnants.

Light doesn’t breathe here,
The sounds of rats in a collective symphony without a maestro,
Lorca is hungry,
His hand stretches among the food remnants,
Swallowing what’s left of the dinner,
Followed by his pet rat,
Lorca mutters:
Among the remnants of lives, abandoned voices,
The scent of our skins, a map without a destination,
Here I am with a dog’s head and my rat,
Sipping what’s left of an Arak bottle,
He sleeps.

Sleep is a gray area,
The highest point of all lives,
We throw the dice there without fear,
Breaking the barriers of silence,
Coloring death to be beautiful,
Arranging our funeral,
Sewing our dreams,
Remembering the water of our mothers’ wombs,
At the first scream of car horns,
We collide with life.