We Work In the Dream Factory

At first, we loved our new employment. We lorded it over the other devils, laughing when they spoke of their tasks: the fires they lit in the bone-dry underbrush, for example, or the whispers they had to convey into the ears of tyrants. Our assignment was nothing like that; we weren’t even initially sure we were at work in the inferno, despite the pitchforks we still carried. Perhaps there had been a loophole, a crisscrossing of bureaucracy from the heavens. For even the nightmares had a soothing hum to them. And the other dreams, the daylight reveries, the sleep imaginings, seemed not at all harmful to those who were to receive. Caught up in their bundles, these dreams were small, wispy things, all eyes and mouths, with only the occasional set of teeth.

As we began the distribution, gently cupping the tendrils and urging them to drift towards the dreamers, there appeared to us no horror in what we did. The cat-and-dog naps were enhanced, not hampered, by their hunting dreams, their whispers of swift paw and the fast breaths of prey. There were death-shrieks, of course, but we ignored them.

We soon graduated to fantasies, smoky curlicues that clung to our fingers before letting go to slip into the heads of those who wished for these things. We were far less certain about these, the visions of yet more riches for the rich, of violence for those that, sickeningly, wished for that. But these were doubts only.

Then we moved on to the impossible dreams. These were terrible in a different way: images of food for those who had none, love for those who felt awkward in the seeking of it. These dreams stuck to our hands like spiders, clenched their fangs in our flesh. How had the world grown like this? we wondered. Hopelessness struck terror into our hearts, and in the factory our hooved feet shook.

Below us, the dreamers clamoured. They turned up their faces to us, and we flinched to see them gathering, their mouths widening even for the wisps we could give them. This could indeed be hell, we decided. The horde below us. All those people with their empty arms extended, their mouths open and yearning. All those lips, jaws agape with longing, all those undulating tongues.

Colleen Addison completed a PhD in health information; she then promptly got sick herself. She now lives, writes, and heals on a small island off the coast of Vancouver, Canada. Her work has been published in over 30 literary magazines, including Crow & Crosskeys, 50 Word Stories, and Halfway Down the Stairs. Recently, she became a winner of the George Dila Flash Fiction Contest with Third Wednesday.

A Song for Colleen