gifts

I was wrapping presents for people. I had not bought or made gifts, rather I sorted through my belongings that were packed into a suitcase, searching for something suitable to give away, and found various items of clothing. In particular, I prepared two large sarongs - one deep pink, the other rich turquoise - folding and refolding them so as to present them beautifully. Both sarongs were embroidered and decorated with sparkling sequins and beads and I was able to straighten the sequins and alter the colours of the leaves embroidered on the cloth. I sifted through reams of wrapping paper to find the ideal piece, again to present the gifts beautifully. My brother appeared and commented upon the paper; he liked the same ones that I chose. I was pleased to be able to give the presents, although I also felt as though I was taking away from myself.

moment in the sun

I went for a walk to find a patch of sun. I was wearing a white toweling robe, wrapped snugly about my body. Arriving at a gentle slope of white sand, I decided to sit awhile in the sun. I could see hundreds of bees flying just above the sand and crawling around in it. I waved my hands through the top layer of sand, clearing the way to sit down, sweeping away any bees. I felt something crawling up my left sleeve and thought I must have scooped up a bee. Reaching my right hand up the sleeve, I, sure enough, could feel something up there so I shook it out. A daddy-long-legs spider fell out and scuttled away, then a ten dollar note fell out. I picked up the money and flattened it, ironing out the creases with my hands. After a short while, I stood up and walked back in the direction from which I had come.

cult

B and I paid one hundred dollars to a man as a deposit on a home in St Lucia, Brisbane. Having secured the house, we walked around it, looking in each room and exploring the garden. The previous owners - a man and woman, still living there for now - invited us to come back in the morning to hike to the end of the garden. The man said it would take an hour to walk to the far reaches of the property, and at least an hour to walk back. We were surprised as the back yard certainly didn't seem that big, but we agreed to come back. The next day we arrived, prepared for a long walk. We set out, down the front steps of the house, around the side, through the back garden and further afield. We trudged through muddy patches and scaled the side of a hill. As we ventured further, our memory of where we had come from faded. We ended up arriving at a place where the man and his wife ran a cult. An entire community of people lived there, working away, oblivious to a world outside. We too began to live in the community and work. A couple of years passed when, one day, my friend (who was now a man) awoke to the whole pretense. He began vocalising about how wrong it was and immediately left. I decided to leave too, but I was more covert. I escaped the cult, running from the grounds in the dead of night. On the outskirts I was spied by a group of cult women who screamed at me and chased after me. It was then I realised that I too was a man. I sped on foot as fast as I could possibly go, back through the hills and down the tracks we had walked a few years earlier. I could hardly comprehend how much time had passed or what had transpired. I ran, exhausted yet also exhilarated, all the way back to the house we had bought, narrowly escaping the deranged cult women who threw rocks at me and followed me as far as they were able, until some invisible barrier prevented them from running further. Safe at the house, I found my friend. We no longer wanted the home and happily forfeited our deposit. We set about attempting to resume a normal life in society.

snake swallower

Crossing the threshold of a small house, I was startled by a fat brown cobra sitting just inside the room. He flared his hood threateningly, but I quickly grabbed him around his thick body, one hand just under the hood and the other around the tail, preventing him from biting me whilst I wondered what to do. He writhed about, furious, trying to bite me. Summoning my strength, I hurled him out the door, hoping that he would take the opportunity to escape and disappear into the scrub. Unfortunately, he was too vengeful and returned. A young girl sat in the corner by the door and saw the snake enter. The snake reared and again flared its hood. The snake had changed shape a little: it was now long and thin and its hood sat around its neck like a wide collar out from which it extended its neck, reaching up into the air and striking down repeatedly as it now attempted to bite the girl. Rather than retreating, the girl played with the snake, mocking its angry attack motion by swiping at it, two of her fingers curled in imitation of its fangs. I called out to her to stop, fearful for her safety, but she continued and the snake lunged at her again and again, just short of sinking his fangs into her flesh. Suddenly, as the girl went to say something, the snake extended his neck way out of his collar and poked his head into her mouth and slithered down her throat, his long tail still stretched out across the floor. I was horrified as the girl just sat there with a surprised look on her face. I waited for her death as I imagined the snake would bite her internally and that would be the end. Instead, the snake continued sliding down her throat until even his tail disappeared. His collar was left behind on the floor.

death

I was in a large, bare room with three other people: a woman and a man who were conspirators and were plotting my murder, and a man I believed to be my ally. We had successfully evaded our enemies up to this point, but now we were trapped and our deaths were imminent. They did not force us, rather they compelled us to sit on two wooden seats in the centre of the room. The woman held a syringe in her hand, drawing out the moment. I looked at my friend, one last time, lamenting our premature end. The woman injected me with poison and I immediately died and became a ghost, separating from my dead body, though my spirit, invisible to the others, looked exactly the same as my body had looked in life. My ally stood and embraced the other two people; they did not kill him. It dawned on me that he was, in fact, a conspirator against me. I was deeply betrayed.
I travelled through the halls of the immense building. The rooms teamed with people, walking up and down stairs and riding escalators. Most people I passed could not see me, but every so often I encountered someone who could. These people did not seem to understand that I was dead; they assumed that, because they observed me, I was another living person. I began to realise that people had different levels of awareness and that they saw only what they could comprehend.
At the junction of three escalators, each leading upward in a different direction, I saw a young boy trapped in the space between them. He had somehow jumped the moving handrail into the gap and could not now get out as the mechanisms propelling the escalators - cogs and wheels and loud machinery - blocked his path. The only way out, it seemed, was to wriggle under one of the escalators, through the small gap between the motor and the floor, timing the exit so as not to be crushed by the moving parts. Most people seemed oblivious to his predicament as he did not cry or make any noise; indeed, it seemed that he was too afraid or embarrassed to attract attention to himself. He was focussed on learning the pattern of the machinery, hoping to shoot through the gap at the appropriate time. I joined him on the floor between the three escalators and gently held him back, knowing that the wrong move would lead to a gruesome death. I hailed down an old mechanic wearing dark blue overalls, happy that he could see me. He fiddled with the buttons of the escalators and switched them all off. The boy slid out through the narrow space and was gone. I, however, felt terror at having to go through the gap. Though the machinery had been switched off, the exit was suffocatingly small. I hesitated for what seemed like a long time before noticing another way out that I had not seen before - an opening like a doorway. I simply walked out of the space and the mechanic started up the escalators once more.
I walked up a flight of stairs and, at the top of the stairs, I saw my father. To my delight, he could see me too. I was not sure if he would be able to feel me, so I extended my hand and he held it. He could see me, hear me and touch me. Dad asked me if I was going to come back and live with him now, but I told him that I was held to this building until I finished whatever business I needed to before leaving Earth. We embraced and he went back home. There was no sense of sadness, only joy. I noticed how well and vibrant he looked and I could see that he had extremely developed awareness, that he was able to see and sense my spirit more than anyone else I had met.

pressure

I was sitting toward the back of an auditorium, waiting for a show to begin. The huge room was filled with people and it seemed that there would be speakers and performances of various kinds. The old man next to me began speaking with me and, where at first I didn't mind, he became increasingly confronting, making me extremely uncomfortable. First he said that he could sense when people had too much caffeine pumping though their system, that they were tense and charged. I confessed that I had earlier had two small cups of coffee, but felt fine. He then went on to say that he had lived at the time of Jesus, that he remembered his life and that he remembered me. He said I was Elizabeth. I did not believe him but felt curious nonetheless. He then asked me to sing a particular religious song that I vaguely recall from my youth. I declined but he insisted. Again I declined. Instead of accepting that I did not want to sing, he amplified the pressure. He called the main speaker over from the stage to support him. The man, his voice booming over the sound system, walked up the aisle to the back of the auditorium where we were sitting, stood over me and told me to sing. There was no way now that I would sing, none at all, and my anger and embarrassment was too much. I walked out of the auditorium, turning my back on all that the crowd stood for. Outside, I found my friend, S. She was looking for me, walking through a maze of tents and stalls. We were obviously on the grounds of a big festival, probably religious.