Requiem for a Dream

Flames. Bright, unquenchable flames flickering in the distance. And a girl. A beautiful girl standing, watching. My eyes rotate and the image shifts. A car speeding into the darkness. It is a red Ford Fiesta called Alice with tinted windows and a lowered front bumper. Propane Nightmares and smoke from Pall Mall cigarettes escape from the half opened glass and remain floating over the tarmac of Totteridge Lane after we are long gone. We are laughing. We are drunk and laughing. Shaking my head in time with the music I lean my head backwards out of the window and look up into the night’s sky.

“Faster!” I yell, giggling at the adrenaline rush as he laughs and obediently hits the accelerator.

Come Josephine in my flying machine, going up she goes, up she goes!
Balance yourself like a bird on a beam in the air she goes, there she goes!
Up, up, a little bit higher, oh my, the moon is on fire!
Come Josephine in my flying machine, going up, all on, good-bye…

I feel the wind in my hair and I never want this moment to end. I feel so alive. I feel so untamed. I feel so free.

“Faster.” I murmur, knowing that the word will get snatched up by the wind before it reaches his ears.

“Faster, faster, faster.” My lips only mouth the words, and my brows furrow as I try to recall what this moment reminds me of.

Now we’re flying to the moon and back, if you’ll be, if you’ll be my baby…

I sit up suddenly.

“What’s wrong?” he says, but he’s not there anymore.

Got a ticket for a world where we belong…

I smile a little at the beauty, but my eyes are sad. Such devastating beauty. So horribly pure and wonderful. Deadly, but how can you not love her? How can you not want to be her?

My eyes flicker under their lids and the image changes again before I see her. This time I am in a dark room. There are posters on the walls. A hundred nameless faces looking straight at me but avoiding my gaze. This time it is only a matter of seconds before I am clawing at them and laying them all to rest in tatters on the cold stony floor. My nails close around the face of a young girl with dark hair and a gaunt, pallid face. She is standing on a ladder wearing a dress made of paper. I tear her to shreds and find what I want in the space she once occupied. My fingers push to reveal a hidden door. It gives way and opens. Blinding lights pour out and it is several moments before I am able to step out into the next scene. The noise hits me. It is the sound of applause. Clapping hands dance around me as I take the stage. They echo around the vast theatre. I look out at them and slowly I bow low. The crowd erupts. I throw a sideways smile their way as I playfully skip off the stage. Behind the curtain I break into a run. I run past tall buildings and men in suits until they become blades of grass and strands of wheat. A chestnut horse with a white star on his forehead runs beside me. Floating onto his back we gallop into the distance, and my body rises and falls as I dream of Celia…