A dream of evil

Ishtar Gate. Art by the author.

 

Some years ago I had a dream that struck me as one of those more real-than-reality dreams, intense, full of meaning. I was walking in the countryside with a friend, talking and laughing, on some kind of trip. We were walking at the edge of the road on the green grass, the landscape was that of the rural regions of the center of my country.

 

He was walking in front of me, I was concentrating on our talk when a sheep caught my attention.

 

-Hey look, it's the proverbial black sheep!- I said as if it were something funny.

 

 It was an ordinary sheep with ragged, dirty dark gray wool, grazing at the side of the road, for some reason she amused me and I started to talk to her. Then, I realized that at the feet of the sheep began a path in the grass, one of those where the herbs are stomped marking a way. I said goodbye to the sheep, feeling like she was some old friend, and started to walk that little path.The path went off-road along a declining hill, I walked at a good pace, watching the cow turds mining the way. The hill ended and I entered a plain, a country house stood at a small distance, when I was near it the path had faded and a girl stood by the entrance of the house.

 

She was too young, skinny, filthy, her grayish-blue stamped dress was just as dirty as she was. She looked at me with pale brown eyes, part scared, part uninterested. I assumed she lived in the house while noticing she was barefoot with no concern for the cow shit all around.

 

At that time I was 24 or 25 years old I believe. After seeing into her eyes I wanted to fuck her while I told myself that I just wanted to kiss her. So I walked towards her and started to talk softly, my arms went around her and gently put her in the grass. When my face got close to hers I started to see all her freckles and the green of her eyes. She just looked at me with the same intense uncaring gaze. My lust grew and I kissed her.

 

When my lips touched hers I felt a repulsion I had never felt in my life, something crueler, darker than death. Every cell in me choked, dried, and collapsed, I felt the nausea of an intoxicated body that cant trow up, smoke filling my veins, the taste of putrid ash, insanity exploding in my head and every conceivable sickening sensation stroke me at the same time. She was all that life is not.

 

Then I knew that what we call evil is just the absence of love.