The Chase

“It’s a tall order.”

There was no response from the young writer. He sat at his desk, covered in shadows, staring at a piece of paper. A pen rested in his relaxed grip. He never worked with the lights on; would ruin the mood.

“Is there anything,” he finally spoke, “you can tell me that’s not in his file?”

The old man thought a moment, and stretching his wings, blocked what small light came into the room through the office door. A mug in hand, he sipped. At the slurping, the youth set down his pen and turned to his employer.

The old man began, “Don’t know. Zeus wants it done, and tonight.” Taking his mug, he turned and walked off. The youth crawled from his high drafting chair, his long thin legs like those of some black spider pulling itself from its hole. Coming to his door, he slowly pushed it closed upon the light of the main office. As the final beams of that heavenly glow were excluded, and the latch clicked shut, the youth returned to his desk.

As if this were not darkness enough, he then spread his black wings and folded them about himself, excluding all but the desk, the paper, and the pen. In this canopy of shadows, he meditated.

“A taste of Hell,” the phrase echoed amid the pinions of his wings. The pen moved over the paper, the nib just floating above that virgin white sheet. The ink was ready. And he wrote the dream. In it, the subject was pursued—by what? The imagination filled that: it could be a wolf, a teacher, a parent, anything. But as he ran, it all started to blur. Coming out of his own mind, the subject would view the whole scene, see the wolf chasing, and himself running.

Then slowly, the subject returns, coming back into his body, back to the hunt. But here, the reintegration gets confused; he still sees himself. There is the taste of Hell, for the subject is running, running away from that monster, and he is running while watching himself run away. He is running because he is now chasing; he is running because he is being chased.

And so, the writer of that dream interrupts the chase, and sets the subject within his office. There, the subject must write his own nightmare.

“It’s a good draft,” says the boss. “But Zeus changed his mind. Here’s the new specs. You’ll need to finish it before you go home today.”

The subject returns to his writing desk to dream up another nightmare.