Here is a dream Jimmy has had again and again: he is sitting in a cage.
It is, he thinks, probably not a particularly nice birdcage. No one’s bothered to gild it; maybe he should consider it lucky for the white polymer enameling that means the bars don’t rust, but in some ways, it’s more insulting that no one’s tried to dress up that it’s a cage. There is straw on the bottom, a water dish, a small plate of fruit. There are mirrors and colorful bells and perches hanging from the ceiling. There is a knife on the floor, half-hidden by the straw and so polished that it almost looks like a mirror.
As he starts to pull his hands away from the straw he’s been sat upon, recoiling from the knife for reasons he doesn’t know how to explain, he can see he’s not alone. There’s a bird in here with him, a little yellow canary. (Of course there is.) The bird mostly hops, rather than flying, but its wings aren’t clipped; it could fly if someone let it out of the cage. It has a lovely song, and it sings it over and over, as though it doesn’t know what else to do when it’s locked in.
That’s normally when Jimmy looks for the door, then. There’s a little black digital lock holding the cage shut. It’s on the wrong side of the bars and the bars are too close together for him to reach anyway. The first time he had the dream, he spent the whole time there, trying to figure out how to get at the lock. He couldn’t figure it out, though, not before he suddenly stopped being able to breathe.
The rest of the times he’s had the dream, he’s bothered to look outwards. There, he sees people; many of them are familiar, but most of them are strangers, blurry figures that are only distinctive in that all their eyes are looking at the cage. He yells for their attention, rattles the cage, rages, and sometimes, one of the familiar faces sees him. Tango and Joel at least tried the lock; they didn’t know the passcode any more than he did. Others talk to him, but don’t bother with the lock. Jimmy tries not to be angry. It’s not like it will open without the code.
No one else seems to see him at all, though. They’re too focused on the bird. His words steadily get more and more drowned out by the birdsong, even as the room starts to heat up and smoke starts to coil on the ground. By that point, not even the people who know Jimmy seem to be able to hear him over mesmerizing birdsong, and as he desperately tries to get someone’s attention, vision swimming in and out, desperately tries to reach the lock again, do anything, nothing happens.
And then, one time, they turn to look at him as the bird succumbs before he does to the smoke.
They still don’t get the door open in time.
But the last time Jimmy has the dream, it’s shown him what to do.
He picks up the knife.
And as he exits the mine with blood and yellow feathers on his hands, he does not regret it at all.
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jean moreau, and faith and religion and the absence of it.
the sunshine court, nora sakavic // the unabridged journals of sylvia plath, sylvia plath // "stay down" by boygenius ft. julien baker, lucy dacus, and phoebe bridgers // the denial of st. peter, caravaggio // salome with the head of st. john the baptist, simon vouet // henry iv pt. ii, william shakespeare // the rebirth of the arts, charles haslewood shannon // daredevil: "born again" (1986) by frank miller et al. // "ash-wednesday", t.s. eliot // map of hell, botticelli
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" at last, when all of the world is asleep,
you take in the blackness of air,
the likes of a darkness so deep,
that God, at the start, couldn't bear "
de selby (part 1) - hozier
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