Wherein we join the world’s favorite somnambulant, Reign Bartolomew, in another conversation with one of his inner demons.
They sit, Reign and his Demon, wrapped in ancient heavy velvet dressing gowns, sipping an unknown liquid from dirty goblets in front of a kingly fireplace that has flame but emits no heat.
R: I had that dream again.
D: Which one?
R: The one about the Sargasso Sea.
D: When was that, when you had the dream?
R: Last night. And before, many befores.
D: Were you dying in the dream?
R: No. Simply – becalmed.
D: Good. I don’t like it when you die in your dreams. It means the end of us. What happened in the Sargasso Sea?
R: Nothing.
D: What kind of nothing?
R: A nothing that was nothing. No sound. No wind. No feeling.
D: Surely you felt the water around you?
R: No.
D: The seaweed. There is much seaweed in the Sargasso Sea.
R: No. I felt… nothing.
D: What did you do there?
R: I floated. Ennui is bred there. Heavy. But light, floating to the top like cream in a bottle. It dragged at me, but I floated away from it.
D: You weren’t ready.
R: For what?
D: For whatever fear it is that haunts you. Instead, you wait.
R: For what?
D: You tell me. What is it you wait for?
R: I wait for you?
D: Me?
R: Yes, you, and the others. I never know which one of you will be here when I wake.
D: Do you know why we’re here?
R: To torment me?
D: Do we do that?
R: Sometimes.
D: That is not why we are here. We, too, are waiting.
R: For what?
D: For you.
R: Me? Why?
D: You’re not ready to know, yet.
R: Will you kill me?
D: Do you want to be killed?
R: I don’t think so. Then I’ll live?
D: If this is what you call that.
R: I don’t understand?
D: If floating in the Sargasso Sea, experiencing nothing, observing ennui, is what you desire, is what you call living, then who am I, who are we, to deny you that small pleasure?
R: I’m very tired.
D: Then sleep.
R: Will you be here when I wake?
D: We demons are a fickle lot. He – or she – who is supposed to be here, will be here. Let that suffice.
R: I have no choice. But I shall not dream of the Sargasso Sea.
D: How can I refute that?
R: You can’t. I control you.
D: (chuckles) Of course you do.
****
