Atoms of a Lifetime

A night squeezed into a small bed brews vivid dreams. Clutching my body at different positions, the mind forces itself into a place it doesn't normally venture. There is physical evidence of this in the morning: two fingerprints below my shoulder where they rested for the entire night, soft scratch marks all over my arms and stomach. And beneath that there is the memory that contains the night. My peripheries where the blankets couldn't reach, for instance, can still feel the intense cold. Deep down bubbles of a dream still rise, expand and pop throughout the day.

It's difficult to grasp why any part of my mind would not question myself as a vampire. Drinking tea with two other vampires, who called themselves des gomps, I knew only that I was socially uncomfortable with them. In the public square, their French was rapid and unrelenting. They made no excuses on my behalf, though I understood almost everything they said. It was the one sentence directed at me that I failed to understand. It was a phrase I knew that I did not know. It was said quickly, so even if I wanted to look it up later, I couldn't. I muttered a couple of friendly curses at them, so as to feign comprehension. They knew, however, that I didn't know what they said. They yelled at me, "You can't understand us! Putain, you're good for nothing!" I do understand, I tried to persuade them. "OK, then what were we saying?"

I couldn't answer, but luckily two plump blondes came up to our table and distracted us from the conversation at hand. A few sentences later it was clear they were hitting on us, and it was understood among the gomps that because the girls were not good looking we would be able to feast on them later. This was the arrangement we had worked out then, before the dream had started: we could drink the blood of unattractive girls who hit on us, but the girls who we mutually understood to be attractive, we would leave for each to develop natural relationships: one-night stands, friendships, or they might even become lovers, girlfriends, or wives.

Somehow or other I had made my way past demilitarized zones into North Korea. A mighty cold-war style stadium stood before me. Inside, Bill Clinton and Kim Jong-Il were meeting before thousands of Koreans. I knew that to escape North Korea I would have to seek Clinton's pardon and not his Jong-Il's umbrage. But to do this I would have to approach the center stage. I went around the stadium only to find a mansion that brushed up against the elliptical walls. I went through a few French doors, windowed, empty rooms to the backyard where there were five American girls playing frisbee and barbequeing steaks. I asked them the way to the center stage and they said they didn't know it. I looked over the fence, which was more like a huge wall with ramparts and was about to make my way toward it when I thought to ask the girls: "What the hell are you doing in North Korea?" The answer seems to have escaped me now, but I do know that they offered me one of the steaks on the grill.

Dinner was just being set when I remembered my way back home. I scrambled towards the fence and climbed over it. The steaks were getting cold, but I knew I had to get to Bill Clinton or else I would be forever exiled in a country stricken by famine, poverty and international isolation. There, just over the fence, was a vast, emptied stadium that, at once, symbolized my depression. It was so large and empty as to be impressive. I saw the gray, worn-down stage, the entrances and the bleachers. Not even a piece of trash graced them. And, hopeless, I wearily turned around towards the five American girls waiting for me to eat their dinners.