Sleep Medicine - Entrée
Treats of a Toll-Road
You’re snacking on In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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Tock... Tock... Tock... Tock… goes Grandfather Ticker. His big, bronze pendulum swings up, drops down, swings up, drops down. It sways with the Wind-blown cottonfruit tassels. It glints like saffron in an angled Sun Fish light. Grandfather Ticker’s hands rotate round his button nose; fraction by fraction by fraction. Grandfather Ticker keeps time with li’l ticker, folded in the grey robe. Grandfather Ticker strikes in sync with the gulp… gulp… gulp… of dream medicine, pulsing in a grey throat. Grandfather Ticker’s glass face pulses too; metronomic rhythm. His face watches the cozy den. His face glares in the sizzling, cinnamon-ginger incense. His face reflects the garnet-cushioned chairs. His face captures the sitting pair.
Another Tock... Tock... Tock... Tock… of Grandfather Ticker’s spinning hands. The hands grab the room and whirl it; so it seems to the sitters. The sitters drop their ampoules of copper. They sink into silky pillows, into soft armchair upholstery. The grey sitter yawns; tilts his head back; watches the ceiling spin. The golden one drops her lids; stretches like a cat on her cushions. Both taste brisk, crisp, sharp old-barn air. The Wind - wrinklier, chillier - pulls it through the window. She makes the whirling room rustle. A hollow rustle, as the room spins, spins, spins from a box to a circle. Followed by hollow tocking, from Grandfather Ticker spin-spin-spinning hands.
Grandfather’s Ticker’s hands spin faster. Tock. Tock. Tock. Tock. Faster. Faster. Faster. Faster. Spinning, and spinning, and spinning through their fractions. Smoke drifts off the cinnamon-ginger incense, twirls through the turning room. It gathers on the rounding corners, replacing terracotta walls with terracotta fog. The cinnamon-ginger smell whips like meringue into something els. A clingy, vegetal smell. The angled Sun Fish light dims. The room’s new fog-light is that of a moon. Beneath the sitters - sinking lower in their chairs, sinking lower with their lids - the floor bubbles, curves, ribs out. The Wind blows still from somewhere; somewhere else. She sounds far away, and carries the cawing of crows. And somewhere in that fog, on that Wind, along those hollowing ribs; old, blind Grandfather Ticker tocks.
One distant Tock; the grey and golden lids fix shut. The walls of fog turn fibrous and carroty. Grandfather Ticker’s pendulum rolls up… and back down, and another Tock strikes. Insensible are the ears on those soft seats of devouring comfort. Insensible to the tock. Insensible to the bone-chimes. Another Tock drifts with the Wind, between the stringy filaments of yam-fog. How wrinkly and cold are the hands of that Wind! The sitters are senseless. With a last groan; a groan that vibrates the fibers; a groan that sets the ribbed room rolling; Grandfather Ticker bids farewell with a final, ancient, Chime.
Mr. Grey dreams, senselessly, to Grandfather Ticker’s toll.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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