There I was, in her room. There was nowhere I could run, nowhere to hide.

And she looked at me with disdain. "Can't you feel it? This is real! Not a dream! We've been here for hours and still we are here together. So stop praying and start thinking what to do!"

I was praying hard for whoever was dreaming this to wake up. I even promised God that I would attend church every single day if He makes this a dream. I was desperate. Please wake up, whoever you are!

What could I do?

----------------

When we woke up, I was in her room again. 2.32am. The clock thermometer showed 31 degrees celsius.

And she sprang out of her bed, exclaiming,

"What are you doing in my house?"

She looked around and screamed again.

I had no idea how I got to sleep with her. Inexplicable. Bizarre. "Maybe this is a dream," I said.

She thought for a moment before asking, "Whose dream is it then? Mine or yours?"

Her bed was large and comfortable - soft and cool and topped with a fine cream bedsheet. The furniture was dark; the walls were white. The room was air-conditioned. And the bedpost was cold to the touch.

She shuffled around the room, frowning, peeking glances at me. When she finally stood still, the night light was blocked behind her, and I couldn't see her face.

She said, "Yes, you are right."

I called her name and she sighed. "It's so wrong that it makes this feel so right," she said. "Call my name again."

I did not reply.

I said, "I’m sorry. I’m terribly poor at explaining things. And so I love to ask. Even when I know the answers."

Both of us just laid there without words for several minutes. She took the remote control and set the air-conditioner to 16 degrees celsius. Still the clock thermometer showed 31.

"None of us have woken up yet," she said, "we are still here in this dream."

"Yeah," I said.

http://youtu.be/qrOeGCJdZe4

Well, it's necessary to rearrange one's memories to remember the events that happened in the desired manner. Not in their originally experienced form. All that's needed is a series of victories over your own memory.

It was raining rose petals when I reached Keong Saik Road that late afternoon. The red petals turned to blood in my hands. I had to find a place to hide. Fast.

Underneath a shophouse, there was a door with a sign bearing the Chinese word "seven" beside it. The door was open. I ran in.

There was a huge tank of water. Like an aquarium tank for fishes. Very big tank. But there were no fishes. A lady was swimming inside it. Not really swimming. Just suspending inside the tank of water. Looking out of the tank. Looking out at the world. Looking at me.

She was naked. Naked white. Her long hair was black and flowing in the water. Her eyes were black and staring at me. She was white. Pure pure white. And she motioned me to come into the tank.

I hesitated for a while. Not knowing whether I should go in with my clothes on or with my clothes off. I took off my clothes.

The water was piercing chilly. Freezing to my heart. Freezing my heart. And the chill was overwhelming, everywhere, enveloping, suffocating; the fluid hands, the searing cold fingers, scratched, nail scratching, gouged, gouged beneath the skin, cut to the bones, ripped my flesh, my muscles, my tendons, ripping spasms - I, I tried to escape!

I flailed and splashed, and I was drowning. The lady in the water looked at me calmly. Then pulled me to her body. She wrapped her thighs over my waist. And guided me into her warmth. It was the only way to go. Deeper. And deeper.

There was the tide in the tank. The rhythm of the ebbing and the rushing. And we were floating in the tank. The earthquakes. The little earthquakes. Then the rushing again. Quickening. And we were moaning bubbles in the tank. We could not hear a thing. Smell nothing. Floating. Only her. I could only feel her. Feel her warmth. See her. A pure white body. Her round eyes of blackness. Her long hair of blackness. Floating. Moaning. Drowning... dying...

I burst out of the water gasping for air. My feet was totally numb, unable to feel the cold at all. I could still move my hands a little. I struggled to pull myself out of the tank, finally collapsing onto the floor outside.

Shivering, I quickly put on my clothes. Still it did not help. The cold was in me already. The lady in the tank tried to talk to me. But I could not hear her. Her mouth opened and closed. Her hands gesticulated. Eventually, the words appeared on her white body. Chinese words. Calligraphy.

Because there is love, there is pain. I may be dead, but I'm still hurting. On the thousandth night. I'll come back to your side.

I ran out in tears. I ran out in fear. I drove my car to the grave where she was buried. The tiny sapling on the grave had grown to hold a single bud. I pulled the plant out of the soil, and the star from which it was drawing its life from. I thought about how I could destroy the two items, and I swallowed them both.

"The dead has no memory; once forgotten, they are gone."

No one else would know about her death. There was nothing left to mark her grave. I would erase her. Erase her from the world. And I would start running.

I can run. Run. And I have been running. Running from the places that remind me of her. Running from the things that remind me of her. Just looking ahead always, and running. Running. Running till I have nowhere to run from myself. My memories. My dreams.

There is no escape from destiny.

This is the thousandth night.
This is the thousandth night.
This is the thousandth night.

The telephone rings.
I put down my book, Soseki Natsume's Ten Nights of Dream.
The hospital tells me that my sister and her husband are dying.
I arrive too late at the hospital.
The doctor tells me that only the baby is saved.
A nurse carries out the baby.
It is a baby girl.
Her eyes are wide open, but the blackness within are lazy, unmoving.
Her cheeks are rosy.
Her lips are red.

She opens her mouth,
and counts,

"One thousand."

Living is a scary thing.

What more, being half alive.

She dreamt.

I was taking another woman from behind. This other woman had her shirt on. But her skirt was lifted up above the waist. Her panty lay on the floor. She dreamt she saw me taking another woman from behind.

It was in the semi-darkness of a corner of the room. This other woman had her elbows resting on a desk. Her back was arched to meet her smooth ass to my grinding hips. Her long legs were splayed open like an inverted V. Her feet wore high-heels. And I was praying in her shrine.

This other woman panted as if she was dying. She dreamt she knew I did not care about her life. As if she was me. I just penetrated deeper and deeper into her shrine. I held onto her thin waist, and rode on to the far infinity, repeating everything over and over again.

She dreamt she saw me though I was faceless. But she knew it was me. And she saw me from the mirror of her dreaming. In the mirror, she saw the other woman dying. The nearer death approaches, the more aroused she was. She was leaning on her own desk, spying us from the mirror, and her fingers walked and wandered south. She was strumming - the instrument of her lonely love - and she was crying and masturbating in the emptiness of the semi-dark room.

She said she saw me in her dream. But I was far from it. I was reading Soseki Natsume's Ten Nights of Dream by the side of a grave. I was waiting for the dead woman to come back to me.

From the moist of the soil, a tiny sapling had peeked her head through. She swayed her heavy head in the cold wind, looking. And she turned east and found the red sun.

I counted, "Two."