Storm before Dreaming

“If you are so strong, why couldn’t you defeat Yoseline? She came to me and gave me her side of the story, and it was very convincing. If you are as strong as you say you are, you shouldn't have had any issues destroying her. What are you hiding from me?” Inella interrogated Addimar suddenly, catching him unaware. Inella had approached him unaware as soon as she saw him in Namelle.

“Whatever are you speaking of? I know no one named Yoseline.” Addimar said somewhat convincingly.

“She taught me a spell to observe living memory. If you let me use it on you, I will be able to verify whether you know her or not.” Inella stomped her foot down defiantly. Her foot hitting down on the wet grass made Addimar’s brow furrow.

“You will cast no spell against me. Not without my permission, Inella.” Addimar stood as straight as he could in an attempt to physically intimidate her. Inella went from irritated to furious. Her posture was stiff and creaking; her eyes were lit with fire.

“An innocent man does not react this way. If you truly do not know Yoseline, you will let me observe your living memory as proof.” Addimar tried to speak, but Inella cut him off with a firm hand movement. “You have been a good teacher thus far, but that does not mean you are above investigation. I have always been wary as to why someone of your strength would be interested in helping me in the first place. You will let me observe your living memory, or you will leave this planet forever. The choice is yours to make, Addimar.”

“You forget that there is a third option, child.” Addimar said smugly, his hands were folded in front of his chest, even his robes seemed to smirk in defiance.

“And what would that be? Please, enlighten me.” Inella replied. She did not let his contentment ruin her posture. It is so typical for a man to try and intimidate a woman. Inella would not be intimidated; not while she was owed. For, she was a woman, and thus she was owed the world. Owed the world for the innumerous, precise cruelties that patriarchy and misogyny inflicted upon her (and all women).

“There is a spell that I know that is a substitute for your ‘memory’ spell.” Addimar said the word as if swollen in the lip, bitten by a venomous snake.

“I don’t care to hear what your substitute is, Addimar. The longer you draw this out, the larger my suspicion grows.” By this point, Inella’s suspicion was large and looming like the shadow of a mountain.

“Oh, but you simply must.” Addimar flicked his hand and a miniature carnival appeared. A red-white tent with bean sized clowns packing into a car like a preservative can. A ferris wheel with yellow baskets and bulbous decor. A carousel with pink, white, brown, and light blue horses. Happy children ate sticky fingers of cotton candy and slipped handfuls of kettle corn into wide, ecstatic mouths.. Inella had no idea what any of it was, and that initial stupor was all that Addimar needed to set up his presentation. “I present to you, THE DREAM SPELL.” Addimar bellowed with cocky grandeur. “It’s my greatest tool of manipulation.” Addimar was at the first part of a long winded explanation. Hearing the word ‘manipulation’ made Inella react negatively. She tried to lash out at Addimar with a spell, but for some reason it didn’t work. To her, it felt like she was in a plastic bubble. What was actually happening to her was far worse; she was temporarily forgetting everything she knew about magic, and most other things in general. “The dream spell is a spell that traps a person in a fantasy of collaborative creation. I have already cast it on you, Inella.” Addimar gave a disgusting smirk. “I will create fictional characters for you to interact with in a ridiculous scenery that the both of us make. While you are in the dream spell you will have no power over your body in the real world. While you are in the dream spell I will be editing your memory, taking out your recollection of Yoseline, taking out your aggression towards me. I will restore you to your former self; I will edit your memory, so that you can’t remember the real me.. The dream spell is an elaborate labyrinth wherein you must use your mental fortitude to escape. Escaping will take you such a long time, I promise. You will have no idea what is going on at first. It’s a spell that I have used countless times on those close to me. I use it to make them do my bidding. You will be my slave. When this is all over, Inella, I will rule this world through you. Once you have served your purpose I will dispose of you.” Inella fell down unconscious, trapped in the dream spell. “Toodaloo.” Addimar began cackling, but Inella could not hear it.

The Dream Spell

The psychotic sun lamented the long desert over which it stood (in a foul mannered judgment). The mountains in the distance were a lime green, begging to crown a Corona, dehydrated as anything else. Wild coyotes and quick-paced rabbits (with twirling horns) scampered the sand dunes, speeding in a place where a woman could only wander. Caravans would use hypothetical camels to traverse the unforgiving desert, but there were no caravans. There was only one woman. Inella.

She trudged, the dark orange sand made little sound, but her feet left tracks that the wind would hide with its careless howls and puffs sooner or later. A cactus with sunglasses waved a stagnant hello to Inella from over a hundred yards away. At first glance, Inella had waved back, but once the heat shimmers that suggested mirage were considered in her second glance, she identified it was a cactus (not even pondering the sunglasses).

-Inella was under Addimar’s augmented reality spell, unaware that she could do magic-

“Life is some damned, shambling curse. . .'' Inella muttered to herself, since no one else was close enough to hear. No one but the coy faeries of the wind who yanked and pulled at Inella’s purple silk agbada as they screamed their joys in passing, chasing each other in a mutual game of tag (or perhaps the more divisive “cooties”). “At least it is while I roam the harsh absence of this blasted desert.”

A Chevron gas station up ahead had the only road connection for miles. Granted, it was a wonky dirt road connected to the Chevron on only one side. Connected to nothing on any other side besides the view of the green mountains, and the intensity of the far away sun. ‘Yet how far away is it?’ Inella wondered. Or, at least she wondered something along those lines. She was hardly comprehensible. The high noon sun had turned her brains into a plate of scrambled eggs, salted. Inella’s lithe arms were poxed by polka dots of sunburn the exact circumference of Costco muffins. The sun had made her arms into a jerky, and instead of salting, her arms were coated in emotionally available, but needy hives of sand; that skin which was exposed to the sun blistered.

“Red, white, blue. And it says Chevron. Like the gas. Right.” Inella caught herself up to speed with the society of 2019, or rather, tricked herself further into believing she was in 2019 (in America no less, Arizona to be precise (and negative)); as well as affirming her ability to read (and perform other necessary tasks for operating as a laborer in a capitalist society).

Society? A society that had structural racism that had been largely ignored by the wealthy, white elite? A society that had misogyny rampant within its facets of media, and to a large extent, everyday life? Such misogyny was present in 2019 America; it was hardly better than the fantasy world Inella lived in. At least in Inella’s world women could protect themselves with magic from horrible things like sex trafficking. Sex trafficking did not exist in Inella’s fantasy world due to the militarization Inella led, but in 2019 America Inella was no leader. In 2019 America, Inella was just a woman sauntering the harsh desert like a drunken cat (and a very self important cat at that). As a woman without magic, Inella was now vulnerable because of the patriarchy. Vulnerable to exploitation- subject to silence and judgment. Her fate was to have her voice stripped away from her in a country that claimed to be the “best” in the world, but had countless homeless, and lacked access for people with disabilities. Her future was to have her intelligence questioned at every turn, no matter how far she could outhink and outperform her male counterparts. The desert would be a metaphor for society, but as a woman in 2019 America, Inella was better off alone in the desert. The desert would be easier than anywhere else. Anywhere else, she would be trapped by rampant sexism, cornered by the testosterone fueled egos of overconfident men, belittled by laws written by those same men who claimed a greater legal stake in Inella’s uterus than she was allowed to. A blind eye gazed at “American Values.” Inella did not go from frying pan to fire literally, but when she crossed the threshold onto the graffiti’d tar of the Chevron fueling pad from the orange sand of the lonely desert, Inella went from bad to worse.

“Hello?” Inella addressed the clerk with a weak word from a dry, croaking throat. The clerk was a 17 year old boy named Kevin. He had facial acne, dark blonde hair in a poorly cropped haircut, and stood 5’6. He was dressed in black, gray, and red polyesters (he looked the part of a Burger King employee more than he looked like a Chevron clerk).

“What can I help you with, miss?” Kevin had a polite tone, but you could never really tell what customer service workers were thinking, because they were paid to be artificially nice, and not paid enough at that.

“I’m not sure.” Inella put her right hand on her hip and did a 90 degree pivot that started a back and forth series of pacing.

“Well, you sound like you could use some water.” Kevin walked out from behind the clerk counter, past the well of mismatched pennies, past 18 different brands of tobacco, and reached into one of the many fridges to pull out a bottle of water. He held it out so that Inella would take it.

“Oh, I don’t have any money.” Inella tried to decline the kind gesture by shaking both of her hands in front of her chest warily.

“That’s fine. Dehydration in that desert is no joke. You can have this water for free.” Kevin observed the various blisters and scabs along Inella’s arms and said, “You look like you could really use it.”

Inella gave a defeated but appreciative smile and took the bottle, drinking more than half of it without ever unlatching her teeth from their grip of the spout. Kevin gave a surprised gasp that he hushed as quickly as he had let it out, his prediction of dehydration was affirmed by Inella’s hasty action.

“So what brings you out to these parts?” Kevin asked as he walked back behind the counter where he would soon fidget with a bobblehead of Albert Einstein.

“I’m not sure.” Inella took another drink, this time smaller, but not so small that it didn’t give her the opportunity to think. “It feels like I was born today if that makes sense.”

“What do you mean? You’re a full-grown woman.” Kevin chewed on his next words to verify their flavor before he spoke them. “I don’t want to assume your age, but you have to be at least 20.” Being called 20 made Inella laugh (by blowing air out of her nose and humming with her lips still closed).

“You’re saying you would ID me if I tried to buy beer?” Inella laughed again, this time widening her smile to show her straight, white teeth.

“First of all, I have to ID everyone. It's the law. Second of all, you would need money to buy beer. I wouldn’t give you alcohol for free, I’m not that nice. Well, maybe I am, but I would get in trouble for it, and I need to keep this job. There’s not much work out in these parts.”

“Fair enough.” Inella said, turning around to observe the various isles of multi-colored plastic packaging that gleamed under the overhead store lights.

“I’ll give you a hot dog if you’re hungry, though.” Kevin said with a chivalrous flourish of his pointing hand at the metal box that rolled pink, sweating weiners over metallic cylinders in a constant motion. Kevin’s proposition turned Inella’s head back around.

“That’s a deal I will take. Thank you.” How many times had the real Inella said ‘thank you’ to a man? This was a new Inella, though. One with more cheer in her general disposition. Kevin opened the door to the hot dog chamber and pulled out a frankfurter, the one closest to him and no further. He handed it to inella on a bun (which was on a thick coffee filter). “Thank you.” Inella took an average bite out of the meat line and V-shaped bun, not at all discouraged by its lack of condiments.

“You say you were born today… that has me thinking. You’re not one of those gene clones are you? I heard about those on buzzfeed.” Kevin’s scientific skepticism was clear in the question he asked. Kevin loved science (that’s why he had a bobblehead of Einstein).

“A what?” Inella’s brow furrowed into a patch of rolling white hills that scotchbroom would likely grow between.

“Well, that probably is a no as far as your answer then.” Kevin paused to order his explanation. “A gene clone is where they take your DNA and make a copy of you by incubating the cells or something… I think. That way you can live forever.” Neither Kevin, nor Inella currently knew that Inella was already capable of immortality (in a different way).

“Oh, well that sounds pretty interesting, I guess.” Inella quirked the left side of her lip into a curious handle. Outside, a Chevy truck pulled up to the gas station for fuel. A rusty, faded red paint, old model Chevy truck (whose driver was a fat-bellied, balding white man in a black hat that said ‘Got Beer?’).

“Interesting, definitely. Ethical? I would say no. It goes against the circle of life.” When Kevin said ‘circle of life’ Inella began to hum music from The Lion King for reasons she could not figure out on her own, but were painfully obvious to Kevin (so he did not think he needed to mention his observation). The man entered the store with a wide-gait sauntering. “Hey, Earl.” Kevin said before the door even had a chance to shut behind the man.

“Kev, how the hell are you doin?” Earl asked while lighting a fat cigarette between his grease-sweating lips.

“I’m doing good, but my friend here is not. I was going to call her a cab out here, but now that you’re here, Earl, I would think you could give her a ride into town.” Kevin finished with a wink.

“Sure can.” Earl turned to Inella, adjusting his ‘Got Beer?’ hat. “What’s your name, ma’am?”

“My name is Inella.”

“Oh, well that’s an awfully purdy name, if’n I do say so muh-self.” Earl extended a thick right hand out to Inella for a shake. Inella shook Earl’s hand, which gave him the opportunity to look at Inella’s burnt skin. “Looks like ya been too long out in the desert, miss.”

“That I have.” Inella took a deep breath, the deepest kind of breath, that signified an entirely new chapter in your life. “Feel as if I’ve been out in the desert my whole life.” Earl took Inella into town, where she caught a bus up north, and began a new life in Washington (or what Addimar made Inella think was Washington).