Picking my way carefully through a dark ruin covered in mossy growth. The path is dangerous. A twisted ankle waits to spring upon me at every step. I find what I've been searching for. Tiny plants nestled among the rocks with round leaves. Their purpose is unclear, perhaps required for terrariums or aquariums, perhaps a food source for animals entrusted to my care. I pluck them from their beds and expose long white roots. The tips of these structures are animal-like in their responsiveness. When touched the sting and burn, immediately melding into skin and beginning to sap away at my life force. I collect and replant these tiny creatures, marveling at their adaptability.
I spend some time as a child. Revisiting sixth grade. Feeling anxious, and yet somewhat like I am returning to myself or my home. I know that I have already grown past this phase, and I speak to several of my classmates as if I am a time-traveler. They present Bernice to me like a prodigy, telling me that she is graduating impossibly early. I lean in a whisper to her that I know she ends up going to Princeton. She shrugs.
I enter Mr. Sampson's classroom and he tells me that registration has already come and gone, I'm late. Everyone already has a seat and a place. I'm sent to the office, where Judy from Bradley replaces the usual secretary. She mentions something about juicy gossip and I'm reminded of a situation in grade school where I got caught passing a note about a boy who sexually molested his little sister. I return to Mr. Sampson's room where he renames me Jeffrey and writes it on my desk.
Most vividly, I play the part of myself in a dramatic retelling of my own starcrossed childhood lovestory. I am Christine Daae, my step-brother Gregory plays himself as the Phantom of the Opera. We reside in an opulent victorian hotel-mansion. I unbelievably attracted to him physically and we lay in bed together. As we are kissing I keep reaching between his legs but there is nothing there and he scolds me for being so aggressive. I move my hands to the backs of his thighs and up his side, relishing the smoothness of his skin. He is over the experience and leaves me alone.
My awareness leaves the first-person and I witness the next scene as an audience member. Gregory squats over a blonde woman sitting on a couch who is pleasuring him with her mouth. Christine enters the room, outraged, turns on the light and rushes over to the pair, screaming. She is carrying a blue glass bottle and somehow breaks it on her own face as she faints. Red liquid stains the couch and floor. Police rush into the room intent to catch Gregory, who now looks less like himself and more like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic.
A maze of corridors provide a lively chase for me, now inhabiting his body, with pursuers blocking every turn. At long last we reach the ground floor and rush through a catholic mass in progress, down the center aisle, and outside through a side door. The bishops in full garb are understandably upset. A beautiful courtyard park seems to stretch in every direction. It seems as though a long time has passed, years perhaps, since leaving the hotel room. I climb a tree and watch as a beautiful young woman with brown hair rides up in a horse-drawn cart. She tells me that her mother is looking for me. I already know that this is my daughter, and Christine is her mother. She is unaware, simply out on an errand. She hands me a purse full of metal pins with different figures on them, and we look through them together. I smile and laugh with her.
