S IS FOR A DANCE OF QUESTIONS

“Even a soul submerged in sleep
is hard at work and helps
make something of the world.”
 - Heraclitus 

{Play the music as you read}

The shadows filmed over in bronze gauze, 

filled with hooded figures in colorful gowns floating dreamlike past us as strange music filled the darkness:

Mark shivered as one wraith stroked chill fingers along his throat.  Even Freud seemed shaken.

"W-We arrive at S, Roland.  What occurs to you at the sound of that letter?"
 
"Sleep and the dreams that dwell in it." 

Freud tore his eyes from the departing wraiths with an effort and said, 

"The reason you struggle to remember your dreams, Roland, is because the superego is at work. 

It is doing its job by protecting the conscious mind from the disturbing images and desires conjured by the unconscious."

Mark nodded, "I often slept-walked as these figures seem to be doing."

He shook himself as if a dog fresh from a bath and assumed a jovial face though neither Freud nor I were fooled.

The wraiths swirled and parted around the tables they passed, their frozen footprints breathing icy vapors up into the shadows.

" Go to bed early, get up early--this is wise. 

Some authorities say get up with one thing, some with another."

Mark pulled his eyes from the spectral walkers with a visible effort.

 "But a lark is really the best thing to get up with. 

It gives you a splendid reputation with everybody to know that you get up with the lark; 

and if you get the right kind of a lark, and work at him right, 

you can easily train him to get up at half-past nine, every time--it is no trick at all."

The last walker in shadows kissed a lone customer at a table.  The man gasped and faded bit by bit into nothing.

Mark shivered and  jabbed his glowing cigar end at me.  

"Now that boy there!  

He goes to sleep at once.  

There is a sort of indefinable something about it which is not exactly an insult, and yet is an insolence.

 I get to feeling very lonely, with no company but an undigested dinner."

I shook my head at him.  "Ghosts don't eat."

The lagging figure in black robes stopped, turned around, and laughed softly, 

the sound of it trailing off like icicles slowly bleeding. 

Mark husked, "In that you are wrong, son."

Now, it was my turn to shiver.