The World in Between

The World in Between

I had once dreamt of a place that was far different from the one I know now. Although it belonged in my sleep, it felt like it was closer to me, as though I had seen it in reality and have traveled there before. Something about it was real. The other parts were ominous and bizarre, the parts in which dreams are made of. It reminded me of a time when I was young and lost in a world that seemed like a stranger and everything felt frightful. What it means or where it truly comes from, I don’t quite know, but I know you have seen it too. 

Everything is bleak and ashen in color. A thick fog coats nearby trees, the houses I pass along, and it lives in the distance as a white, murky pool. The sky is a slate hue built of numerous clouds that have merged for the creation of a grey solid plate, like gauze entrapping the sky. The stars, moon, any outside substance beyond the grey barrier seem blocked, untouchable, and nonexistent. Wisps of dreary flakes constructed of ash and rebel glide along a slight warm breeze.

A grand church is ahead at the corner of the street. Its mighty towers and deep steeples look down upon the houses and trees that seem microscopic to its size. The church owns the street but blends into the eerie atmosphere. All is quiet although the distant fog moves in disturbance as though something is stirring its stillness. None of the houses, buildings, or plant life seems burnt or broken but the ominous grayness has caused an abandoning, acting as some poisonous fume engulfing the world.

I continue to walk toward the church; my steps are quiet for I fear to awake some hidden evil within the surrounding mist. Breathing with anxiety, my chest pinches with an intense ache. Within the stillness, only my rigid breaths provide sound to the hushed planet. Falling flakes of ash land on my body like snow, marking their places only without melting away as though to be permanent reminders of this world. As a mere distraction from the utter loneliness, I peer up into the emptiness to calm my implanted fear. Ashes fly about playfully and subtly the clouds move, as though dancing, allowing the shades of grey to blend like a mystic whirlpool in the sky.

Something begins to fall from the clouds. It’s a small object, soaring through the milky sky encrusted with a dark color, symbolizing a diving crow. My arm extends forward and my palm opens wide to catch the falling thing. As it nears the ground, its dark color is clearer and appears as a deep red. Gracefully, it hits my palm with a light splash as though it was its intended landing sight, and its red essence splatters in various directions, tainting the ground with scarlet spots.

So here, in the world in between, the skies rain blood.