dreamweaveruk

Once upon a time, a boy met a girl, and they fell in love. It was an uncommon match in that while she was from a wealthy family, he was from a poor one.And while she found much to love, and loved him dearly, his relative poverty had lead her lover to become dissatified with himself, and to crave opportunity for advancement. He may have had many virtues, but alas possessed the vices of selfishness and greed; he began to reflect on the unfairness of the situation: that while his family worked hard for their money, his sweetheart had but to ask her parents to recieve what his would be paid in a month. And so in time she found him with his hand in her purse, and with a mixture of regret and disappointment cast him off.

Her beau seethed with rage. How dare she? He had been forced into this position; he had needed the monies which she had a surplus of; she would never have missed them; she would have in any case wasted them (which was in fact probably true). Over time this hatred grew, and he became fixated on his abhorrence: he gave his love a thousand deaths, and at the same time never for one moment stopped loving her. His hatred became over time as true and intense as his love had been: he hated and hated, and this hatred did not diminish. Until one night, when a dark gentleman entered his dreams - perhaps, he thought later, a faery; or perhaps not. The gentleman admitted that he was attacted by his passions, and offered an exchange: in exchange for his fervours, the gentleman would ensure his wishes were carried out.

Unnaturally, the dream stayed with him. Time passed; he found somehow he had overcome his fixation and moved on. He was physically intimate with others, but he was restless and found it impossible to settle for any one for very long. If he had considered, he might have felt as if something were missing, though he would never have been able to identify exactly what. Except he never did consider, nor indeed was able: he was a man possessed with a certain nervous energy. He moved from place to place as if searching for something he was unable to locate; or perhaps as an attempt to escape some thing unseen, for now he always had a sense of being watched, of there being some-one always looking over his shoulder. But the rational part of his mind shrugged this off.

Through-out this time he followed the fortunes of his former love, but gained no satisfaction from them: her father was discovered to enjoy deflowering young girls, and lost his place in society; her former friends found they no longer wished to associate themselves with her; she was cast out and established a place in the city slums, addicted to opium and selling her body for it. Whether while thinking back to her former state she reviewed her actions to the young man, and considered them unjust, I cannot say; and in any case it makes no difference to our story.

Time changed to a thick sludge. More time went by, and he could find no pleasure in any diversions he had formerly enjoyed. His parents passed the way of all flesh, and he observed the funerary rituals. He felt their loss at first, but this soon passed into a vague dull ache. He spent night after night listlessly wandering the streets of his home city. His work was a banal routine, and he was observed to be indifferent to the ribbing he recieved from the younger workers (of whom, he noted dully, there seemed to be an ever-increasing number). He often had odd dreams, in which he was visited by a dark-haired gentleman who spoke to him, and told him such things; but although he could later recall every detail of these dreams (in-deed, they often seemed more real to him then his day - to - day life) he could never remember exactly what he had been told, beyond that whatever it was, it had been of the utmost importance and interest.

Until one day, he looked at himself, and found torn, ragged nails on scabby fingers; he found unkempt and dirty grey hair; he found he lived in filth and squalor and disorder. He laid down his head, and everything he had once been came back to him: and realizing this, he wept. He wept for what seemed an age, until his energy was gone, he wept for the generations had been taken from him. And he did not notice when, his body exhausted with tears, he descended in to sleep He slept.

He awoke with a start, and recognised the gentleman he had seen so many times standing at his shoulder. The gentleman nodded courteously.
'Well, it seems it is time for me to take what is mine', he said, with a wry smile. The young man looked at him. 'What do you mean? What has happened to me, my life? Where has everything gone?'
The gentleman shook his head; he seemed amused. 'Why, you have always been mine. Did you not realise?' The gentleman walked past the young man, and disappeared. When he turned around he saw his body lying on an unwashed mattress; but this was not the decrepit relic he had recently vacated. This was how he had appeared in his youth, when he had first seen the gentleman, the place he had loved and lusted in his youth. The gentleman smiled lazily at him again, but this was a smile of hunger, and more-over a keen hunger now satisfied: as if he had been waiting a very long time for this meal, and was now determined to enjoy it, slowly and one bite at a time.
'Well, my son, it has been a fine existence, and I thank thee for this fine flesh. As all things pass, however, so must I ... I have waited outside this world for far too long. Good day to thee.' With that, he nodded, turned, and walked away; it did not occur to the young man to try to stop him. He turned and stared at the space he had inhabited for so long, and as he recognised what he had given away he found himself alone once more...