(EDITOR’S NOTE: FRIENDS, this very special CINE-WEEN post is a piece by Sofia Gonzales. Sofia has been a long time supporter of Cinepunx who recently joined the staff to offer a ton of important behind the scenes support. I am so glad to have a submission that is not just critical reflection on art, but art itself. Thanks Sofia and let this be an invitation to you, reader, to submit your poetry, fiction, speculative non-fiction, or whatever to us as well!)
Author’s Note: If you know me well you know my dreams are precious & sometimes worrisome to me (ask later). A lot of people think they don’t dream or can’t remember their dreams but I dream every night and every morning I have a pretty good idea about what my dreams were about. Every once in a while I’ll have a recurring dream that becomes glitchier every iteration. Confusion sets in: faces change, conversations are added to, the shadows get ever closer.
I used to talk and walk in my sleep and when someone caught me wandering around I always said I was “looking for something”.
I still have no idea what that something was. Or if I ever found it. Or worse, if it ever found me.
It must have been 20,000, 25,000 square feet
The ceilings were thirty-feet tall though the metal air ducts hung much lower.
And you wound through rows and rows of detritus:
Broken chairs and tvs and wheels of bicycles and ghettoblasters and piles of books as tall as you were then.
The rows seemed to go eternally and you walked for hours until you heard it. a faint sound.
Like a radio broadcast? The sound went in and out and so
You pushed a million boxes aside and
you cut your shins on air conditioner parts
You fell over coat racks and paintings by “painters of light”- crappy sunsets, bad compositions.
stacks of pissed on Cat Fancy Magazine.
The sounds had stopped and then it was there.
A mannequin. sitting. No wig, no clothes.
Its mouth was slightly open? It had a hinged jaw.
And you could see…something on its tongue. something shiny.
You slid your fingers into its fiberglass mouth and the something
It was so near now, you could feel it on your fingertips.
A knob? a tiny doorknob. Smooth and cold.
While you kept reaching with your index and middle finger, you tried to slip your thumb into its maw and that’s when the jaw opened slightly.
Your thumb pressed the hinged jaw down and the radio broadcast sound came tumbling out of the hollow, plastic head.
For just a second there were words. Slowed down, but the sound of a man saying
Something you couldn’t quite decipher and at that moment-
do you remember? There were noises someplace in the warehouse. Like shifting.
Getting closer? But…
You took your fingers out of the mouth and began moving this articulated jaw up and down
Up and down but the words were still so slow and so you moved the jaw faster
Up and down and up and down and then a whirring began, and the jaw moved on its own
And the voice. A man’s voice
Clear and deep
and reciting a murder confession
recorded into the naked head
And you stood back and tried to remember what was said
but the shifting
It was so close now
