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The Sandman Dream Country |
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The Sandman Library
Preludes & Nocturnes |
RICHARD MADOC: Christ! What are you doing in my house? Who let you in? MORPHEUS: Nobody let me in, Richard Madoc. RICHARD MADOC: I don't know who you are, but I want you out of here, now, or I'm calling the police. MORPHEUS: Be quiet. Calliope MORPHEUS: You disgust me, Richard Madoc. You want ideas? You want dreams? You want stories? Then ideas you will have. Ideas in abundance. Calliope RICHARD MADOC: The fraternity of critics. In reality a dark brethen, linked by profane rites and blood vows. To destroy an author they sacrifice a child and perform a critical mass... A city in which the streets are paved with time. A train full of silent women, plowing forever through the twilight. Head made of light. A small piece of blue cardboard. A plum, sweet and tart and cold. A were-goldfish who transforms into a wolf at full moon. Two old women taking a weasel on holiday. Gryphons shouldn't marry. Vampires don't dance. A man who inherits a library card to the Library in Alexandria. A rose bush, a nightingale, and a black rubber dog-collar. A man who falls in love with a paper doll. The sun setting over the Partheon. Shark's teeth soup. An old man in Sunderland who owned the universe, and who kept it in a jam-jar in the dusty cupboard under his stairs. A biography of Keats, from the Lamia's viewpoint... Calliope FELIX GARRISON: God -- what did you do to your hands? RICHARD MADOC: All the pictures in my head. I had to get them down, but I didn't have any paper, or ink. So I used the wall. And my fingertips. Calliope CARRION KIND: Justice? Justice is a delusion you wil not find on this or any other sphere. And wisdom? Wisdom is no part of dreams. Lithe Walker, though dreams are a part of the sum of each life's experiences, which is the only wisdom that matters. But revelation? That is the province of dream. A Dream of a Thousand Cats I am a cat, and I keep my own counsel. A Dream of a Thousand Cats I left the humans that very day, to spread the good news. And now I travel from place to place. I have walked for leagues beyond measure. I have starved, sometimes, and often I have been hurt. But I have walked on. In a metal machine I crossed the cold waters. I have preached to solitary feral cars in empty places. I have shouted my message to the stars from rooftops and whispered it to dying cats in alleyways. I have spoken to one cat, and to many. And wherever I have gone, my message is the same... Dream it! Dream the world. Not this pallid shadow of reality. Dream the world the way it truly is. A world in which all cats are queens and kings of creation. That is my message. A Dream of a Thousand Cats MORPHEUS: I wonder, Titania. I wonder if I have done right. And I wonder why I wonder. Will is a willing vehicle for the great stories. Through him they will live for an age of man; and his words will echo down through time. It is what he wanted. But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their hearts desire, their dreams... But the price of getting what you want, is getting what you once wanted. A Midsummer Night's Dream MORPHEUS: It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak. A Midsummer Night's Dream ROBIN GOODFELLOW: If you ask me, none of those women are women at all. They're males. I can tell. Human males taste more like rabbit than the females... and they stick in your teeth, Oh yes. Also, the males are hairier, and they lack the flesh on their chests. A Midsummer Night's Dream MORPHEUS: You have asked me why I asked you back to this plane, to see this entertainment. I... During your stay on this Earth the faerie have afforded me much diversion, and entertainment. Now you have left, for your own haunts. and I would repay you all for the amusement. And more: They shall not forget you. That was important to me: that King Auberon and Queen Titania will be remembered by mortals, until this age is gone. AUBERON: We thank you, shaper. But this diversion, although pleasant, is not true. Things never happened thus. MORPHEUS: Oh, but it is true. Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot. A Midsummer Night's Dream ROBIN GOODFELLOW: If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended: That you have but slumber'd here, while these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding than a dream. Gentles -- do not reprehend. If you pardon -- we will mend. And -- as I am an honest Puck, if we have unnearned luck A Midsummer Night's Dream URANIA BLACKWELL: They say that cigarettes will kill you, eventually. Fine. That's just fine. I only wish they'd do it faster. I draw the smoke into my lungs, extract the nicotine and the tar. It doesn't do anything for me, but I like the smoke. I like the ash. The way it falls. I like breathing out the smoke. I like smoking cigarettes. It's something normal people do. I smoke a cigarette, and pretend I'm normal. And I wish I was dead. Façade URANIA BLACKWELL: Nobody ever comes here. Nobody phones. Nobody cares any more. Façade URANIA BLACKWELL: I only have two kinds of dreams: the bad and the terrible. Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and they end eventually. I wake up. The terrible dreams are the good dreams. In my terrible dreams, everything's fine. I'm still with the company. I still look like me. None of the last five years ever happened. Sometimes I'm married. Once I even had kids. I even knew their names. Everything's wonderful and normal and fine. And then I wake up. And I'm still me. And I'm still here. And that is truly terrible. Façade URANIA BLACKWELL: I want to kuh-kill myself. And -- and I can't. It's not that I'm too scared to kill myself. I -- I'm scared of lots of things. I'm scared of noises in the night-time, scared of telephones and closed doors, scared of people... scared of everything. Not of death. I want to die. It's just that I don't know how. Façade URANIA BLACKWELL: I can't slash my wrists -- I don't have any blood. When I was at high school, a kid shut himself in a garage and took sleeping pills, climbed in the car and turned the ignition. I can't do that. Carbon monoxide's just another gas, to me. And my body just processes poisons... Maybe I could sit at ground zero of a nuclear test -- if I could find one. But I'm afraid I could survive that. I think I would. Perhaps I'd be radioactive for always... but I'd survive... I thought about transmuting myself to free oxygen radicals and just melding with the air. Or with added hydrogen, I could become water and join myself with the sea. But I'd probably still be conscious. Just spread out all over the world. Façade URANIA BLACKWELL: Isn't it dumb? All over the world, people running around trying not to die? Hanging on to life like grim death. And I want to die, and I can't. Façade DEATH: I'm not blessed or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it... I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them. Façade DEATH: When the first living thing existed, I was there, waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave. Façade |
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