It is the prerogative and duty of the narrator to make assumptions. So I assume that man can be known by his dreams. Or perhaps I should say by the form of his dreams. Or, at least, by his transformation, a consequence of his dreams. Or perhaps, the assumption of that transformation into something less vague, more essential, less consequential.
Don't you think that the tone is a bit formal? A bit too revealing? Don't you know that to begin with an abstraction is to deflect rejection before there is substantial reason for rejection?
Dewfall. The moon rises, full and barren. Silence penetrates everything.
A cramped and oppressive room. Heavy air, moved in waves by a ceiling fan, laps against the white, windowless walls. Sweat starts on Ian's brows. It seeps into his eyes - salt-white, blood-red. Waves of questions ...
"Given these conditions, can you establish a boundary?"
"I don't know." Ian hesitates, "Boundary or border?"
Ian writes the two words on the blackboard. He stares fixedly at the writing. He pulls at his collar, tries to breath deeply, tries to focus on the question.
He tries to focus on the word 'border' but finds himself wondering at his choice. Parallax? The stronger vision in his left eye drawing his thoughts away from the question, as if the question had changed the second he'd chosen a vantage point from which to answer it? When surveying parallax made it impossible for Ian to match the vertical line in the transit with the distant, slightly swaying, plumb bob string. Calculations based on uncertainty were the consequence, though often the apparent error was offset by other apparent errors. But this only happened if you returned to the same point that you started at. If you had to run a line ...
'Borderline.' He mutters the word under his breath and shivers 'People without soul'.
Sweat soaks him through. His stomach presses up into his throat. He has trouble breathing. He fixates on the pulsing sounds of his heart. Pumping blood furiously.
The eyes of the inquisitors are empty and black; dark stars that command something, something that Ian once knew but, somehow, lost ... Or is it lost? Perhaps it's something that sometimes he is aware of, cowering in the shadows, at the edges, in the near silences. Or if it's lost, is there a memory of it in the eyes of these ghosts?
Suddenly, the sun. And a skeletal tree. Ian sees himself hanging by the neck from a strong rope, tied to a long limb that stands parallel to the receding line of the tide. Vultures circle in the new light. Yet still he breathes.
Ian rubs his eyes, pulls the sheet tighter around his neck, and opens his eyes. The dream fades to foam. But then he turns over and, as he drowns in an undertow of cold, and white,
"Can you establish a boundary?"
He wakes to sunlight slanting obliquely through a soft serenity of morning. Fog undulating through great birch branches. Ian listens to the birdscreech. With an effort he gets out of bed, closes the window, pulls down the shade and goes down to the stove to make some coffee.
He makes his first pot of coffee. It's too strong. But taste doesn't matter. He remembers the dream as whispers, intimations, trills and buzzes. Shrieks, groans and howls. He remembers failure. He remembers guilt.
He stands by a window that faces the harbor. Yawns, stretches and rubs his temples.
Ian sips his third mug of coffee and climbs the stairs, carpeted with a deep blue and orange oriental pattern. He walks into the guest bedroom and rolls out the mat for his morning meditation.
The telephone rings. Or chirps. To be more precise, it chirrups like a cricket through the high summer heat. Though it's not summer now, but early autumn. Almost the equinox.
Stumbling down the stairs, "Hello?"
"Good morning, sleep well?" A high, thin nasal voice; insistent, repetitive and tiresome, even more so over the telephone.
Ian spits out "Alright."
"Your ten o'clock cancelled. Her daughter's home. Are you coming in this morning anyway?"
"Yeah." Ian watches an osprey circle the top of a tall pine. "I've got to finish Ben's evaluation. I'll be in by ten. See you then."
Ian hears the churchyard bell across the harbor. With a sigh he hangs up the telephone and walks heavily, still tired, into the bathroom. He sits in the bath until the heat loosens the muscles in his neck and lower back. Then he remembers the evaluation. He stands up, turns on the shower and lets a cold, narrow torrent beat on the center of his forehead. The torrent smoothes his brow. Cold purifies.
He throws the towel toward the rack and stares in the mirror. The wrinkles around his eyes are ravines, crevasses, labyrinthine glacial valleys. He watches the snow melt, wash away. A wind blows softly through wild grasses. Blur of red-wing blackbirds. Asphodels in bloom. A wisp of mist.
Ian brushes his teeth and hair, puts on a kimono and walks, with purpose, back to the guest bedroom. He has twenty minutes to meditate.
The meditation goes nowhere.