The Sins of the World
Dancing with Dreams
Art and Article by Katie Kamio
All the sins of the world live in the abandoned barn in my backyard. They accumulate one. by. one. In crevasses of discarded cans and under molding leaves. Then, when darkness comes, they creep into my bedroom, consuming my dreams.
The music starts and they dance with me. I turn left and we dip into a waltz. We twirl round and round in circles; they tell me how I can have it all. As we come to a hold, the side of the room vanishes and is replaced with a veneer of shimmering gold. I see myself dressed in heavy golden fabric, leaflets peeling off my wrists, the dress’s hem drooping to the floor. She or me stands in an arched passageway that looks out onto a quiet sea and the breeze disturbs her hair. She gazes back at myself, stretching her spine. Then, the wind picks up and a sheet of white paper blows into view, someone’s frantically scribbled handwriting across it. I squint at the paper scuttling across the floor of the archway, blowing against the wall before going airborne. It flutters up towards her and I watch the nose of my regal self wrinkle, and in the wall, she reaches out to touch it. As the paper tentatively connects with the fingertips of her gilded hands, its white hue slowly bursts in a vibrant explosion, like a leaf turning color in the wind of a biting fall. It’s a metamorphosis so subtle it’s almost undetected until one day, I look up and am faced with a wall of red. But here, the white paper turns golden and the letters start to fall off the page. Each letter jumps off of the sheet and plunges to the marble floor, leaving her to stare, crestfallen, at a halo of misshapen stains encircling her skirt. As the sheet floats down, leaving her fingertips, it scrunches itself into a ball. The spikey ball seems to pull inward with its own gravitational force, folding in on itself until its edges start to smooth and roll into a tiny golden droplet. As it falls, the droplet rolls down her dress, disintegrating into the fabric at the hem. As the drop disappears, another sheet emerges, along with a second, and before long, she is surrounded by a storm of paper and gold. I peel my eyes away from the chaos and back into the ballroom, where all the sins gather, their eyes still watching the frenzy of white and gold. The music leaps and becomes more upbeat. I turn to the right and we flow into a salsa. As the music bears down on my rhythm, I think back to the archway and feel the urge to return.
I pivot back to the veneer, now a dark navy, and see myself in my kitchen late at night. I’m in pajamas and swallowing the last ice cream sandwich instead of leaving it for my brother. He’s not there to see the black font on the box grow, consuming all the light. The black lettering continues to expand, swallowing so much light that the fridge disappears. Then, the darkness abruptly stops expanding, a portal suspended in the air. My hand reaches again into the non-fridge, searching, looking for another sandwich, another treat I shouldn’t take. The darkness consumes my hand and for a moment, all is still. Then wider and wider, the darkness creeps across the adjacent wall. As if breaking a barrier, the dark jumps up my arm, dragging me into the depths of the freezer. I start to feel a tingling in my gut and I can hear the music again. All the sins of the world hush. They whisper, “It doesn’t have to be scary.” An ice cream sandwich utopia slowly develops. Cookie crumbles decorate ornate chateaus and the fountains flow cream. I pull away from the wall and settle back into the arms of the sins.
As if on cue, the beat starts throbbing under our feet, pulling me back to the dance. A feral feeling crawls from the end of the room, slinking up on us, and then it pounces. Trapped in the tumultuous rhythm of the song, my arms and hips flail to the sound. As I jolt left and right, the floor cleaves open, leaving a steep crack down to the depths of the ground. Hot liquid seeps up and I start to feel the knot at my center harden. As I peer down at the dark eddies of nothingness, I feel spidery fingers settle on my back. The pressure hardens into a shove, I turn to find all the sins in the world smirking down at me. I grab their hands as my balance falters. Heat coats my body and before I can say,
“Stop! Stop it!”
I find myself falling into the depths with the sins on top of me. Angered, they twist, contort, and then plunge faster. They break the dream dimension and soar out of my head and into the waning night. The sins of the world crawl into the dense bushes outside my house, before slinking back to the crevices of the abandoned barn.
I awake to find my body in my bed, in my room, in my house, curtains glowing with early morning sun. As I peel myself from the covers, I can’t help wondering:
did something happen last night