Sheep: The Dream

(Written on Friday, September 18, 2009. It is a retelling of the dream I had the night before, which began with a Tim Burton-type, dark and distorted, eeriness then...well, I'll let you read for yourself.)
 
I had a dream last night.

  Whether I lived next to the farm house or not, I can’t tell you, but as my dream opened, I approached it's front yard down a gentle, grassy, overgrown slope and through a misty haze. There were sheep in the yard; beautiful, white, playful, young lambs. They were not in the safety of a pen as they should have been, but were playfully hopping about the yard, some wandering aimlessly into the narrow country road.

  Worried for their safety and desiring to guide them to the sheepfold, I tried to get their attention. I called. I waved. I got the attention of one adorable little lamb with large eyes. She walked cautiously toward me. I called gently, but in earnest. Just before reaching me, she turned and sprang away into the road.

  As I made my way quickly through the chilly fog to warn the farmer in his house, I found myself dodging discarded tools and broken farm implements left in the machinery graveyard that was the lawn--the rusting remnants of a brighter past.

  The house itself stood high and narrow, enormous in its leanness. Dark paint peeled from shutters which hung in disrepair. Whether the darkness within was real or an illusion created by the filth which covered the windows, I could not yet tell.

  Entering, I found a very young man, a teenager I think, sitting silent and alone in a parlor. I think he was holding a book. The wallpaper, his shirt and the upholstered chair he sat in were all of a dirty yellow that was somehow both dark and pale. I told him the sheep were out of their pen and wandering into the road. He replied sluggishly that he supposed he should let "them" know.

  I followed curiously as he made his way into the next room. In the deep darkness, I could just make out that, like the room next to it, this was all one dirty color. This time, though, the color was a suffocating, dark and fluid blue. The color seemed to move like water promising to drown me. I wasn't afraid, and I think the blue knew. It was a bedroom, and on the bed was a fat, greasy woman sleeping under an ocean of blue bedding. She moved in her sleep as if she were drifting in a pool. I understood her to always be just as I was seeing her—wallowing in a darkness which swallowed. I knew she had authority over the boy, but her obvious uselessness made me wonder how that could be. Upon waking to my companion's news, she rolled like a whale, looked at me with eyes equally as large as her disdain at being bothered, and told the boy to tell "him."

  We found the farmer at last in a narrow, dirty passageway. He was not old, but lean, wrinkled, leathered and hard. His one upper tooth hung diagonally from behind his lips which I thought unable to smile. His eyes were a beautiful, pale blue, but glassy, as if real observation was not possible. He cursed the sheep and said, "If they die, they die," and went on his way.

  Alone again on the front lawn, I became aware that the fog, while still there, was lifting slowly, and there were small patches of sunny, bright sky taking over. The chill I had felt moving across the long, damp grass just a short time before, was leaving too, as a gentle, warm breeze blew it away. The most amazing change was in the sheep themselves. They were suddenly grown into large, robust, mature adults. No more youthful and aimless, they walked calmly, but with purpose across the road, down a slope and onto a straight, narrow path I had not noticed before, although I had looked at the very spot. The most inexplicable change of all? The sheep were black.

  I stood watching as the sheep left for better pastures they could not yet see, away from the lethargy and darkness of the towering home which contained only shadows of life. My chest filled with admiration for their quiet strength and purpose. As I stood amazed, I wondered why they were now black. Weren't black sheep bad? "No," came the revelation, "but the inhabitants of the farmhouse will never understand."