Night Dreams

Orchestral music boomed beneath a cantilevered dome lined with plastic cherubs and tasteless frescoes. Doves flew from perch to perch, groggy with chlorine. The audience booed as I swung from the rafters, the stage below awash with clowns and nymphs and propylene dragons.

On cue, a dissonant bassoon, freefall.

I jerked to a halt just above the pool’s surface. My harness dug in cruelly. Bronwyn reached out, gripping wrists. The hydraulics fired, and we were reeled upward, a dozen actors on steel wire dripping clockwise around us. Bronwyn played the lead, the Woman in Peril. I played Grimwald, Peril Incarnate. Water beaded down my length, and then hers, misting the cheap seats. She smiled, but I could see she no longer loved me.

“Let go,” she whispered.

“I’ll never let go,” I said, and then did. It was in the script.