He Came to Me in My Dreams

He came to me in my dreams. For weeks I would resist sleep by reading or playing Solitaire, until my eyes fluttered shut and my head slumped into the warm cocoon of pillows on my velvet couch. I dreaded sleep, feared the recurring dream that left me confused, excited and ultimately sad every morning when I would drag myself back to consciousness.

It began the same every night: the featureless apparition stood framed in the doorway of my little stone cottage. Incredibly tall, he would bend forward, hunching over to fit through the opening and hold his hand out to me. But there was no hand! His thick sinewy arm ended in a bloody stump, the bone and tissue exposed oozing raw and ruby red against his pure white forearms. He had no face, no features, and no mouth to utter words… his eye sockets were grown shut, his nose a vulgar stump, and his mouth a gaping tear in the pale white lifeless flesh…still I knew he wanted me to take his arm and walk with him into the cool night air. 

We walked silently through the darkness, my hand wrapped like a toddler’s around his thick wrist. He was sure-footed and agile for such an incredibly large man. His size was unreal, and outside of my dream he would be freakishly proportioned. His heavily bowed legs were beefy but only average in length compared with the rest of his body. His torso was large and his smooth belly protruded forward like Buddha. I looked up at his mighty chest: two luminescent cannonballs strapped on his shoulders, his massive arms swaying at his side as he strode across the meadow. My puny mortal form tripped along beside him as he floated over rocks and brambles in our path. I can’t remember if he wore clothing. It seemed irrelevant in my dream. I only remember his incredibly overpowering presence, fearing him and yet needing to be next to him.

Every night, in every dream, we end up at the fountainhead of a small stream. The landscape is familiar, I know this hillside like the back of my hand, and yet it is different. The trees I expect to see have not yet grown; the red clay soil is exposed and raw under my bare feet. The little stone bridge that the village children play under is not in its place over the foaming brook.

Confused, I look up at my companion’s featureless face, but he says nothing. We drop to our knees as he guides my hand to the damp earth as if to feel for a pulse, to sense the living heart of the hillside. He wraps his thick muscular arm around my waist, and lays his heavy head on my shoulder. He has no eyes to cry, yet I feel tears on my bare back, dripping off my shivering flanks into the humus. His hips press into my buttocks, but there is nothing between his legs but urgency. I wake in my bed, sweating, the pillows soaked in perspiration and my heart beating like a snare drum.

The mountain path looks very different in the brilliant light of morning. I woke with a splitting headache but found the energy to stroll into the brambles, the warm sun on my back. It was just a dream, yet something lured me to the place by the stream, to the very spot that we knelt at the edge of the brook in my fantasy. The ground is covered in moss and wild oregano. I scratch at the spot with my bare hands, my fingers digging into the soft loamy soil as I lift handfuls of humus out of the hole. My nails scrape on something hard and unyielding. I carefully lift the object from its resting place and rinse it in the icy water. It is an enormous hand carved from alabaster, snowy white with delicate purple veins crossing its surface. 

I put aside my book early the next evening and clutching the alabaster hand to my chest, lay back on the chaise. That night I welcomed slumber; I needed to see my phantom and trembled at the thought of him appearing before me, large and overwhelming in his horrible beauty. The fireplace flickered, the flames shrank into embers and I drifted into my dream.

I felt the cool hardness of his loin as he pressed against me on the couch. His hands…his hands! Elegant fingers extended from broad, smooth palms that were as cold as stone. He caressed my cheek and cupped my chin, pulling my face to his chest. My nose pressed into the ghostly white flesh, taut and firm. I inhaled his scent, rich and earthy, like the fertile loam of the forest. He reached down to me; I felt my body lifted high into the air. I lay across his brawny shoulder like a small sack of potatoes as he carried me from the cottage.

The great leviathan held me firmly but securely on his strapping shoulder. I felt his hard muscles rippling under me as we strode across the heather and milkweeds. We reached the edge of the creek where the water coursed around the base of the mighty willow tree forming a small island of damp, sandy soil. He lay me down gently into the soft cushion of willow branches and, spreading my legs, he lay on top of me. 

His weight was oppressive, crushing my fragile body under his bulky torso. Gasping, I looked up into his vacant face, unable to tell me what thoughts were forming beneath the blank expression. I felt a hardness against my spine as the weight of his immense body pressed me into the muddy soil, into the gnarled roots of the ancient tree. Reaching behind me, I found a rounded boulder and ran my fingers over its form…a profile, full lips and a broad Italic nose. 

As the features of the stone head revealed in my hand the specter’s face distorted, swirled and reformed into a face. I gazed in amazement into black eyes, deep and fathomless. His cheeks flushed with color, the rosy glow of life filling the dead white void. His nose filled out, and facial hair grew miraculously from his jaw. His rosy lips formed from the bloody gash like the elegant curve of a bow. He pressed his stunning face to mine and I felt the familiar warmth of humanity in his caress. His flesh radiated heat like a burning fever, his cheeks hot and moist to my touch.

I woke in the first gray light of morning, nestled in the crook of a willow root, the rotting wet leaves sticking to my back. I pulled myself to my feet and, grasping the heavy stone face, trudged back to the cottage. This was more than a dream! I held the enormous head in my arms, cradled like a suckling baby. Fetching the hand, I sat at the kitchen table and stared at my alabaster treasures as the sun filtered through the olive trees on the hillock, and reality returned to my world.

I placed the hand and head on the pillow next to me that night as I prepared for sleep. I shivered in anticipation of his return. What form would my nocturnal visitor take this time? He seemed so human, so real to me under the shadowy branches of the willow tree last night. I could still feel the remembered touch of his hands on my waist, his handsome cheek pressed against my face, his perfect lips almost kissing mine. 

I tossed for several hours unable to sleep. I walked out of the cottage and started towards the brook. Would he be there waiting, or would I not see my specter outside of my dreams? I approached the stream and followed the edge to a rocky outcropping, the water bubbling and dancing over the stones in its rush to the lake. I was drawn to a large chunk of rock that stood out in the middle of the rubble, creamy and glowing in the moonlight. I took off my shoes and waded into the foamy water.

I sensed his presence immediately. I was anxious to see my apparition, but looking around saw nothing except the glittering surface of the water and the dark shadow of woods beyond the stream. Touching the large white stone, I realized it was the waist of a huge statue, made from the same milky-white alabaster as the hand and head. Its legs were either missing or buried deep in the riverbed; only the torso was exposed above the surface of the crystal-clear water. The slippery wet stone was carved into rippling abdominal muscles, the belly smooth and firm. I dropped to my knees, and taking the broken torso in my arms, held it like a lover.

I perceived his mighty arms wrapping around my shoulders. Drenched and shivering, he pulled me tightly against his body, drawing my head into the warm crease between his solid pectorals. He took my hand and guided it down his belly, following the deep ridge of muscle that defined his crotch. My fingertips combed through a thick wet mound of pubic hair and found his manhood. I wrapped my hand around it and felt my own penis rise as his swelled and grew in my palm. His cock was proportioned like the rest of the statue fragments, hugely exaggerated and supernaturally large. He pulled my face to his, and I yielded to him as he pressed his lips to mine. He kissed me as we collapsed into the shockingly cold water.

Tumbling, swirling…the water swept over and around us as he urged my legs apart and guided himself between my thighs. Even in my delirium, I knew I could not allow him to enter me; he was twice the size of a mortal man, and he would surely tear me open! I had no way to resist, but still I begged the huge brute to stop, whimpering softly as he pushed his rigid cock against my trembling ass. The icy water was numbing, yet I felt every inch of him as he drove himself deeper into my rectum. His cock was as hard and unyielding as stone, as firm as the alabaster he was made of.

Somehow I felt myself expand, my body swelling and morphing as he entered me. Like a rubber band, my sphincter opened for him. I felt an enormous sense of fulfillment as his crotch pressed firmly against my ass, his cock completely inserted into me. The water eddied over our bodies as we writhed in sexual frenzy. We were buoyant and sleek, and we coupled on the gritty river bed like two great fish.

It started as a rumbling in his chest, a low and guttural moan. He howled and choked, the water engulfing our faces as we rolled in the swift current. I clung to him as his back arched. I screamed out, not from fear but from ecstasy. He tightened his grip on me as we thrashed together in the biting-cold stream. I felt his glorious body shudder as he released himself into me. The specter was a man; I had revealed his substance, shared my essence and brought him to life.

The villagers were always suspicious of me. They didn’t understand why this strange American man had chosen to live in the old cottage at the edge of the olive grove. How could they know that of the many grand and well-funded archaeological digs I had been on, none gave me more satisfaction than stumbling on a fragment, a bit of stone, that gave testament to civilization long gone? 

I could have made myself more accessible to them, tried to make them appreciate the beauty and history that their own sweet soil has hidden beneath the surface, but I never tried. Many villagers said good riddance when my nude body washed ashore near the wooden fishing boats at the edge of the lake. Tongues wagged when it was revealed the body had been violated, a grotesquely huge alabaster phallus lodged firmly in the cold, lifeless cadaver.