Dream Painter
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Mamu painted pictures of other people’s dreams. That was her gift. She lived with her mother, Salaria, and it was Salaria who came up with the idea to sell these paintings.
It was a successful business, thanks to Salaria’s relentless marketing. That woman spent her life on social media. Mamu often wondered if Salaria was the true creator of TikTok or if TikTok had created her mother. She worshiped Instagram, tolerated Facebook, and had nothing but scorn for Twitter, which she refused to call X. Of course she had a Blue Sky account, she wasn’t stupid.
According to her mother, they were the best in the business. They were also the only ones in the dream painting business. When her mother said, “Dreamwork makes the teamwork,” Mamu died a little inside.
Checking her appointment book, Mamu saw there would be a new client today, Harvey Wallbanger. Good lord, that was not the man’s real name! How absurd. He’s trying to hide his name, thought Mamu, which would be pointless once he began dreaming. Mamu sighed, thinking of people who exhausted their energy concealing their true selves. Yet, they thought nothing of letting her prowl around in their dreams. So certain their visions were fascinating and unique. When they were only wisps of phantom fears and desires that evaporated in the morning, leaving behind a nagging sense of loss.
Mamu wondered if the clients knew she would also suffer the fear, anxiety, and the occasional joy of the dreamer. Salaria said to keep her mouth shut and take the money; no one cared about her feelings, they just wanted their painting.
Resigned, she prepared the bed and hookah pipe for her client’s arrival, then straightened the couch where she would lie when she entered the client’s dreams. Her tools were neatly organized on the table by her side: moody oil paint in little jars, vibrant acrylics in crusty-topped tubes, worn nubs of dusty chalk, and a coffee can full of potent markers.
Once, when she didn’t have a client, Mamu dreamed and then painted her own experience. It was as if she had turned herself inside out, exposing veins and blood, intestines full of shit. Her skin imprisoned on the inside, her hair a twisted mass of gore. The painting was hideous. She wanted to destroy it, but she was afraid. The painting exposed her like those dreams where you are naked in public. It twisted her power back onto itself. Terrified, she turned the painting towards the wall and covered it in a heavy cloth drape, where it stayed, ignored but never forgotten.
Salaria refused to have her dreams painted. She said they belonged to her alone.
Hearing a hesitant knock on the door, she knew Mr. Wallbanger had arrived. Opening it she saw…no one… until she looked down and saw a tiny man, neatly dressed in an old-fashioned three-piece tweed suit, complete with a gold chain looping from his pocket that presumably connected to a pocket watch. He was barely knee-high, smiling shyly. He extended his hand in greeting. Mamu stooped over and shook his warm, dry hand.
“Mr. Wallbanger. Please, come in. Make yourself comfortable,” said Mamu, gesturing towards the dream bed, secretly worried she might need to lift him onto the bed. Laying down on her couch, Mamu looked closely at the man, preparing herself to receive his dreams. He looked familiar, like she knew him, but couldn’t place where. It felt urgent that she remember how she knew him, but there wasn’t time to think about that now.
“Please, call me … Harvey. If you are going to see my dreams, we should become friends, don’t you think?” the man said, walking towards the bed. With each step, he grew taller until his head nearly touched the ceiling. As he lay on the dream bed, he began shrinking again, growing long, thin arms that wrapped themselves onto the bed like restraining roots.
“I apologize for the reinforcements,” said Harvey, gesturing to his expanding web of arms, but I have a terrible fear of falling out of bed.”
Mamu nodded in agreement, for she had a similar fear. After adding an extra pinch of dream magnification powder, thinking it might be needed for such an unusual person, she handed him the pipe.
Harvey inhaled mightily on the pipe and soon was breathing deeply, his eyes closed but moving beneath the lids. Mamu lay on her couch, opening her mind, drifting, unsure when the dream began, willing herself to accept and observe.
They remained in her little studio, but to her shame, Harvey, now a normal-sized, two-armed man, walked over to Mamu’s self-portrait and removed the drape. He turned the portrait around and stood staring at the grotesque imagery. Leaning over, he began licking the color from the painting. With each tongue lap, strokes of the painting vanished. The man’s tongue was coated in swirls of pigment as chaotically colored drips ran down his chin and stained his shirt in exuberant splotches.
“Who are you?” Mamu asked, trembling, as she watched herself disappearing from the canvas.
“You know who I am.”
Mamu did know. She whispered, dreaded speaking his name aloud. “Morpheus.”
Morpheus sadly nodded his head. “I heard of your great powers as a dream painter. You broke the rules. Dreams are never meant to last. And now I’ve licked you clean. I couldn’t stop myself. I did want to thank Salaria for helping me find you, but that isn’t necessary anymore.”
Looking down at her hands, she saw they were no longer there. In fact, there was nothing left of Mamu’s body. Her last thought was regret. Salaria’s greed was their undoing.
And then, Mamu was gone.
Morpheus sighed, contented. There would be no more paintings encroaching on his domain. Shrinking back to his small size, Morpheus straightened his jacket, wiped his face clean, and put a lit match to the canvas that had once held Mamu’s dreams. For a few brief moments, he watched the flames, then turned his back and left the room.