A Dream of Half Naked Men Dancing Deep Inside a Mountain, Waist Deep In Blood and Rose Petals
I approach a small, stupa-like building. Its stones dry and cold. The snowy wind swirls around me, scratching my face and bringing with it a deep and biting cold. I approach the building. Are there drums somewhere? I'm unsure of whether I hear music or my own heartbeat.
There's a faint reddish glow, flickering like firelight from within the hillside. A glow stinking of sweet roses, almost the smell of decay, almost the smell of sex. I step forward into the light and begin a descent down a flight of small, rounded stone steps. The light doesn't help me to see, and I stumble and slip on the stairs. I'm sure that someone must be drumming now. Each beat of the drums bringing a swell of emotion and red and purple and light and warmth, growing more forceful, like a wave sweeping closer and closer and stronger and stronger as the tide comes in on the beach.
Now the drums and the red and the purple and the warmth linger after each drumbeat, sticking in the hot, humid air until each wave is nearly indistinguishable from the next. I hear people splashing in something thicker than water. I come into a chamber, the heat is nearly unbearable. I see dozens of men, naked or with blood-soaked lungis hanging heavily from them. They are trudging through a circular pool of blood made thick with crushed and trampled rose petals, which are poured in from buckets by naked young girls. The blood is supplied by stone sluices in the walls, from which it trickles constantly and sometimes gushes. I can see no drummer, but the thundering of the drums makes my heart stop. How long have they been here? How long have they been pushing their way through the ever thickening sludge and the stench, making this strange circle around the small and hideous little figure in the middle of the room?
I hope never to know what that little figure is.