felt a little like that.
A van drove by, its tires hissing on the wet asphalt. He waited a moment, then crossed the street, stepping into and splashing through a shallow puddle. Looking down, he saw muddy black water.
Black water.
He felt cold suddenly, and he shivered, his mood dampened by the remembrance of last night's dream.
It had been a bad one.
In the dream his mom had been staggering through a meadow, drunk and naked, holding in one hand an overflowing skin of wine, in the other a severed penis, blood still dripping from its torn, ragged end. There were other women nearby, also naked, also drunk, but his attention was focused only on his mom. He'd stepped forward, through a pile of rustling leaves. She turned and saw him and let out a great, excited whoop of joy. She dropped the wineskin, dropped the penis, and began dancing, a mad celebratory dance of wild abandon. A goat sprinted by, passing directly in front of her, and she leaped at it, grabbing the animal around the neck and twisting it to the ground. There was an audible snap of bone, and then she was on top of the goat, ripping with fingers, tearing with teeth, ecstatically smearing the blood on herself.
In the space between her legs, he could clearly see the goat's hairy erection.
And then the other women joined his mom, all of them coalescing into one madly carnal, wildly anarchic group of grasping hands and hungry mouths.
His mom grabbed the goat's erection, yankiag it out and proudly holding it aloft.
And then he was alone in the darkness, floating face up in the waters of a black river, everything, all of his thoughts, all of his feelings, all of his memories, fading, going, gone until he was a blank nothing drifting onward into a bigger nothingness, the black water streaming through his ears, through his nose, through his mouth to fill him up.
He'd awakened cold, shivering, his blanket kicked off the foot of the bed, feeling ... not frightened exactly, but ... disturbed. He'd felt depressed as well, filled with a strange sense of loss.
The feelings faded with breakfast, were washed away with his shower, and were forgotten when he saw the gorgeous fall day outside.
But now he was worried. He walked slowly down the sidewalk toward school. There was something about the dreams he'd had lately that didn't sit right with him. They didn't feel like ordinary nightmares, did not seem to come from the same subconscious pool as the dreams he usually had. He was not sure what about them made him feel this way, but whatever it was had him scared.
'Hey, dickmeat!'
Dion looked up to see Kevin hanging out the passenger window of Paul's Mustang.
'Need a ride?'
He shook his head, waved them on. 'I need the exercise.'
'I thought you got your exercise doing push-ups on Penelope!'
He pointed toward Kevin, then pointed toward his crotch. 'Your breakfast, bud!'
Kevin laughed. 'Later!'
The Mustang took off, tires squealing on the wet road, splashing water.
Black water, Dion thought, looking at the spray.
He shivered.
Kevin closed his locker. 'She called it what? The commune?'
'The combine.'
Kevin thought for a moment. 'You know,' he said, 'there used to be a religious cult that ran a winery around Santa Rosa, back, I don't know, a long time ago. Fountaingrove, I think it was called. And it was run by a cult called the Brotherhood of the New Life. If I remember right, they used to use their wine in ceremonies. This sounds a little like that.'
'Penelope's family is not a cult.'
'It doesn't sound just a little spacey to you?'
Dion twisted his combination lock, pulled on it to make sure it had caught. 'A little,' he admitted.
'Just keep your eyes open.' Kevin grinned. 'You've got a rare opportunity here. You're seeing all possible permutations of the female Daneam. You're seeing Penelope's future. In twenty years she's going to look like one of them. Acorns don't fall far from the tree and all that good crap. So you've been given fair warning. If you don't like what you see, back out now. Save yourself some grief and heartache.'
Dion tried to smile. 'I like what I see,' he said. 'I hope so.'
Dion tried not to think of Penelope's family as he and Kevin walked to class.
Bacchus, Mr. Holbrook wrote on the board. Dionysus. He underlined the words, wiped the chalk dust on his pants, and turned to face the class.
'Bacchus, or Dionysus,' the teacher explained, 'was probably the most important of the Olympian dieties. More important even than Zeus or Apollo. There are not as many stories about him, but the fact remains that he was, throughout this time, the most popular of the gods, and his followers were by far the most loyal. This can be attributed in large part to the fact that he was the only Olympian god who was both mortal and divine.'
A student near the back of the room raised his hand.
'Yes?' the teacher said.
'Which name are we going to be tested on?' the student asked. 'Bacchus or Dionysus?'
'We will be referring to him by his proper Greek name in this class:
Dionysus. You may be tested on both.'
The class was filled with the sound of furious scribbling.
'As I said, Dionysus was both mortal and divine, the son of Zeus and Semele, the princess of Thebes. Zeus was in love with the princess, and after impregnating her while in one of his many guises he swore by the river Styx that he would grant any wish she desired. Zeus' wife, Hera, jealous as always, put the idea into Semele's mind that her wish was to see Zeus in all of his glory as the king of heaven, and this is what the princess asked for. Zeus knew that no mortal could behold him in his true form and live, but he had sworn by the Styx and could not break that oath. So he came to the princess as himself, and Semele died beholding his awesome splendor, but not before Zeus took the child that was about to be born.'
Mr. Holbrook turned back to the chalkboard and wrote two more words:
Apollonian. Dionysian.
'Over the years, over the centuries, Dionysus has usually been misunderstood and misinterpreted. In general, these two words have come to mean 'good' and 'evil.' If something is described as 'Apollonian,'
that means it is connected with light and goodness, order and lightness.
The word 'Dionysian,' on the other hand, applies to the dark and chaotic, and is often connected with evil. Although Dionysus was by no means a bad or evil god, this mistake is easily understood. As a god who was half human, half divine, Dionysus had a dual nature. This duality was further emphasized by the fact that he was the god of the vine, the god of wine. Wine can make men mellow, and it can make men mean.
Likewise, Dionysus could be likable and generous, warm, good and giving.
He could also be cruel and brutally savage. Just as the same wine that brings men together in camaraderie can also make them drunk and drive them to commit degrading acts and horrible crimes, Dionysus could bring to his worshipers joy or pain, happiness or suffering. He could be both man's benefactor and his destroyer. Unfortunately, over the years the dark side of Dionysus has tended to overshadow his good side, to the point where today most people's picture of him is highly distorted.'
Mr. Holbrook turned back to the board. Dionysian Rites, he wrote.
Bacchanal.
'We will now look at the worship of Dionysus, which was done often through drunken orgies and festivals of debauchery.'
Dion felt a pencil in his back. 'Now we're getting to the good stuff,'
Kevin whispered.
Dion laughed.
Vella was absent, Kevin had a dentist's appointment, and for the first time Dion ate lunch alone with Penelope. He was glad Kevin wasn't there, but he felt guilty about it. He liked Kevin, enjoyed his friend's company, but at the same time he found that he preferred being alone with Penelope.
