THAT DAY

Another ear infection. My fourth this winter! Luckily the specialist can see me today--a cancellation. I bike across town. He vacuums my ear--again. Black fungus, though way less than other times. Why it's damp & weeping he's unsure. Paints the canal purple with gentian. I feel much better. But then I did last time. And it regrew. I still feel pressure in my jaw, twinges of pain. Makes me suspect my MIDDLE ear's infected too.

Afternoon: work on Inversia, my surreal version of Earth where up is down & down up. Research Canada's Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake. The lake-basins dip below sea level, so on Inversia, with the topography inverted, they'll become archipelagoes in the Canadian Ocean. Trouble is, the floor of Great Slave Lake has been poorly mapped; very deep.

3AM: wake, can't sleep, and my housemate needs a ride to the airport anyway. Take him. Traffic jam--at 3AM! Turns out to be a crash. But we get there. Go home and sleep another few hours...

THAT NIGHT

I'm back in my parents' house in the Eichler Highlands. Feel like the new neighbors are always watching me. Of course I'm watching them too. Tall hawknosed blondes, two or three, come in & out of next house up the hill. I can't tell them apart yet. Bodies attractive but sharp faces and auras. Spiky. Kinda scary.

One is leading around a waifish girl, about ten. Pale skin, black hair. She's wearing a black dog collar. With a strap attached. They keep her on a LEASH!

The girl points at me. They whisper. I feel alarm.

A minute later, one of the blondes, towing her... daughter, slave, dog? knocks on our door and invites herself in. She tugs the leash till the girl sidles in.

"You've been watching us" lisps the kid. I feel danger. "You like little girls like me?"

Yep, they're dangerous--but I can't tell if they're pimping kids to the neighborhood perverts, witches putting kids under spells, vice cops gone crazy, or... something even weirder and worse.

I just watch in a silent panic, as the sharp blonde offers the girl to an old man also living here. "Look, you have blue pajamas, she has blue pajamas--clearly you're meant for each other!" The girl pulls up her top, her pimp pulls down her pajama pants, showing her bare belly, side, and flanks. Little more than you'd see at the beach, just child-skin--but he suppresses a gasp--he IS attracted.

And so, to my alarm, am I. Apparently waifs on dog-leashes turn me on.

He's tense and silent, afraid to say either yes or no. Because you don't cross this woman, and it's unclear what she wants. Money, secrets, blackmail-power, something else? Does she want the old man under a spell?

I'm grateful she's focused on him--if I too want this underage girl, I'm vulnerable to her owner's game. Whatever it is.

MUCH LATER

I'm on a train or subway, when I run into this girl again! She looks a bit older and taller now, maybe twelve. No collar, no leash, no... owners. She's with her two little brothers. Escaped whatever the hell that place was...

They tell me they're on a quest. Alone; can't trust adults not to take them back to the 'safety' of their 'home'. To their pimps.

The bigger brother, tennish, warns her "Your back's bare again." True. Her loose dress or robe droops almost to her tailbone in back.

She opens the robe and shrugs it back up to her neck. She's nude inside the robe. Bare cunt. Brother goggles, clearly excited. Well, so? I am too. Pink lips I want to kiss.

She's rather busty now--not just for twelve, for anyone. She belts the robe loosely round her, breasts still half-showing. Still doing a poor job of avoiding attention... and perverts.

Like me and her brother, I guess.

Still, I'm not worried for her anymore. She got herself off that leash, away from sorcerers. She's not soliciting strangers for witch-pimps. Merely flashing everyone on a train is, well...

Child's play.

NOTES

• Slave in parents' house: I spent years in that house obedient to my parents' eccentric beliefs--and thus missed a lot of teen milestones. But why's it coming up now? This winter, repeated ear infections have made me feel I'm under house arrest... again.
• Neighbors to north, peeping: as a kid, I had inadequate blinds in my bedroom, so our neighbors to the north COULD peer in at night--not that I think they often did. After I went off to college, the new neighbors WERE nosy. But not witch-pimps. Though I haven't seen that house in five years--maybe child abusers have moved in. (Always consider literalism before psychologizing.)
• Slavery, child exploitation:
  1. Holly Lisle wrote two (bad) books on the Feegash, a patriarchal empire where sadism & pedophilia are not just tolerated, but actively required of men.
  2. Today, for a Planetocopia project, I had to research Great Slave Lake in northern Canada, named for a tribe others raided for slaves. We forget slavery was ubiquitous in history--in many places kids really could end up as pimped... enslaved. My dream sounds grotesque... to our sheltered society.
  
• Dream I'm a pedophile, but "even buzzards sometimes gag": I AM sometimes attracted to underage girls, if they're very gifted; the dream points out feelings aren't acts, and admiration isn't exploitation--by showing real exploitation. Historically real exploitation. Though not normally by witches. What's that about?
• Women not men as pimps: In Lisle's books, Feegash patriarchy is absolute, so women & kids are pure (guilt-free!) victims. My dream protests. Women have power; without them, systems fall. But, like men, they can misuse it. They did in my family, and do in the dream.
• Witches: unsure. Awake, my view of Wiccans & Goddess-worship is positive, but the dream has a Wicked Witch right out of Grimm's Folktales, hatchet chin & all. My best guess: I associate witches with feminism, and my mom rationalized her bias against men (and me) in feminist terms.
• Escape on train: training! Undoing my family brainwashing through equally methodical training. Like a long train journey, it may take time.
• Casual flashing on the train: after my crazy upbringing, I ignore privacy & propriety--flirt & bare myself so casually I can shock normal people. No need to panic, folks!
• Eccentric, but escaped scary owners: my current state? Escaped my family prison, but still worry sex'll pull me back into exploitation--slavery.
• ACTION: patience, I guess. I may look pretty weird to others, but remember that leash! Progress is progress. Judge by where you came from.

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