THE RED ADMIRALS

Just as it happened before and likewise as it happened before that a viscid substance started to drip from my hair, my fingertips, my toes and my eyes as I tried to gather my senses. My prison was high and built of red bricks; its shape was that of an almost perfect hemisphere. The floor that was slowly turning red with my blood intersects it a little above its greatest possible diameter; which somewhat accentuates the feeling of oppression.

I can feel the Red-letter days. When the red-blooded men enter my cell and beat me with red- hot metal to make me reveal my desires or perhaps to gather some pleasure. I remained silent under their torture and give them none.

Today, I felt ill. I dreamt that there was a red admiral butterfly on the prison floor. I went to sleep again, unmoved, and dreamt that I had woken up and there were two admirals. I went to sleep again, and  dreamt that the butterflies were three. They went on increasing in this way; they filled the cell and I was dying in this hemisphere of fluttering red. With a vast effort I woke myself up. Waking was useless; the uncountable red admirals were choking me. Someone said to me: You have not woken to the waking state but to a previous dream. This dream is within the other, and so on, which is the number of red butterflies. The fluttering butterflies were crushing my mouth,

but I shouted: Butterfly in a dream cannot kill me and there is no such thing as a dream within a dream.

Brightness awoke the cell up. Through the open door of the cell the red admirals flew away with me... Ignoring us a few virile men entered the cell to gather my body.