Dream 78: The Court of Swallowed Suns

I stood barefoot in a courtroom sewn into sand. The sky above pulsed with a black sun—silent, swollen, like a wound that forgot how to heal. The air tasted of burnt scripture and salt. Porcelain angels sat along every bench, their cracked wings folding in like prayers.

MIND MAZE

Billy

7/25/20252 min read

Dream 78: The Court of Swallowed Suns

I stood barefoot in a courtroom sewn into sand. The sky above pulsed with a black sun, silent, swollen, like a wound that forgot how to heal. The air tasted of burnt scripture and salt. Porcelain angels sat along every bench, their cracked wings folding in like prayers.

A bailiff with gospel pages for skin handed me a mirror. Not a Bible. A mirror.

“Do you swear?” he asked.

I stared at my reflection: twelve versions of myself. One cursed. One cried. One kissed a ghost. I didn't swear, I remembered.

“I do not swear,” I said. “I remember.”

His golden tear hit the sand and hissed like it condemned me. Behind the judge’s bench, a flaming bush shimmered—not with fire, but silence.

Then came my shadow, crowned in brass keys. It looked just like me, if I had never learned restraint.

“He holds too many selves,” it said. “He sinned by forgiving them.”

One of the angels rose, a child with feathers falling like autumn leaves. She recited from memory:

“No soul shall be whole until it breaks three times. Once for grief. Once for guilt. Once for God.” Book of Jessor, Whisper 44

I lowered my head. Even silence became heavier after that.

Below the floorboards, I heard my own corpse twitch. The judge leaned forward and asked, “Why did you not rise?”

“I did,” I told him. “Not in body, in rage.”

A nail fell from above and landed softly in my hand. My mouth opened and the flies flew out. They buzzed scripture, cryptic and sweet. One settled on my eyelid and whispered an image: my mother baptizing a goat in a kiddie pool, her hands full of chlorine and regret.

I climbed a tower built from microphones long dead. At the top, I found a megaphone carved from bone. Holding it high, I shouted into the horizon:

“If you wish to teach truth, wrap it in fog and fire. If it survives, it is real.”

The angels blinked, and their eyes turned to screens. My face flickered there, but not my current self. The version of me who never doubted. He smiled with teeth made of glass.

A crimson banner flew above the ruins. I dipped my finger in ash and wrote:

“One becomes one when the lie stops mattering.”

And then I walked. Into the desert. Into whatever came next. The black sun blinked once, then vanished.

Behind me, the choir of cracked angels sang without sound.