The Dreams That Dreams Once Dreamt Of
2025There is an ogre.
There is a beast who wishes to grind the bones of Britain’s children with his teeth. He is an usurper of all that is good and divine; noble grace stolen cruelly from the heavens.
Tilt your head, blur your eyes, and through another lens you may perceive him as others do. View the shadows cast through ink-stained historiography; that of a statesman in marble crowned in laurel, a martial Mars marred maritally, a short king compensating for the height he did not lack in life, Great Man or Greatest Man?
So many visions of visionaries, so many delinquent dreams-
But forget not the ogre! The spectre of a corrupted revolution! The werewolf that stalks the night to drench the world in red for his own ambitions!
There is an ogre, and his name is Napoleon Bonaparte!
Let us change the topic briefly.
Once upon a time, in a dream, there was a knight.
Let us dwell on a fact; historically, knights have not actually been required to save people. Perhaps by their actions, some have lived who would have died. Certainly, many died who might have lived.
They were thugs in shining armour. They were titled nobles given rank and reward for enacting violence pleasing to the king. But for some, they had been raised to the level of heroism within the dream that we call legend.
And in that dream strode a brave knight.
A long time ago, he had endured nine days of torment. At first he bore a cheerful grin with jokes about his predicament. And then perhaps he gained a gift of Odin-prophesy and spoke of the downfall of his friend’s throne - or maybe he was just speaking his mind, unfettered by life’s regrets. And so his life seeped away only to be replaced by myth, slipping from the waking world into the dream.
And in the dream, as in life, he was beloved.
By who? By whom? Many, let us say, or enough that in this dream he was larger than life, which he had already been in life.
He strode forth on legs of cracked yet polished stone through which slender vines grew, before twining around his waist much like a sash part of some official uniform. This rather resembled something hewn from some sordid statue depicting his splendour yet overgrown with the weight of neglectful years.
Once, there was a hero-knight with legs carved from stone, and if you asked him how his legs got that way, he’d say they got “real fucked up” in some great battle and then he would refuse to elaborate further.
But he was telling the truth, because he was Roland, he was Achilles, he was a swashbuckling swordsman who could drink anyone under the table, he was a hero-knight.
And of course, as knights do in dreams as these, he fought monsters.
It was hard to avoid hearing about the ogre and the more the knight heard, the more he grew curious and hungry. He chased the trail and had many adventures on the way-
The knight fought a duel that never happened, against a knight of mists with snow settling upon his hair and icicles falling from the hole in his chest, both recalling heated words never acted on. The duel was fierce and fast, Durandal against sharpened mist, and I could not tell you who won because it was broken off by providence, perhaps by a man with lightning in his eyes, weighed down by flesh of golden coins.
The knight passed a lionhearted man chained in molten furies, defiant anger spilling forth from his heart and roars as lava plumes. He might have fought the lion too, but the heat was too much, and that wouldn’t have stopped the knight but for the fact that this was not the ogre.
The knight met a musician with a shining round face who might have been a drummer boy once, unacknowledged threnodies drowning out the guilty ghosts around. The musician asked where the lionhearted man was and refused to listen to the answer.
Perhaps the knight knew these people once. But this is a dream. Most of us have met those in dreams who we momentarily believe to be the closest of confidantes, until we wake and they fade from our understanding. Certainly it was not worth dwelling on, not when there is further to go.
And at last, at last, after countless adventures, or at least the knight didn’t feel like keeping count, the knight entered the ogre’s lair.
It was beautiful, because beasts like the ogre must aspire towards aping grace and nobility by their betters. Gilded statues that looked as if they had been caught by some gorgon, jewels surely pilfered from a more deserving kingdom, all the glory and the legitimacy of a forgotten court.
The knight did not knock. The knight did not clear his throat loudly, or announce his presence discretely.
The knight said in a thunderous voice used to commanding battlefields, “Hey, asshole!”
The ogre did not come out right away.
“I’m here to kick your punk ass in! So come out already!”
Still no ogre.
The knight decided that if the ogre was going to be like that, well then. So he grabbed a beautiful vase and smashed it on the ground.
About ten beautiful artisanal masterpieces later, the ogre appeared.
Tilt your head, let your eyes unfocus, and through a prism see the cold marble Mars the Peacemaker that so graced the Duke of Wellington’s halls. But blink, and see the crooked lines depicting a goblin caricature in puffed up uniform pretending to a station higher than he truly is.
Said the ogre with malicious relish, “Good day and welcome, noble soldier, welcome to my palace!”
“Stop doing that,” said the knight.
The ogre said, “Stop doing… what exactly?”
The knight gestured aimlessly. “Whatever you’re doing. That. That flickering thing that makes it hard to look at you.”
“Ah! Perhaps you need glasses.”
The knight squinted.
The ogre laughed. He moved towards the knight, as if in camaraderie, but stopped himself. “Usually, most see me as one thing, a monster or a king- or a monstrous king.”
“And so what you’re saying is that you’re not one thing? That’s fucking weird.”
The ogre shrugged. “Most people are not one thing, no?” he said.
“I’m sure I’m one thing,” said the knight.
“Yes, yes, you seem to me to be an uncomplicated man with perfectly ordinary legs!”
Immediately, the knight said, “Fuck you.”
As if the knight had not said anything, the ogre continued. “What you see, my friend, is what I have lost. I was everything, once! But I have lost those other shining facets of me, and what is left is only a hunger which I sate with the bones of terrified British boys!”
After a moment’s thought, the knight gave the ogre a look of scorn. “You have shit taste!” he said with a laugh. “At least have some standards! French bones, or Spanish bones if you really have to.”
This was not what the ogre had expected to hear. “You are not supposed to sanction my terrible cannibalism,” said he. “Rather, you are supposed to be adequately horrified.”
“I could suggest you eat shit if you’d like.”
“That is rather more expected, yes.” There was an awkward silence, before the ogre said, “Come in, my friend. You have travelled a long way on those strange stone legs, so rest and let us chat over dinner at least, before you attempt to slay me.”
Dinner was raw meat and bones, presumably from naughty British boys who hadn’t behaved. The knight did not partake, but neither was he much fazed.
“So why?” asked the knight, and before the ogre could make a smartass remark, he amended his question to, “Why all this? Why eat British bones?”
“It is my nature,” said the ogre. “In life, it was my nature to conquer and devour!”
“Bullshit.” The knight stared at the ogre, and when there was no laugh, just an unstated curious invitation to go on, the knight explained awkwardly, “That’s just a fucking… after the fact excuse. Like drinking so much you get an awful hangover and then saying that it’s in your nature to have a hangover.”
“The parts of me with the correct justifications were torn away. Perhaps that is why I am an ogre!” The ogre leaned over, and the knight really should have pulled away, but he sat comfortably still, as if he’d done this a thousand times before.
A cruel hand alighted on his ear and pulled at it playfully, and that was all it was.
“And you,” said the ogre, “if I may turn the question back on you, my friend! Why is it that you do the things you do?”
Said the knight, “They told me I was a knight, and I said, sure, why not.”
Said the knight, “Fighting is the only thing I know how to do. I’m damn good at it.”
Said the knight, “I dunno. Nothing else to do here.”
Said the knight all these things, and he was well aware that they were shit reasons, but he didn’t have anything better.
And then, said the knight, “Maybe I could go mad and slaughter everyone, but it’s not like I’ve got an Angelica or Patroclus to go mad for.”
For those were the names he had been given. The paladin Roland went mad for the princess Angelica when she fell in love with someone else. The hero Achilles was stirred into action by the loss of his lover Patroclus. And, well, Achilles also fell when his legs had been targeted.
The knight then said, “I don’t really know why I’m here.”
“You are here, my friend,” said the ogre, “to slay beasts like me and to die in the act! A symbol of heroism with humourous quips about grenadiers to amuse and entertain, and a tale of tragedy to ask what if you had lived? But, dear friend, even you would have fallen eventually. Might as well fall to my monstrous strength and fiery breath, or win some accolades on the way, no?”
“But then there’s no fucking point to any of it.” The knight stood up and kicked the chair roughly. “What do you want, you asshole? Do you want to die or keep blabbering philosophical nonsense? I’ll fight you, yeah, but not because you’re a monster who has terrible taste and I have to. I don’t feel like doing that today.”
In the favoured tradition of argumentalists everywhere, the ogre retorted, “What do you want?”
And to answer this was to fall into the ogre’s trap, but the knight did so anyway.
He said, “I want to go back.”
He said, “I want to go back to the days when you weren’t an ogre and I wasn’t a knight, when the world was simpler and we didn’t have to think about all this shit.
He said, “I want to drink bad wine with you and argue about politics and complain about our wives. I want to share a shitty straw bed on campaign and you to keep me up all night because you had some weird grand idea about, fuck, saving money on supplies or shoes or some shit like that. I wish we were boys again.”
The ogre stood up, and for how short and squat and strange he was, the ink of newspaper cartoons vibrant upon him, he seemed to fill the lair with his presence. And he said, “Even if I could give you that, Lannes, I wouldn’t. Can’t you be happy for me and the grand legacies I have carved out for us?”
“You fucking asshole.”
“I’ll take that as a no.” And the ogre grinned with sharp teeth. “Let us fight, then! To the death!”
The two stepped away from the table, to the mouth of the lair that might have been a cave and might have been a castle.
“This is how the fight will go,” explained the ogre. “I will breathe my fire, and you will be lightly singed. But you will sidestep it, for you have always been so swift.”
The knight did not look so impressed. “If you’ve got this all planned out, then why do we not dispense with all that nonsense and just kill each other?”
The ogre spread his arms, “It is the show of it all! It must be dramatic and convincing, fit for publication! See, you will adeptly thrust your sword at me, and it shall pierce my side. I will scream in pain before removing it and tossing it to the side. I will reach for you and try to break your neck, and we will grapple with each other in a grand finale. Perhaps you will even kill me, my friend!”
“But surely you don’t want to fucking die, you idiot!” cried the knight.
“If I die a grand death,” said the ogre, “then my legend shall grow, and you with it! I found you so small, my friend; is it not an honour to be granted such greatness?”
“You’re such a shithead!” The knight clenched his fist. “Yeah, you were great, but it wasn’t just because of you that I became like this!”
“Isn’t it?” asked the ogre, mocking and sincere. “Did you not follow my lucky star? Were you not ever so loyal? Did you not believe in my dream?“
“Your fucking dream,” growled the knight. “I’ve had enough of dreams.”
He hadn’t realised it, but his hand was on the hilt of his sword.
The ogre clapped. “Now that is it! Come, my friend. Look upon me and see the ogre that I am, the beast I have become! You can never turn down a fight, so come!”
And he was right. The knight hated to admit it. Once, he had run from a fight, but he had never run again.
The ogre had described the fight perfectly. Flames spilled forth, and the knight had to step out of the way, swift and surefooted. He did not have so many opportunities to fight a duel in life, but here his sword-arm was steady and his aim was true. He slashed and stabbed, and his blade entered the side of the beast who screamed in rage-
No, it was in satisfaction, somehow.
The ogre tore the sword from his side and threw it to the ground. The ichor of nations dripped, but it did not weaken him. And he lunged at the knight, and they were locked in cruel embrace. The ogre was stronger, but it seemed that he was holding back.
And the sword was in reach, so close that the knight could just reach out, could just grab it and stab the beast, again and again and again-
Tilt your head, and through the tears that you cannot blink away, see two young men who had worlds ahead of them, and see what became of them. One was shattered first by grief and then by a cannonball, and the other so royal and mighty kneeling in supplication, clasping the fallen’s hand in his own.
Now, ignore that. That isn’t important, anymore.
Close your eyes, clear the dust away, and see a knight fighting a beast-
Said the knight, “Stop fucking talking.”
…
Says the knight, “I won’t do it. I don’t want to. I think you’ve said enough.”
“But that is who we are-“ begins the ogre.
“You can also shut up, you idiot! Honestly, you both talk too much!” The knight is breathing heavily.
He pushes the ogre away, roughly, and the ogre is surprised by this turn of events that he does not resist with his superior strength. On his cracked stone legs bound by ivy, the knight finds his uneasy footing, and he stands and kicks the sword away.
His eyes are wide. He does not blink, he forces himself to look, and he smiles a crooked smile full of madness.
“So you said you lost your shit?” asks the knight. “Your… other yous? Fuck, I don’t understand any of that shit, but sure, if you’ve lost that, if it’s making you all weird and fucked up and empty, then I’ll just have to go find it, yeah?”
“That is not something you can simply find,” protests the ogre.
“Even if I have to fuckin’ go to the moon on a hippogriff or something, I’ll find them for you. I don’t care if it makes me mad or whatever- oh.”
And like a hyena who has realised a marvellous thing, the knight begins to laugh. The tears in his eyes are no longer that of sorrow.
“What?” demands the ogre. “What is so funny that you would stop our grand fight for?!”
The knight chokes out through a furious grin, “You’re Angelica. You’re Patroclus. You’re the one that I love and you’re the one I’ll go mad for. I’ll burn this whole shit dream down for you, my best friend. And while I’ve never backed down from a fight, there’s nothing saying I have to fucking finish it, isn’t there?”
It’s not a very funny joke, but it’s the only one he has now.
And the ogre begins to chuckle too.
“You have to come along, though,” says the knight. “It might be in your nature to eat people, but it’s in my nature to follow you. And it’s your weird shitty situation that we’re going to fix, Napoleon.”
“But,” asks the ogre, “are you not afraid that I will eat you?”
“You can try,” says the knight, “But I’ll kick you with these legs, and you don’t eat stone. They’d break your stupid teeth!”
And he has a point.
Even the ogre has to admit that.
Even I have to admit that.
There is an ogre. There is a beast in the night who has brought Europe low, who has desecrated crowns, who threatens all that is good and holy.
But there is also a knight. He was once a hero, but he has lost his wits. He follows the ogre loyally now in search for something that could fill the ogre’s emptiness, whether that is the fleeting envisioned selves of a great man’s legacies or something else that we cannot make sense of.
There is an ogre and there is a knight.
And together they just might break this damn dream apart.