Dandra The Destroyer

Dandra the Destroyer: Nightmares of Narcissists

Bones scattered the large pond where Dandra had committed the ritual and brutal sacrifice of humans for decades. Red trunked and stomping hooves he would smash his victims to death with no mercy or quarter and deposit their bones as an offering to his tribe into the waters of the murky hole.  He felt no regret, took no pity on a soul.  There was no escape.  The sacrifice was made from an untouchable place of hurts and pains, the compilation of suffering, his ancestral wounds at the hands of man.  Elephants are known for their keen memory.  He had seen enough to feel nothing when he attacked for he too had been shown no mercy as a young elephant.  His parents had abandoned him beside the very pond where he rolled his victims in.  Left him emotionally alone and unsupported because they too had suffered years of trauma.  His father scarred by man-made wars had been emotionally absent.  Left trunk shaken by the shock of war.  His mother an elephant of constant anxiety had seen her family members die and be lost to the cruelty of the world.  Dandra was once a young hopeful elephant seeking love and approval, but over time the neglect had shaped him into an elephant who possessed cold power, poise, and show.  He had become a medicine trunk wielding the powerful sword of cruelty to appease the familial pain.  When he stomped his elephant tribe would honk and cheer “death to man.” They celebrated the death of the next victim and the deposition of their bones into the depths.  Their spirits released and haunted the woods bringing protection to the elephant tribe as no man willingly came to their place anymore. For man you see was also intelligent and intuitive. 

It was into this inescapable tract of land that Ridruna found himself stumbling about.  Surely, he had dreamed himself there because why when he tried to run did, he find himself once again near the pond? Like a labyrinth of death. Running in endless loops he realized there was no way out of the surrounding landscape. Each time he took flight he found himself staring at the whispering waters once again.  When he glanced down, he had with him a small boy, his son?  No!  Not him too.  Suddenly he heard the stomping rage crashing and thrashing through the forest.  He ran and told the little boy that looked so much like him to run too.  The little boy was slower.  Ridruna in his cortisol fueled flight had abandoned him as his legs drove him fast to the water, he felt the boy disappear into the mists.  Dashing through the thick and cutting bramble he could hear the angry pounding footsteps of the large red elephant in pursuit.  He caught a glimpse of Dandra’s ochre painted skin, and the shamanic headdress of the destroyer.  Fear struck him through, but he would not give up.  He dove into the water and began to swim but he had long ago lost track of the small boy.  Where did he go?  He must have been crushed and soon his bones would be rolled into the flow. Grief flowed deeply into his soul.  Yet, Ridruna still held hope in his heart.  He looked down into the place where he now swam, and the eerie echoes of death resounded through him.  Bones and heads stared up at him with gaping eyes from below.  He was madly swimming away as fast he could, but the elephant stalked the land in a waiting game.  Wearing him down.  Waiting for him to tire.  Everywhere he swam the elephant would go.  He was trapped in this watery hell.  In his mind the inevitability of death flashed through.  He could feel his body weakening.  The elephant never relenting.  Pounding heavy hooves, fueled with blind rage and fury pounded the earth below as he screamed his horn in a taunting torment.  The meanness inside pulsed powerfully through as he would show no mercy. He was coming for Ridruna and he would become another sacrifice for the sins of man.  He would become another victim of trauma perpetuated on earth.  He was fatigued.  He knew the moment had come.  He could not feel any sentient moments in the elephant’s torment, no connection to another being, simply rage and vacancy.  The elephant was intelligent and cunning, stalking him with cold calculated detachment from the shore.  Dandra never tired of the game.  Was this a dream?  Was the young boy his son or really a younger version of himself?  He still had not seen him again.  Perhaps the boy was an apparition cast by the medicine trunk of Dandra to throw him off balance.  A conjured image of a past self coming back to remind him of his own traumas suffered at the hand of powerful stomping male energy. Death by cruel calculated stalking, wearing him down until he was nothing.  Taunting, and showing him that he would never be good enough to survive.  Surely, whoever the apparition was the little one stood no chance.  Death for the babe had surely come.  Young and innocent and defenseless he was no match for the calculated attack.  All that was left was himself.  Ridruna in this moment had a choice. 

Choices flooded him.  He had a flash of an idea.  He could come out of the water and challenge the elephant head on.  Envisioning himself confronting the great Dandra, perhaps he could wake the beast from his rage.  Perhaps, he could force him to acknowledge his fellow sentience, life as flesh blood and bone and fight.  Or he could simply submit.  He could willingly let go into the murky expanse and become yet another pair of bones in the pond of dismay by his own hand.  The elephant had become the red ochre painted body of rage aimed at him, the collective narcissistic attack, cunning, relentless and utterly without empathy.  Was it even possible to get through the blind fury or would he allow himself to simply let go?  It was the easier choice by far to sink into stillness and death.  He could allow himself to become less than nothing, not good enough to survive, a victim of rage and weakly sink to the floor.  Death after all was just a step in the rebirth cycle. Or would he rise and challenge the elephant head on?  He was so tired.  He could see the path to confrontation, but did he have the strength to force Dandra to look into his eyes?  Could the elephant be saved too?  Or would it end in death after all as he cut the throat of the great destroyer?  Was the elephant lost to disassociation from feelings, a narcist beyond the veil?

The world would never know for in that moment he woke. A gasping breath escaping his lips as he slammed back into his body, yet a part of him still in that watery abyss with Dandra, the elephant destroyer stalking him in his memories.  What was this dream?  No, not a dream, it was a nightmare of inescapability.  Where was this place?  Was this version of himself a future version of self-come to warn him or bring forth the energy of the raging tusked red harbinger?  Was it a memory conjured from the pain of his inner-child and he was to bear witness to the loss of the young soul?  Perhaps, it was whispers of choice.  Red ochre painted healing in the form of acknowledgement of wounds.  His heart still weeping for the small boy he began to take his first calmer breaths of awareness and reemergence. He knew that small form was dead, but he still had the choice of how he would survive or die.  Perhaps a part of him was still there, trapped in the moment of live or die.  Soon the nightmare-dream will be forgotten as dreams are, sunken into the depths of our psyche, blips of time so odd and then gone.