a dream

I walked the streets in a city of my own construction, wandering the nameless avenues, looking for landmarks. I spoke to people with no decernable expressions, asking directions. Their answers were nonsensical and nearly impossible to hear. Unsure of my own destination, I found myself in a district of warehouses and grids of criss-crossing railway tracks imbedded in worn blacktop. Every road decends here, in a vast plain of empty buildings and unused electrical circuits.

I went toward the nearest door, thinking, as one does in dreams, that it would lead me somewhere. As I stepped down into the deserted street off the curb, the door opened slowly outward toward me and a figure began to appear. I stopped, aware of the pounding in my chest. As the figure became more solid, my breathing became shallow and irregular. There was something familiar about the shape of the body, something distinctly, unpleasantly, familiar, and I backed away, and tripped and fell over the curb. I was so afraid that once I had connected with the solidity of the cold pavement I couldn't get up. I lay there on my stomach with my face pressed against the street. I felt someone kneel beside me and a warm palm touched my back and stayed there, exerting a gentle pressure, making it impossible for me to get up or even turn over. I squeezed my eyes shut and felt a single tear of terror slide down my face and across the bridge of my nose. While I was trying to find a scream, a face came close to my ear and began to whisper. It was the voice of a woman, soft and melifluous, chanting in my ear,"You know what I am and you know what I can do. "

I struggled to free myself like a cockroach pinned to a countertop by a toothpick. I threw my fist backward toward her face several times in an attempt to make her stop repeating those words, over an over, into my ear, "you know what I am and you know what I can do!" Finally my fist connected with the hated mouth and slipped, as if intended to choke those words down her throat, directly into it. I could feel the warm saliva covering my hand.

Suddenly, I was awake. Sitting upright in my bed, I found the scream!


Pocket change hit the hardwood floor in the room beneath me. I struggled to catch my breath as feet pounded up the stairs and down the hall toward my room. I was holding my fist in front of my face. It was wet with saliva.