Ending of a Dream

I was sleeping soundly until a vicious stab of memory propelled me upright, it rushed out of my dream, leaving my cold and sweating body, the irritation of its passing ending my unconsciousness, and the horror rushed out and into the dark.

As I woke and reality started to metamorphose out of my dream sensations manifested themselves. Deep arrhythmic breathing, impatient muscle tensions, a hand through my hair revealed it to me as gritty with sweat, the bedclothes as plastic wrapping binding my legs.

Something of the dream’s memory began to coalesce. I am driving a powerful locomotive out of a siding pulling many wagons behind fully laden. The engine screams and whines it thunders and hammers at my ears bones and flesh. I am vicariously powerful for a moment and feel pride. The power to move is mine and I am calling it to do my will. But at that moment a hideous crash against the windscreen twists my perception cruelly and pulls it hard by the roots. Blood and hair, a flash of a face smashed and horrified. And then I see you crushed too, lying on the road and what you are experiencing is a complete negative of my dream. Silent on lookers are shocked into stone, you have no way of preventing your death and your body is becoming immobilised as your breathing subsides.

I feel you stir in the bed next to me and for a moment you are even conscious enough to ask me what the matter is. I don’t answer and soon enough you slip back into wherever you are. I get out of bed and go downstairs to the kettle and while I wait for it to boil change into something dry. I think of my daughters sleeping who knows where; back at their mothers, with their boyfriends, or maybe out in the world. Wherever it is it is unknown to me. I sit down with tea and check four different message sources, nothing of importance or kindness is there. I nurse the smoky Lapsang mug.

Over by the kitchen table is a little desk, one which you use to organise us and make sure all of our papers are accessible. Folders colour coded, pens in trays, photographs of the kids. But because you are not here all day you do not know what the postman brings and you cannot bring order to what is hidden. There are things I that hide. Letters with a momentum that increases daily and soon their tide will be beyond the breakers, too high to resist. I go to the pocket of my coat and pull out one from yesterday. More than three years salary owed if I had a salary which I don’t, and that’s not all.