bad dream

by uzwi

You wake up to yellow & orange flashing & loud silent thuds & explosions, like a monstrous old camera shutter going off outside the window, the other side of the blackout blind, only somehow it’s inside your head (although it stops as soon as you close your eyes) & at first you think it’s maybe the circulation of the blood, but it’s far too arhythmic for that both in pulse & intensity of light, and though your legs are soaked in sweat your heart isn’t “pounding”, & you finally realise that what you’re seeing is the nightmare you were just having, translated into a blurred, simplistic, modulated flicker, & that the non-rhythm is the rhythm of narrative with the narrative taken out, & that if you fell back to sleep this minute, exhausted by all this meaningless noiseless cacaphony in the half-waking world in the dark, the nightmare would just pick up again where it left off. & despite the sheer silent assault of it as experienced in this novel way, would prove to be not even very nightmarish.

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