This Gentle Night
They say you should record your dreams, though I had nightmare this week that I would surely love to forget. It was a sneaky bastard, coming to me sometime after dawn, like the milkman, instead of the usual dead of night routine, and it shook me right down to my ankles. I woke up around 4 AM, feeling fully rested, and decided to get a few hours more sleep before getting up for work. Big mistake. It seems like the second I closed my eyes I was in the middle of this hell dream. I was on the couch watching as my father slowly collapsed to the floor of our dining room. In the dream I ran by my late mother, who was sitting on a chair in the living room and did not look up when my dad fell. She was alive and healthy in the dream, and appeared to be watching TV, though I don't recall it being on. It was like I was running through time, racing through the past, represented by my mother, to my dad lying there on the floor. I ran over to my father, tried to get him to talk to me, and then I ...