Ch. 14: Unpleasant Imaginings

She comes to collect the last of her stuff. Her face seems obscured, and I see her as if in soft focus, there in front of me as real as she's been in my thoughts since the Breakup.

Time compresses and dilates, seeming to lose all sense of meaning. I'm here, she's here, everything is good and for some reason we're taking a bath together. The water is deep, hot, and scents of Radox infuse the steam around us. I know this shouldn't be happening, but it feels calm, and I feel safe and settled. I'm happy - this is the way our relationship was always supposed to be, and if she'd been like this we'd never have broken up.

After the bath, we head down into the town centre, and we seem to float through the square past other shoppers whose conversations I can't hear, whose forms seem as insubstantial as ghosts. My thoughts are solely with the woman at my side, who I can see less clearly now. How did I get here? I can't remember. I'm still warm, comfortable and at ease, though, and the questions I want to frame in my mind just fade into nothingness along with the shades of other people around us.

But once we get back home, the atmosphere changes. It gets darker. More threatening. She's angry. Accusing. I can't seem for form a reply. I try to speak, but can't get words past my lips. I'm helpless in the face of her aggression. Her face shifts. Changes. I can't see her features. Panic strikes me. I'm fighting for breath. Try to run away. Escape. But I find myself gripped by sleep. Darkness overwhelms me. I sink into unconsciousness.

Blackness. Cold. Fear. I know she's ther. But I can't see her. I can't open my eyes. She comes at me out of the darkness. I'm frozen., Paralysed. Help me! She's wailing, incoherent. I'm assailed by her screams and those of a rape alarm combined, inexplicably, with flashes of blinding light that force me into a corner. Try to call the Police. Grab for the phone. No words come out. I'm on me knees, hands pressed against my ears, as this cyclone rages around me. I'm going to die. I know it. And I can't help myself. Blackness once more.

I wake to find her next to me. This isn't my bed. I am disorientated. Then I realise she's moving. I try to break free. Run. Flee. Escape. She attacks again. Her nails are talons. Raking my face, tearing my flesh. I still can't move. Somebody help me! I'm going to die and I can't save myself. I must move. I have to. My limbs are lead. Rooted to this bed. This pillow. This grave.

"Somebody help me!" I hear myself screaming.

My scream jerks me awake.

The dream was so vivid, so intense, so paralysingly real that for a couple of minutes I daren't even turn over to look at the clock.

3:59. The welcome, friendly sight of my alarm clock.

Light on. Look to my right. Alone. At home. Relief.

It appears that The Silence has visited my dreams now. I hope that this is the first and only time. I get out of bed, go through to the living room and try to light a cigarette. My hands are shaking so badly that it takes me three attempts to get it lit.

4:20. I finish my cigarette and go back to the bedroom. The shaking has passed, and though I have (for the first time in my life) total recollection of the events of my nightmare, the worst sensations have gone and I'm only left with the last traces of the fearfulness that had so gripped me.

In 'The Matrix', Morpheus turns to Neo and says, "have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream - how would you tell the difference between the dream world and the real world?".

That's what tonight was like. The imagery was solid, right down to sensation. I could even smell the body wash she uses - the soap-free stuff that you can only smell when you're in contact with it. I could feel her skin. I could see her face through the darkness, and hear her words. As I woke, the feelings were still there, with the tingling still in my fingertips and the smell of her hair in my nostrils. No wonder I was still shaking.

I can't remember the last time a nightmare scared me the way that one did. I don't heave them often - I can rarely remember dreams anyway. I'm not one of those people who can sit and discuss dreams over morning coffee. I always thought that dreams were just the brain filing away experiences - the neurological equivalent of a computer hard drive. But she was never violent, never attacked, me and, truth be told, didn't even make the Breakup all that difficult.

So why the strange mix of images? My mental hard drive defragging? A conflict of combined past experiences mixing with the recent stress? God knows, I'm not a psychologist. I just think it's The Silence, finding a new way of getting to me, and my brain fighting off The Silence as I sleep.

5:00. Light off. I push the nightmare from my mind, or at least try to - the intensity of the images are such that they seem scorched onto my retinas - and turn over. To sleep. Perchance to dream. And in those dreams - what?

Hopefully nothing as bad as that. Ever again. Please.