#153

It's 5am and I have just awoke from the most horrific nightmare. Not pictures, but sounds. Timeless drips, echoes and hollow arctic winds over chopping and slicing and cutting and tearing. There were smells also. Foul, immoral scents that no man has the right to release: Stomach acids, brain fluid, unprocessed waste, neat urine. When I awoke the world outside was whipping up. The wind was blowing phantoms in from dark places and the trees were bowing, creaking and hissing threats. A strange reality cut shapes and faces into the window, someone all bashed up, but not John, showing a lifetime of grief and pain in the glass. Over in the gloom of the room, Jaw's scales flickered and reflected light from his dark plot on the chest of drawers. It looked like someone was standing in the corner smoking a cigarette. The bedroom door was open. Outside it was blacker than black; just a hole to God-knows-where. And I lay there like that, pulled up tight into my blankets, praying for that weird waking moment to pass. And suddenly the bed felt too large. I knew that to my left the sheets were laying stone cold. And for the first time since it happened, I realised John was gone.