23
I wake to the sight of five shadowy black pulses wafting through the doorway into my bedroom and approaching my bed. And that’s it. I sit up, fully roused. The shadowy pulses are gone. They didn’t just disappear. They might’ve never been. I’m alone in my bedroom. Nothing but me and what happened. I think of this in-between world between waking and sleep, this realm where the conscious mind is shutting down, and dreaming and reality blurs. There’s an alarm here, but I’m not overly worried. I haven’t kicked into fight or flight mode. My anxiety is not cycling up to catastrophising what’s going on. Of course, I’m older now.…
19
I wake to the sight of an old woman standing over me. She’s a crone, twisted and ancient and alien, a disruption of my reality that lasts a millisecond, but it’s a millisecond that stretches so tortuously over my surprise that I’m able to process so much. It’s seven years ago. I’ve been sent home from work for a few days because I have a bad cold and, after waking around my usual time, have stayed in bed and tried to catch up on sleep. But light’s busting in from the window, and the blinds aren’t that effective. Come the morning, I know about it. Opening my eyes, seeing her,…