25
I wake to a sudden weight that lands on my chest. Something has sprung on me and seized me. In the darkness, I shout and push, feeling immediate resistance. Then I thrust my hands out, flinging whatever’s on me to the floor by the window. I squint and I’m sure I can make out some shadowy form. More and more, consciousness takes hold. The last tendrils of sleep lose their grip on me. All the typical rationalizations kick in and, as they kick in, whatever I’m seeing fades. A dream. A dream. A dream. So cliché, but it’s the easy out, and the simplest way to classify what happened as…
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.…