Nightmares

A moonless night, thick clouds blocking out the stars. I awaken to the slight hum of my old bedside alarm clock. Its harsh red LEDs telling me that I have no business stirring at this hour. Yet I find myself drenched in sweat and sticky, the covers all piled on the floor, the fitted sheet pulled off one corner of the mattress. I am still shaking from the images that just a few moments ago were racing through my mind, plaguing me with their horrifying scenes. My wife in the arms of some faceless lover. My daughter being driven away in a pick-up truck filled with all of her belongings, never looking back. A smile pulling at the corner of her lips as she finds humor in the words of the unseen driver. An empty bedroom that used to be filled with the delightful props of a rich childhood. Bright patches of wall where photographs and drawings once were hung with swelling pride.

The visions strip the strength from my body, pulling away my nerve, leaving me helpless. I slide off the bed into the pile of blankets, hoping the comforter can somehow live up to its name. My tears ultimately numb my mind and I drift back into a surface sleep. A cyclone whips through my mind that tortures me further with effects from the earlier cause. A carton of smokes. Cases of beer and bottles of booze. An empty sanctuary. A computer cache bursting with writhing bodies. Desperate and soul stealing liaisons far from the light, Aphrodite and Ares beckoning.

I wake the next morning on the floor, my shoulder muscles knotted in pain, my head a-reel. I have a terrible hangover, though I touched not a drop. Dark dreams of fictional beasts and shadowy spectres are easily dismissed in the clear rationality of morning light, though lasting night terrors that vividly replay themselves in my mind throughout the day hint at a future and possibilities that I cannot dismiss.