The exercise:
Write about: nightmares.
Max has woken up three times already tonight from what he says is the same nightmare. Also today wasn't the greatest for any of us, as we brought Miles to the hospital to get checked out and he had the joy of having a cotton swab shoved up his nose so that they could test him for various things.
They did rule out pneumonia though, so that's something. Now if the whole house could just get a decent night's sleep we'd be on a roll.
2 comments:
I've heard of recurring nightmares where everytime you go back to sleep it starts up again. I have no idea what causes them though -- and I've had the slightly weirder one of waking up from a dream and realising it was a continuation of a dream from several weeks ago. I hope Max's nightmare is done though, and that Miles doesn't have anything serious :)
Nightmares
When he was little his mother had told him about the nightmares, horses that only rode down from the hills at night with their foals following along behind them. They were black and grey, with the occasional white blazon on their flank or nose and their eyes were jet black and showed only insanity (though, his mother had added, most horses were insane anyway and these were just more honest than most). Steam rose from their nostrils as their breath heated the night air around them, and they would race through the valley, trampling crops and anyone who got in their way. Sometimes something would direct them from their usual route and they would stampede through the village streets; iron-shod hooves ringing on the cobblestones and snorting and whinneying filling the night air. Buckets would be kicked aside; tools left outside would be scattered, and dogs would cower under the beds and howl softly.
Now he was older and he'd sat down one afternoon in October and thought about it, and wondered why wild horses would have shod hooves. And why they would run through the village and the valley but never stop. Was this a migration, or was it a hoax? And where were the nightstallions, from whom presumably the nightmares got their foals? There were lots of unanswered questions and his mother, now in her seventies, sat in her chair in the parlour and refused to answer any of them.
So he decided that the only way to resolve this was to seek out the nightmares for himself: to wait outside and confront them.
At the edge of town was a wooden fence, left over from when there were raiders in the hills (his mother claimed that the nightmares had eaten them since, but he felt she sounded a little hysterical when she said this). He set to work, and throughout the winter months he built a stone tower adjacent to the fence -- a watch-tower he said, and he meant it. Come Spring, when it was six metres tall and had a narrow winding staircase inside to reach the roof it was ideal for watching the valley below and any stray nightmares intending to storm the village. And, most importantly, he was sure it wouldn't collapse for anything less than an earthquake.
On March 21st he went up the tower to watch for the nightmares, only slightly unsettled by his mother insisting on saying goodbye to him before he left the house as though she'd never see him again.
Greg - I've definitely had nightmares I felt like I couldn't escape from, but thankfully that's a rare occurrence. One that I would certainly avoid if I knew how to go about doing so...
Um, this is fantastic and I hope you've continued it. Because leaving it here would just be mean.
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