Collection of Stories

Hypnogogia

A broken marble carving of a Roman Senator.

Muddy water flowing past trampled grass.

The molecular structure of substances in bright red, blue and yellow.

A peacock resting upon a fallen log in moonlit rainforest.

Images flashed underneath my eyelids, bursts of colour and imagined motion.

Some were memories, but most seemed to arise from nowhere.

Flying, glittering shards from chandeleirs and glasses.

Truck tyres discarded, rolling away.

I could feel myself drifting, becoming detatched from the world around me, as silent scenes flooded my mind.

Stay awake.

I have to stay awake.

The stretching of taut fabric having a face pressed against it, features of the person unclear.

Stormy, windswept shores and quiet theatres.

Each of these snippets, these snapshots were familiar, some in a way I couldn't quite understand. Each of them were intriguing, inviting, calling me to discover more.

A crowded room with a man standing confused as a girl was led away by two old women.

Networks of caves with leaves and sticks strewn across the floor.

And then smothering clouds and waves of darkness.

And I understood what was happening, as soon as I could feel my body shift its shape.

I was being bent and moulded and shrunk and bloated, pulled apart and crushed together.

It was terrifying. 

I felt my hands turn from needle thin claws that would click as the fingers touched each other, to hands like boxing gloves, so swollen that I couldn't move anything. Everything would constantly alternate from one extreme to the other, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I knew that if I opened my eyes, the walls around me would distort just as much as I could feel myself being twisted.

I wanted to scream.

Scream for help until my voice was raw.

But no one can be saved from their own mind.

So I whimpered, unable to sleep, unable to be saved, and waited.

Enduring the madness of myself until I lost conciousness.