That night, I dreamt some of the most disturbing dreams of my life. They were so disturbing that I awoke in a cold sweat, screaming in terror at the faceless fears of my fleeting life.
I've read somewhere that your mind is too dull to simply invent something from scratch. No amount of imagination can ever cause a mind to create a monster from nothing or imagine an original face from the senseless gloom of inspiration. That unknown figure that steps out of the shadow of your imagination probably bears the characteristics of someone you can't even remember, who passed you in the street a few months ago.
I suppose that why most monsters are amalgamations of two or more equally terrifying creatures like a sphinx, or a werewolf, or my mother-in-law...
Whatever woke me that night must have been truly horrific. And yet I can't remember a single thing about it. It's almost as though the terror, having plagued my mind into wakening, had vanished like my money after I've loaned Marjorie my bank card.
It took me a good few hours before I finally managed to doze off, only for me to be rudely awakened by the incessant buzzing of my bedside clock. I had to hit the bedside table three times, and cause a great deal of throbbing in the palm of my hand, before I finally recalled the incident between Four and the device. I scrambled around in the dark for a good minute, my hand reaching out across the floor. Finally, my fingers felt the cool metal of the clock's rim, and a quick flick of the switch at the back silenced it's low-pitched whining.
The damage had already been done. It wasn't that I struggled to get back to sleep again, although that naturally had something to do with it, but was rather more to do with the condition the bed was in by the time I returned to it. Marjorie, sensing the opportunity to expand through the depths of her sleep, had spread across the bed, leaving a narrow corridor - a ledge if you will - on which I could perch.
Under normal circumstances, I might have woken her from her gentle slumber and asked her to move. But I had stirred awake with an unusual aggression coursing through my body. My bitter mood determined that it would be far prudent for me to be uncomfortable and have a reason to be angry with my dear wife than to grab the much needed few hours of sleep at the expense of involving myself in some invariably brief, and in all likelihood unintelligible, conversation.
YOU ARE READING
The Brief-Case Affair
HumorOr the story of the man who went looking for adultery and came back with a lemon. When a man suspects his wife, Marjorie, of having an affair, there are only two things he can do: assume her guilt and find another wife, or go to a private investigat...
