In Detail

It’s dark. As the eyes adjust, some light comes through the window from streetlamps and stars. It’s open, letting the sounds of distant cars and dogs in, and a pleasant breeze that gently pushes the curtains. It is otherwise silent. This is not anywhere I know. The view is that of typical suburbia, but the buildings are too white and regular and the air smells wrong.

There are two bodies on the floor. They are dispassionately examined. One male, one female. Adult. They smell strongly of fear and sweat and blood; still fluid, a stream of it flows across the wooden floor and down the stairs. The male’s arm is idly lifted by the wrist, then dropped. It falls on the man’s face. There is no pulse. Their bodies are covered in cuts, some clean and economical, carefully exposing layers of muscle and organs, others messy and ragged, as if they have been savaged by an animal. The bed denotes this as a bedroom, and the position of the bodies implies the male tried to defend the female.

There’s nothing more to learn. Bored, the blood trail is followed downstairs, bare feet splashing in it. Downstairs there is a kitchen connected to a dining room. The blood crosses the linoleum and leads to the front door. The refrigerator is walked over to, leaving a trail of bloody footprints. A small iron disc is tied foursquare by rough string around the neck; it is pressed to the appliance and falls onto the floor with a clatter. Dream confirmed.

The cupboards have clear glass in their doors. It is easy to locate a glass. The tap is recoiled from when it spits out a stream of blood instead of water and the glass shatters when it is dropped. It cannot be turned off. After a while the sink starts to over flow and the blood winds its way to join the stream heading under the door. It’s followed.

Outside the door, things have changed. The sky is black with white stars as if someone was given an accurate depiction of the night sky with which to recreate it but had never seen it themselves. The smell of blood is even stronger, and leads off in the direction the river travels. The earth is bare. The house is gone. It feels like there should be a sound, but there is nothing.

More streams join the one followed. The river steadily gets larger and harder to wade through, and develops a current. It cuts into the earth like water, forming noticeable banks on either side. Lining them are bodies.

They do not smell of decay, as if even microorganisms are not welcome here, but they are clearly dead. This one is a seventeen year old boy with glazed eyes and slightly open mouth. His chest is caved in. This one is a man in his thirties; his neck has been snapped. Here is half of a girl. And from all of them blood drips in rivulets down the sides of the banks, adding to the flow. They get more numerous over distance until they are piled several deep.

There is now no way out of the river, with the current pushing and the blood up to the waist and the banks now unclimbable. The only way is forward. The sharp metallic smell of fresh blood is now overpowering and headache inducing. Ahead the sky glows a dim red.

The bottom half of a shirt is ripped off and tied around the eyes. The top half is pulled up over the nose.

And suddenly it is there ahead, and even through the blindfold its presence cannot be ignored. Its outline is burnt onto the retinas, black surrounded by red. It arrests movement. I realize the river is its shadow.

Then I wake up.