The feeling of wading through seaweed. The tiny hands grasping you, slowing you down, forcing you to push forward or you risk drowning in them.
I wasn’t in the same place. Everything was in shadow. I was surrounded by a deadly sense of calm, like I’d already been caught and was resigned to my fate.
I didn’t want to be resigned to my fate.
I felt my mind battling with itself as I built up a sense of urgency. My instincts arguing with my body that refused to escape. I could feel myself floating through the clouded weeds. It wasn’t my momentum but the momentum the weeds gave me. What would happen when the momentum stopped?
Strange shapes, lingering like uninvited visitors. There was something familiar about them but I couldn’t understand them through the smoke. They were simply ashes dancing in familiar forms. Hovering in the air. Hovering like me.
I want to go home.
I want to wake up.
Then I heard it: humming.
It wasn’t the humming of a mother mending her children’s clothes or that of a child as he sketches mindlessly. This humming felt like a whispered threat. It didn’t float through the air, it dragged itself through until it found my ears.
It was searching.
It was coming.
Then I felt the weeds let go.
A sleep I couldn’t escape. The weight was dragging me down. The ashes were choking me.
Why was I having this dream.
I know my dreams before were different but I could barely remember them now. My memory of them was fading. I was being buried.
No.
I felt myself clawing upward. I was getting out. I had to get out. I felt myself powering reaching, trying to find something to hold onto. This wasn’t it.
It couldn’t be it.
What were these figures surrounding me. Why did they feel familiar. Why weren’t they helping.
The humming got louder. It filled my ears.
This wasn’t it.
I was getting out.
Louder.
Wake up.
Louder.
WAKE UP!
LOUDER.
I screamed.
Sitting upright in my bed I felt my chest heaving. My heart desperately trying to escape my rib cage.
The night was silent outside my window.
Then I heard it.
The humming.