02/01/2015
Kevin woke in a sticky sweat that wrapped around his neck like a scarf. He had another nightmare. In this one he was on safari somewhere in Africa, inside an open-air Land Rover with a few imagined British tourists. The guide pointed a dark, taught and defined arm across the plains, slowly and deliberately without saying a word. His skin glistened in the bright sunlight without a sliver of shade anywhere. Kevin looked where the man pointed. A single, solitary cheetah sat motionless staring at the vehicle. Its slender body of restrained, pure kinetic energy was a rubber band on the verge of snapping. The cat’s eyes glowed, two empty green orbs inside of larger glass black ones as if it were nighttime and its pupils fully opened. They pierced through Kevin’s and seemed to get closer until he could see the cat’s entire face and feel the cool air surrounding it. Then he woke up.
With his hand, he rubbed the covers over his wife’s shoulders, “Shay, are you awake?” She mumbled and turned away. “Shay, wake up.” She sat on one elbow like a renaissance portrait of some annoyed goddess swimming in sheets.
“Why are you awake?” she asked without opening her eyes.
“I had another nightmare.” Kevin’s nightmares had become more intense and more frequent in recent months. He couldn’t understand and didn’t know what may have started them. Shay sat up, now more awake than before.
“Kev, your pillow is soaked. Are you okay?”
“No, I think I need to start seeing a doctor.”
A space on the wall in front of the bed, about six feet high and half as wide, began to light up. Indeterminate squares of static and lines like so many broken TVs flickered, each a different color. A horrific buzzing made Kevin hold his ears but the sound was always behind him and never growing any quieter. The colored lights turned on and off and hummed, buzzing, putting the whole bedroom into a strobe effect. Kevin could see clearly that Shay was gone and her side of the bed left no trace that she was ever there. The lights bore through Kevin as the white noise grew louder, making the hairs on his neck stand and sending a chill shrieking through his extremities.
“Why are you keeping me here!?” he screamed. “I’m not an animal, I’m not an animal, I’m not an animal!” But there was no answer, no return. He could only drive himself to exhaustion until he no longer kept his eyes open to the uncontrollably flashing lights and his voice was too hoarse to continue shouting fruitlessly over the noise. He crushed the bed’s comforter in his hands and used all their strength to try pulling it apart, but it was pointless. He pulled the covers over his head and stuffed the material in his mouth, screaming as loud as he could. Each time he would breathe in through his nose, he would try to scream louder and bite down harder. Eventually, Kevin knew, he would begin to hyperventilate and pass out, slipping back once again into a dream.
