Thursday, Jun. 24, 2004 - 09:22

I woke up because I thought I heard a scream. Though dazed by sleep, I rose from bed and stepped out into the hallway. The apartment was lost in gloom and the silence was disturbing.

I looked to my left, to the door to Danny’s bedroom. It was of course closed. I stood there, staring, straining my ears. Then for reasons I cannot explain, I opened his door. What I saw inside filled me with confusion and icy dread.

It wasn’t Danny’s room. His bed, his desk, his bookshelf were all gone. In place of them; Simon’s bed, desk, draws, CD rack, chair, waste paper bin; even the blue glass, star-shaped tea-light holder I’d got him for his birthday last year was hanging suspended in front of the window.

But Simon himself was no where to be seen.

I turned back to my own room and that’s when I saw Parker, one of my cats. He was impaled on my bedroom door. He had been neatly dissected, with an arrangement of pins holding back the flaps of skin and flesh thus displaying his internal organs. Blood trickled down the door, still fresh. The whole ‘arrangement’ had a neat, surgical element to it.

Parker’s eyes were wide open, staring at me sightlessly.

I burst into tears and screamed, staggering backwards towards the bathroom… somehow I ended up in the bathroom itself where I found my other two cats, Taylor and Tiggy. They were floating in the tub, which was filled with bloody water. They’d been dismembered… but not in a nice, neat manner… it was as if their limbs and been ripped from their bodies, leaving torn, ragged flesh and white bone exposed…. The bathroom walls were splashed with blood…

”Jay…. Jay… can you hear me, Jay?” came the voice; his voice. “Are you awake?”

I couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from: was he behind me, or was he waiting just outside the bathroom door? I don’t know why, but I decided to run for the apartment door, to escape.

The hallway’s layout changed with every step I took; there were bends, corners, twists and turns where in reality, it is a rather short hallway and completely straight. There were doors where there shouldn’t be – in the walls, on the ceiling and even on the floor and someone was knocking on those doors, pounding on them as if to break in.

“You should be dead… you should be dead,” I heard Simon say. “I can fix that, Jay. No mistakes this time…”

I got to the entrance foyer and pulled at the door. On opening it I found Simon standing there. He threw me back against the wall, closing the door behind him as he entered the foyer. I landed on my back. He climbed on top of me, pinning me to the floor.

“Are you awake, Jay?” he asked me as I thrashed and screamed beneath him. “I need my rats to be awake,” he said softly. It was then I noticed that he held some kind of black, leather pouch with an assortment of surgical equipment in it.

I remember the sensation of the scalpel as it pressed against the bottom of my throat, and then it bit in and he cut me straight down - from neck to just below my navel…

“Are you awake? The rats have to be awake, Jay…. I’m going to fix everything. You’ll sleep now. No more Second Chances,” he said as I felt him pull my chest open and proceeded to pin my flesh to the floor.

At which point, I woke up…. Thank Christ!

<< - >>

Hit Me! & Clix Me!

All original images & written content are
Copyright Jay Kerin

< ? Screen Dream # >