It Cannot Be Morning Already
And yet it is; the horror. I’ve been sleeping weirdly for the last month I think. It’s a combination of lots of things. It certainly started when Colin went missing and the general increase in stress and anxiety that followed was naturally accompanied by ‘variation’ of my evening routines, so that I was drinking in the evenings in addition to my usual dose of amitriptyline (damn that word, it never looks right). I know full well that will mess me up, but it definitely makes me extra sleepy and I was grateful for that, since for one reason or another we struggled to go to bed before 1 am.
The consequences of that roll through the next day… it’s considerably harder for me to get up and go on alcohol + sleeping tablets, so my mornings crash and burn into a slurred lethargy and I’m knackered by the time evening spreads its dark wings over me. It cheerfully reawakened the ‘second wind’ phenomenon of waking up again in the evening. That pushes the time I get round to taking sleeping tablets back further and encourages a glass of whiskey or beer to start the relaxation ball off again. So it’s an obvious vicious circle that is surprisingly hard to get out of again.
I’m slowly pulling out of that circuit, though I must admit that we’ve retained our usual fairly busy lives which also conspire to prevent the earliness of sleep. I need to vigorously reinforce my routine of Ami at 7.30pm, all electronika (minus Kindle) off at ten and be in bed at eleven. It will help, I just need to make it happen. This morning is sufficient evidence – although my eyes feel sticky I did haul my corpse out of bed at 7.40am and have bumbled through breakfast and am now able to scribble here. I haven’t managed to write in the morning for at least a month. It’s good, though I’ve got a cracking headache coming on. Hurrah.
Ding Dong, Summer Is Dead
The clocks went back at the weekend (which already feels like weeks ago, so I guess I’m still suffering from time dilation) which is the only way round I ever enjoy our ludicrous practice of pretending it’s an hour earlier or later to briefly and ineffectually see slightly more sun in the morning. Personally I’m baffled by the whole British Summer Time affair. I’m certain that we spend more time changing the times on our clocks than could possibly compensate for ‘gaining’ an hour. If you want to see more sunshine – start getting up earlier. Would it really be so hard to just do things earlier? Who the fuck is being successfully tricked into thinking they’ve actually got an ‘extra’ hour? Every year this makes me angry. It’s certainly confused our cat, who now begins bouncing around with daintily clumsy paws at about half past six. That really helps…
It’s All In My Head, Man….
I’ve also been dreaming vividly again. I used to dream very intensely in my late teens and mid-twenties with frequent lucid components and regularly recalling three or four of the dreams each night. It’s fun and interesting to dream like that, but again, I’d wake up exhausted having spent the night running away from zombies or battling fish in space. Maybe it’s related to the change of season, coupled with the abuses of my routine. Normally in summer I’m bitterly resentfully woken early by the cursed rising sun, but this year the wondrous Ami has kept that at bay and I haven’t been disturbed at all. So why would the decline of sun in the morning make a difference? I’ve no idea. These are morning word babblings, don’t blame me if they don’t make sense.
I realised as I woke up this morning from the sea of sleep that I’ve been having the same dream for days, if not longer. They slip and slide from my view when I wake up (as well they ought, the distracting bloody things), but being woken several times by a cat slipping and snortle-purring into my face allowed me to rise briefly from the dream before returning to its deeps. It’s a simple dream of death – always cheery.
In the dream I am hugely anxious and distressed about the killings that have taken place – there are five bodies of young people buried within ten yards of each other in an area of common land bound by tall brick walls and the terraces that vanish off on either side. There’s a path that leads through the common, with crumbled brick edges that passes a large pond of grim grimy green water and the remains of a Japanese water garden. I’ve witnessed three of the murders personally, being the person murdered each time. I am aware that there are more deaths because once dismembered and in the earth, damp from the pond water and wrapped in a sheet, I can see one other shrouded body through the mud.
The fifth body I know about because I am playing most of the roles in the dream and switch perspective as required – the fifth we find and disinter beyond the right wall, below a tatty clothes line that holds only pegs and the ghosts of clothes. The graves are shallow and callously hewn for these brutalised bodies (my brutalised bodies), and though there is no recollection as the person who uncovers them that we are the same person, nonetheless a miasma of horror and fear permeates all the perspectives. We return to the discovery of the bodies over and over again, focussing on the child who lies weeping in death, the one who retains a violent shuddering and the empty eye sockets of the third.
Eventually we come to suspects and watching for the deaths, so I suppose we’re going backwards. Despite that, the murders have happened and the murderer, rather than the potential murderer is sought. He becomes less of a murderer as we go on. I knew who the murderer would be, I think, right through the dream. Focussing on the deaths and the discoveries just hid that away for the longest time, but finally he’s there, seen through the clouds of dust and fog that blanket the common land, appearing from over the brick walls. A dark ghost; the only character not played by me; the only character I’d never wish to, never to seek to play. And he kills them again.
This time though, there are witnesses – we expected him. Though the children die again, they leave clues to mark their passing. A scrap of paper, a wad of chewing gum. The bodies are found sooner. Perhaps this time we’ll catch him. But then we wake up.