I Don’t Dream About Anyone Except Myself
I wake without realising, so I’m unable to tell whether or not I’m really awake. But had I really slept? Who knew. I felt I’d simply materialised in the few minutes I’d been aware of my surroundings: an amnesiac in a cold bed in the middle of the night.
It was the cold that had woken me. Huge blankets shroud me, but I know I can never sleep in such Arctic temperatures. Something knocks against the wall in the next room as I slide into my old slippers and sail out of the room: my movement impossibly graceful, laced with irrational vertigo. Am I dreaming? Had I been?
I seem to hover inches above the ground although my sleepy brain and bleary eyes tell me my feet are firmly planted on the creaking floorboards. Glacial air blasts through the door next to that of my bedroom; it’s standing ajar. With trembling fingers, I push it open.
A thin, ethereal light seeps in from the open window but every corner and crevice is clotted with blackness. Ghostly pale light drenches the white net curtains: they echo my shivers as I pad into the room armed only with my eyes.
You can’t feel pain in your dreams.
I reach the window and spasm violently as I catch sight of myself in the forgotten mirror: a girl bleached white, wide-eyed and slack-jawed as fluid shadows swim across her face. With underwater sluggishness, she tips me a wink.
You can find the complete version of I Don’t Dream About Anyone Except Myself in issue 63 of TBD.