'Glisten'
a short, surreal horror
Image: ‘Amphitrite’ from Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, including Trick Photography.
Last night I awoke from a nightmare that I think I’ve had two, maybe three, times now. And every time I’ve sat up in the dark, short of breath and fully accepting of my imminent demise - a given truth that takes about an hour to unravel.
It is with some regret that I post this night terror as entertainment. If I succeed, I will have instilled in you, the reader, some fraction of that dread that I, the dreamer, feel even in transcribing these troubling images. Hopefully your day, save these next few minutes, is compensatorily pleasant.
It begins, always, innocuously. It’s a warm night. Or, rather, it’s a cold night but I’m in an open-air hot tub, with a breathtaking view of some unnamed but vibrant city hundreds of feet below. I take it all in, perfectly relaxed. I don’t know the people in the hot tub with me, but they seem nice enough. I don’t feel unsafe.
A scream, above.
A staircase behind me spirals upwards, carrying me to another hot tub. Dream logic allows me to arrive in time to see the cause of the screaming: two young men (chubby, Oxbridge types) have leapt over the railing. They howl in delight, their still-wet buttocks glistening in the moonlight.
I watch as the second young man hits the safety rail of the hot tub below. His skull crumpling at the same spot where seconds ago I--
The first jumper has sailed straight over, avoiding immediate impact.
I turn, seeing a shadow running down the stairs. I hear it wail in grief. How awful for them, I think, to have seen something like that. I’m alone but for several floating corpses. Other revellers, their causes of death unknown. The water now much thicker, more difficult to wade through. I want to leave, but there’s a bloated figure in my way, and I can’t bring myself to climb over it.