Another Nightmare

Dreamy girl, self sufficient around the jaw, says she works here with that carefree kind of smirk, and fishes a couple bills out of some unsuspecting pocket. Oh, so she works here. Suddenly, she is pressed against me, kissing, and then an instant, I realize it’s happening and I am afraid to look at her; who is this person? When I pull away, there is this sagging, rotting corpse looking lecherously back at me. Her black tongue drops out of her head, I’m gagging, and I realize that it’s not real, but somehow, also, inescapable. The key is to remember where I’ve left my body, and I can feel it now, far away, but it’s so dark that I can’t remember exactly where. I think about my old bedroom, that big feather blanket, gray and purple, I think of my old bedroom, the stripped quilt, the bed low down on the floor, I think of my cold bedroom, my little twin bed, the flat pillow. I’m in none of these places. I’m in Leah’s bed, I realize, in the darkness. There is a sensation like waking, I’m lying on my stomach and a little figure appears beside me—it’s blurry, a boy, a man, I don’t know, a person, the size of a little water bottle, the size of a book or a thick candle, he appears there, blurry, and I wonder if is going to tell me something, but I’m lying there, in the dark, and I realize that I can see myself, as if in a reflection, I can see myself, shadowy, watching this blurry figure with a yellow T-shirt. As I watch, the eyes in the reflection self turn dark, inky black spreads all through them, she, or I, leans forward with a growl, and takes the little figure into a blackened mouth, into her jagged teeth, she eats him, and I realize, again, I’m not awake, this isn’t real, and I’m rocking back and forth, trying to make a sound so that Leah will turn around, so that she’ll say something, or wake me up, I’m touching my face with the hands that do not belong to my body and I feel my cheeks, my lips, but it all feels numb and distant. I’m suffocating in this vacuum, straining to breathe in some breath of reality, and yet I am trapped inside myself, writhing.

How did I finally wake up?