Dream a Little Dream...

I rub the sleep from my eyes anxiously. I can't sleep.

It's early, & the dappled sun is just beginning to wash over the morning sky; it's just starting to peek into the windows. I use two fingers to part the slats in the venetian blinds & steal a glimpse out into the world.

The white gargoyle is perched just outside the window, claws gripping the stone ledge, as though he's always been here. He is stationary in the morning light. Frozen.

We've taken refuge in an old tenement building...long since abandoned. Boards on many of the windows. Empty, but for a few vagrants. Just for today...just to rest & heal. Then we find the others.

But I can't sleep right now. I need to heal--& that's never gonna happen if I keep waking up more fucked up than I was when I closed my eyes.

The nightmares are so vivid...the aromas of smoke & death still tangling in my nostrils...

.....

I was walking down Bloodstone Road...our version of "main street" in the Ciudad de Monstruos. However, it seemed to stretch on forever. & it was empty. Bloodstone Road is never deserted, even in the daylight hours...

But tonight it was...

So I walked--alone through the night--aware that I was in the Dream Realm & compelled to move ever forward.

& I hear the cackling of flames, & the buildings fall away like ash...They blow away on the breeze. There are no screams. Only the absence of screams. The absence of life, in a place that is anything but.

"London is burning." I hear his voice & I turn on my heals.

I am face to face with a man, bandages wrapped 'round his eyes. Long tattered wings dragging behind him.

"London is burning--& so too will you." He says to me.

I stand before him, head cocked to the side, like that of a bemused puppy.

The Bandaged Man is only a tale--told to young goblins & whelps. "The Bandaged Man will get you..."

He plunges jagged claws into my chest. I am unable to move. Unable to shift. Unable to feel.

But the blood is real. salty & bitter in the air. The blood is real.

Real. What is real?

The ashes swirl around us--until it all falls away & I am alone again. I open my eyes, & I take in the dimness of the empty apartment. Peeling paisley wallpaper & dusty venetian blinds. & blood.

Pain.

I look down, blood running down my chest.

Fuck. I can't sleep...