The Surrey Quays dream again last night.
Once more I’m stood outside the shopping centre, and again there’s the woman with the baby. It’s a curious thing that even though I seem destined to endure these dreams endlessly, I always seem badly prepared for what’s about to happen. Every time the shock of the moment is so acute. Last night though, I seemed to know – I was aware that the earth was going to be ripped up from below my feet. But, rather than panic, I took the time to really see what was in front of me.
The woman with the baby is truly lovely. She has auburn hair, pale slightly freckled skin and delicately carved cheekbones. Hers is a gorgeous face, a wonderful face. She has green eyes which sparkle at me even though there has to be fifteen or twenty feet between us.
When her face is calm, it’s so lovely, like an angel from some renaissance painting. But suddenly her placidness is lost, her features are contorted with a level of fear she’s obviously never known before. The baby gets clutched even closer to her, possibly too close, and they both scream.
For some reason I feel slightly distant from it, even though the ground is moving underneath my feet as well. It feels – for want of a better description –just like a dream. Except, there’s something quite un-dreamlike about it – the most incredible smell.(Can one smell in dreams? Does that happen?) There’s a dreadful stench – putrid and rotting, overwhelming everything else. I realise it’s coming from beneath the ground, that it’s rising up from the cracks which now exist in the asphalt. What is it? What the fuck is it? For a moment it seems as if it’s the literal smell of death. As if everything which has ever died is now rising its way up and coming back to us.
The lady with the baby, the beautiful lady with the baby, looks so terrified. I want to dash over there and be with her. But the ground between us is suddenly forced apart.
No comments:
Post a Comment