From Grand Mal by Jonny White

For a moment there I thought I was somewhere else – somewhere in the long gone put behind past or the far off distant or maybe not so distant future. I don’t know – now that I’ve started thinking about it I’ve forgotten – I must remember to write these things down. As they happen I mean – obviously. Can’t quite place it… My head is in a pillow – not my own – do I even have ‘my own’ pillow any more? Where am I anyway? If I can’t even remember that, how am I going to remember when I have to leave? Or if I’m even supposed to be leaving at all? I don’t know. Who cares – it’s all too much… I’ll just close my eyes, take it easy, drift off into that other world, lie here in my sweltering solitude and remember my dream – recollect my nightmare… Drift back into it…

My face – it’s in a pillow – another pillow – lifting itself, it’s confused yet recollecting countenance lifting and twisting towards the moon light shining in through the cracks of uncovered city emitance leakage in the dark blue, thick and heavy woven cotton curtains – hanging limp and obtrusive in the corner, next to the head of the bed – that were too big – too long for the window – this window. They may have fit properly on some other window in some other past-times’ pre-life property in another district – the other side of town – the other side of another town? Another city? Another plane? Another existence? Another dream? In the mind of some telepathic adolescent girl in the comfort of her spoilt pink pyjamas and matching bed covers? Some teenage boy sweating in his weed induced paranoiac precognition prediction kick-trip nightmare? Who knows? But they were too long for this window anyway…

Next thing I know I’m pacing lord’s haste down a steep cobbled street in a deluge of rain – head downcast – absorbing the obviously medieval presence, poise, height of the constant two rows of old brick, bright blue, green, red, white heavy, brass knockered, inward opening wooden doored, drained piped, oppressively dank and intimidating buildings that line the thin street as far as I can see through just the corners of my squinting eyes…

I hear a noise that makes me lift my head and look over my right shoulder – probably because this is my good eye – but there’s no one there – just the part of the pavement I’d been existing on before, when I heard the noise… Turning my head back to what’s in front I glare straight ahead and ninety degrees to my right and a little more to my left to remind myself of my surroundings and see how close I am to safety, and my stare veers upwards to the celestial night – the once hazy city-scape window-eyed buildings seem to hang over in crazy spiked concave arch shape like the teeth of some great monster, the city, toothed and hungry for naive victims, hopeless sinners and no-doers, ball-less cunts and limp baby bald cocks, with incessant cobblestone tongue and pitch black burning throat – from the rain streaked darkness as I stare up to the sky – maybe in some subconscious prayer, though I doubt it, more likely a distracting hope or a disdainful insult to a God I’ve never known, and who couldn’t care less about me or the fact that I’m getting wet or could quite easily end up raped in the end if things didn’t go exactly to plan – and all I can see is the blinding bright-white glare of the resolute street lamps looming over like the beast’s mechanical all-seeing one eye tentacles…

The only breaks in the buildings are very narrow, and shallow arched alleyways that disappear off into nowhere – or nowhere pleasant anyway – standing out as pockets of the unknown they let out a smoky fog and faint murmurs of sound which get louder and louder as I increase my speed until I can hear ear piercing wails of babies crying and the eye bleeding banshee screeching of helpless innocents at the hands and bestial cocks of mad gone half man half horse sex criminals that all perpetually increases into an uncontrollable and deafening tumult of unbelievably atrocious twenty-first century paroxysms that send me sprinting down the street and to a door with the numbers ‘1 1 4’ written on it in human faeces, which I bang on with both hands frantically trying to escape the torture of the noise and the street in general and as I’m staring down the door with real tears of fear in my eyes ready to turn around with my back against it and take what’s coming to me, I spot a credit card on the floor – it has my name on it, but I don’t dwell on this occult coincidence for long in my current state of disquiet and pick it up and jimmy the lock without hesitation – it pops open easy… Have I done this before? Have I been here before? Is this a dream or a memory? Or is it a deja vu moment in actual reality? My head spins – the door falls open and I duck in closing it swiftly behind me. It’s silent, it’s dry, I can see now – I’m there…