faint, head throbbing, nauseous.
Anxiety and depression haunt my waking hours, filling me with a nameless dread. By day I am listless and apathetic, filled with the horror of the night to come. I have been back to my doctor and implored him for stronger sleeping tablets. Instead he has prescribed antidepressants which he says will have much the same effect. I doubt it.
I am driving in my car on the way to work. As always it is dark. The headlights shine ahead, piercing the gloom. At first I am travelling along a familiar stretch of the motorway but for some reason I take a turning and find myself on a deserted country road, lined with skeleton-like hedges and trees, their branches reaching out to impede me. At last I reach my place of employment, a large chemical works and park my car. I make my way into the factory which is deserted. I wander through the buildings, monolithic, clad in broken corrugated sheeting, once white but now stained with rust and eaten with acids. Rusty pipe work stretches overhead on spidery gantries. Underfoot the ground is muddy, dotted with puddles of noxious stagnant water. Drums of chemicals are stacked haphazardly, some have fallen and their contents have spilled out staining the ground with unwholesome colours. I enter one of the production sheds and climb a stairway to the upper floor, lined on both sides with immense reactors. Above them distillation columns and glass receivers are suspended from overhead steelwork, its paint peeling away from tarnished metal riddled with corrosion. I am bewildered; this is not how it should be. I cannot understand how everything has become so derelict, nothing is working, there are no operators, the place is deserted. I run out of the building and make my way to the research block. It is equally deserted, its laboratories empty, the benches covered with broken flasks, their contents dripping onto the floor, acrid fumes sting my eyes and I begin to choke. I run and run. I must get away, get back to my home. I reach the car park but there is no sign of my car. Desperately I run up and down the rows searching and searching but it is to no avail. I find someone who I take to be the attendant and beg him to help me but he just shrugs and turns away, laughing. I leave the car park and making my way to the road stand at a bus stop. A crowd of the faceless people surround me, silent, oppressive, somehow threatening. A single decker bus arrives. I get on but the dream people stay where they are, watching as we pull away. The driver ignores me and I make way to the rear and sit down. For a while I stare through the window at the passing houses, indistinct in the distance. As I look down the aisle towards the front of the bus it becomes elongated, stretching away and turning into a tunnel. I rise and begin to run trying to reach the door to get out but the interior has disappeared blending into a featureless blur. The walls gradually constrict forcing me to crouch and then to crawl. The floor becomes slippery and begins to slope downwards at an ever increasing angle until I am sliding headlong down a narrow tube. My senses reel and I become giddy. Suddenly I find myself sprawling on the wooden floor of a vast chamber, its walls barely glimpsed in the distance, its ceiling impossibly high. In its centre is a table. Along its far side are seated half a dozen of the faceless people. I struggle to get away but to no avail. Unwillingly I am forced to approach and stand before them. They study me with their eyeless dead heads. They say nothing but they are telling me that I have been found wanting. I am a failure, unable to achieve my objectives. Their faces take on the features of the directors of the Company at which I worked. They regret my employment is terminated without notice; my services are no longer required. I plead with them, implore them to reconsider, I fall to my knees, sobbing and begging, without a job I will lose everything. I writhe in agony and wake, my heart pounding and my mind in turmoil. Realisation hits me and I slump back. I had retired with a generous pension. Why do my dreams torment me like this? What does it mean?
I attend the next session with the therapist. I take my notebook and describe the dreams. He explains that there is obviously some underlying traumatic event which is their cause, something in my unconscious which only surfaces when the rational workings of my mind are subdued during sleep. This would seem to be associated with my retirement. He asks whether I had found work to be enjoyable, a happy period of my life? I am unsure how to answer. I think hard. I have a sense that it was not. That I had found it boring and had yearned for a change. I had chosen to retire early, looking forward to a more interesting and rewarding existence. I tell him that until the nightmares had started I had been enjoying my retirement, with time to relax and pursue a more pleasurable lifestyle. I have no regrets of leaving my previous employment. Afterwards I think about our discussion and wonder if what I said was completely true. Do I feel a little uncomfortable in no longer being in employment? Do I feel guilty about leaving my old workmates behind? Do I feel no longer part of a community in which I was comfortable? I dismiss such thoughts. I am happy as I am I tell myself.
That night I dream again. I am back with my analyst but he is changed. He seems thin and unsubstantial, colourless. I am sitting in an enormous armchair facing him across an ornate oak desk, its edges carved in curious motifs, the front decorated with twisting pillars entwined with ivy. His voice seems to come from a great distance. I understand that what he has to tell me is of the utmost importance but I struggle to make sense of his words. It seems that I am in some way deranged, defective, malfunctioning. He has done his best to correct this by guiding me but there is a danger that I will infect others with my hallucinations. The only remedy now is by physical intervention. An operation is necessary. My brain will be opened up and its aberration cured by surgical means. I recoil in horror. I cannot believe that such drastic action is necessary. I protest, shouting and screaming but it is to no avail, he smiles and nods. I will be much better if I undergo the treatment. My limbs feel as though they are paralysed. I struggle to get away. It feels as though I am moving through treacle. I can hardly move my legs. Suddenly I am free. I run frantically out of the room, down a flight of stairs, out into the street. All around me the faceless people are pressing close, trying to stop me, grabbing at me, pushing and jostling. I strike out, pushing them aside and run down the dark streets as fast as I can, past the grim houses which press closer and closer, hemming me in. I seek refuge in a tall gaunt building, running up a long flight of steps, my legs trembling and shaking with the effort and stumble into the entrance hall. Horror! It is a hospital. Figures in long white robes cluster around me. Take hold of me. Push me down onto a waiting trolley and hurry me through long corridors, holding me down despite my struggles. They hustle me into a room, an operating theatre. My therapist approaches. He is holding a saw, stainless steel, glinting in the harsh lights. He seizes my head and begins to cut into my skull. The pain is incredible. I writhe and scream in agony, my mind exploding with the pain......and wake up. I am soaked in sweat; my heart is pounding as though it would explode. My stomach heaves and I almost vomit. Slowly I manage to take control of my senses. The room seems strangely dark. I get up out of bed, my legs still trembling and weak and going to the window pull back the curtains. I cannot believe what I see! It is still the city of my dreams, dark and gloomy. The sky overhead like a lead grey inverted bowl, the monochrome buildings solemn monoliths. I hit myself, slap my face, pinch my arms trying to wake up but it is useless. I run downstairs into the street. Around me the faceless people press close, but they are no longer threatening. They are smiling, welcoming. I gradually become calm. A feeling of belonging steals over me. Realisation dawns. I am back home once more, back in my rightful existence. I merge myself into them, rejoining the overmind. I rejoice. I am whole again and can resume my proper function as a member of this society. I laugh at the absurdity which lead me to believe there might be a better life. I can only hope that I will no longer suffer those nightmares of that other world where I had lived in isolation cut off from the comfort of my fellow units. Living under its harsh bright open sky, its landscape filled with garish colours and discordant noises,
populated with hideous demonic creatures, seething with unrest and discontent, always at war with each other, striving for dominance, despoiling their environment, never at peace.
...ooo000ooo...
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