nightmare

The claws work the flesh, plucking shreds, drawing blood. With the dulled vision of fever heat you watch your skin flayed, scarcely feeling an interest. Asleep, awake, the story unwinds the same. The sound of gear teeth meshing, that rush of electricity mingling with living meat. A face the color of turned milk, eyes afloat like bruises at long last free. There is a voice, or maybe just a promise. The only wonder left is that they bother.

You shuffle the deck, deal out your usuals. Pretty picture that fall just short of winning. The story started left undone. These cards are a comfort of continuity in the rest of the bluff and shambles, the boiled shadows that spill and spill. So devils and angels wander the halls. So the dead just can't settle down. They have said their peace. They have made their deals. Now they can find their own hobby, or they will have to do without.

You know the nightmares are losing out when you don't know it was a nightmare until long after sleep is over. Every medicine seems to suffer the effects of diminishing returns, every poison seems to lose its sting. Fingers linger in the substance of your heart, making oaths and spitting lies. Strangers making claims over dead letters and turns of phrase, ghosts that moan and wail, never closing their mouths when you close your eyes. You can take their worst and then some. You can take it twice and then write it a note for teacher. You are through pretending, and they are haunted through the ruins you have made of your life.