The dream

In my dream I'm working in the garden of a large house. I'm there with a few other nondescript people. It's the end of the day, twilight descending. The house in the background looks somewhat eerie and dark. The plants are also dark, it's autumn. Suddenly we notice that ants are coming out of a hole in the ground. The ants are racing away from the hole and we follow them to the nearby road that is covered in black tarmac. There we see the ants are joining an exodus of other small creatures and bugs that are all racing over the road away from us. I am gripped with fear as I realise why they are fleeing. They must have felt a tremor of some sort in the earth and are now trying to escape from some calamity that is about to take place. We all realise that we must get to safety as fast as we can so we start running away over the road. After running for a while we reach a sort of abandoned train depot. It's dark now and rain is falling. Lightning flashes and thunder booms above us. All the people are trying to get into an abandoned structure that has thick walls, but is open in a few places. I look for someone and notice a guy I barely know. He sort of stands out as he's quite big and heavy set. He's already in the building.

I'm inside and we're all huddled together, but the rain keeps pouring down and the wind pushes into our shelter. The guy and me try to close one of the gaps by pulling a tarpaulin over the whole in the wall and securing it, but as we're doing this we see and hear a huge explosion in the distance. The explosion is incredibly vast as we can see it clearly but it's happening at a great distance. The guy grabs hold of me and holds me tight behind the wall as we wait for the schockwave to hit us. As we wait, several lesser explosions can be heard. Then the schokwave is upon us. It engulfs the building in a sea of flame and noise. The wall still stands but we can feel the heat all around us. He keeps holding on to me as people around us scream and parts of the building are ripped off by the blast.

The explosion has passed. Some of the walls of the building still stand and some people including me have survived. I'm alone. I start walking down the road, away from where the blast was. People around me are dazed. I wonder where the guy has gone to, as I make my way towards the city. In the city there's chaos all around. The power is off and nothing is running. people are breaking into shops to find food and some of them are looting. The sun is a glare and everything seems coated with dust.

The street is silent in the rain

The street is silent in the rain. He sits there huddled under the overpass shivering, but nothing moves. Then the rain dissipates and leaves the streets wet glistening in the yellow light of the streetlamps. Slowly he slides down the paved slope he’s been sitting on and wrapping his coat tightly around him starts moving down the street. This night the houses all seem empty. No lights are burning in any of the buildings. His eyes scan the streets but the houses seem to be shrugging back into the darkness, like shapeless hulks in the overgrown gloom. It seems impossible that he has ever walked here so many times before; many brighter days full of life now seem impossibly distant. Now the only thing that drives him on is a weariness, like a heavy load on his shoulders. He needs to let this heaviness rest, but until now it has followed him everywhere like a loyal friend, cursed and rejected but still unable to let go. This load, this wretched friend has gently pushed him on, over highways and rail tracks, down riverbanks and mud tracks, through farmlands and city streets. On and on he’s walked without meeting anyone, without speaking, just him and his ever-present burden.

Now they’re on this lifeless street in this burrow of the dead. Drops falling from branches accentuate the silence, his load so heavy it feels like he can’t take another step. Exhausted he falls to his knees and starts crawling up some anonymous driveway. In front of the house there’s a table, rusted and overgrown with moss. And as he pulls himself upright he sees a note pinned to the table with a rock. He pulls the note from under it and stares at it. The rain and sun have faded the handwriting, but there are two words still legible. He reads the words but his mouth doesn’t make a sound. “… Forgive me.” In the distance the first rays of sun start lighting up the street, it brightness reflected in thousand little pools. As the sun paints his house with light he knows he has finally come home. The weight has gone, but as he faced the sun he cast no shadow.

For Billy