My first Nightmare during the Quarantine of 2020.

April 4th, 2020

First nightmare in a long time.

(At least my dreams returned)

We have been in Quarantine for about 10 days now. When they first announced that we were going into indefinite lockdown my first reaction was shock, followed by a strange sense of happiness. I admit that I felt good because I didn't wanted to be at work anymore. Instead, I wanted to occupy myself with the things that were manifesting within my own life. Any excuse was good at this point. Therefore, this situation appeared like a gift from heaven. Or so I thought.

It was late into the night when my wife woke me up from the middle of a nightmare. According to her I was making strange indigenous sounds (whatever that may be) and something with my mouth she couldn’t describe. She said I was scared and reluctant to talk at first but then I told her what I had just dreamed:

I was lying on the floor in a supermarket, I was crawling away from something. I was in the middle of an aisle full of canned tomato sauce, there was only that, identical, repetitive tomato soup cans of red and white. There was a man at the end of the aisle. I was being drought to him by an invisible force from which I couldn’t break free, he had a strange bizarre-looking machine on his left hand and a dripping tomato sauce can on his right. I tried to stand but I slipped, I was covered in the red condensed fluid myself, his tongue was growing large, his eyes melted in red.

I wouldn’t had known I was having a nightmare if it wasn’t for my wife’s intervention. What could have triggered this is something that escapes my reason. I mean, doubt has been present since day one of the quarantine, we can agree on that, but fear? No sir…

What at first seemed like thrilling is now something that feeds on my sanity.

Where is this all taking us? When is it going to be over? Who knows…

Next day I was quiet.

I had decided to leave the social network and all digital effects for the day hoping that taking a break from the flooding news would calm my mind. The day was shorter but wider. The distance, the silence. There were no hours, no days, but time went on. Is this the end or the beginning? I pondered while I walked barefoot through the garden. The little details grew big as I grew small in the vastness of an infinite present. Something called my attention while I was walking, a bunch of feathers around a decaying body of a little black bird. Doubt, fear, and now death. How different can a nightmare be from reality on these days. How many dead birds have fallen in this garden before that I haven’t seen yet. What else Is going on out there that I’m not aware of? I acknowledge how I used to quench my Soul's hunger for life with bits of useless information. My soul has a hunger for life that I now acknowledge used to quench with bits of useless information. 

As if this was another dream (at least a waking one), the voice of my wife pulled me back. Dinner was served. It was tacos instead of pasta for obvious reasons. She laughed.

Later in bed my wife suggested we change pillows, yes, I had felt something growing in the dark, lurking in our dreams, but nesting in our pillows? Call it what you want, but I liked the idea and went along with it. I was already feeling better. I was eager for that great balancing dream that never came.

When was it all going to stop?

Around 3 am I heard a voice calling me from outside, it was sharp and quick, as if it only had one chance to wake me up, and it did. I woke up alarmed only to find my wife in a state of shock with her eyes wide open unable to speak. As I helped her come back, she started to cry. No matter what I said she wouldn’t tell me what she dreamt. I didn’t know what to do, the only thing that occurred to me was to get rid of that pillow. As my wife calmed down, I got up from the bed and went into the night decided to burn it.

Outside the night stood still. The industrial age was sleeping. The silence was so deep that I felt as if I could hear the Stars moving in Space. I felt out of time, eons of life crossed through my mind in a snap. I felt an strange connection to a distant past. I thought, this must have been how our ancestors experienced the night, the vastness, or nature itself. I felt as if they were there with me, watching me from the shadows, like little black birds in the night. 

I could hear my own blood slowly streaming through my veins, and then… that shivering scream.

All the dogs of the night began to bark in distress. I ran as fast as I could. I entered the room and found my wife pointing… a firefly in the room. I hadn’t seen a firefly in a long time, but she was screaming as If she was seeing something else, yet all there was, was a firefly flying against the breeze of an open window. Another nightmare, I thought, this time from the other pillow. I decided to burn them both just in case.

She came with me this time, we used a little of that white rum leftover to exorcise our old bag of feathers. We also brought one of the candles from the menorah chandelier and there we were, in the middle of the night, in the middle of silence. Purifying our dreams through fire. The sparks rose like fireflies in to the heart of darkness. She hugged me as I contemplated how long has it been since I saw the fireflies.

At least they returned.

Taken from the written journal of Jonah Colson.

April 4^th, 2020.

This was the only fragment that survived the fire.