A Dream of Fire and Fear

By | June 14, 2012
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The first thing I notice is the smoke, the smell of it. An acrid, cloying stink overwhelms my senses and crawls over and into me like a billion ethereal tendrils. The fear grows inside. It is a grotesque unyielding fear. It saturates me and makes it nearly impossible to open my eyes, my eyelids are heavy with terror.

I am sick to my stomach. I hurt so badly I want to die.

With substantial effort I force my eyes open and I see a wall aflame and dripping molten sheet rock silvery and mercurial. It is the central wall of this room, a strange dark room with which I’m unfamiliar. The wall is holding for now, the ceiling it supports bends in a convex arch and I know I must get out of this room before the ceiling collapses and buries me under its weight.

But I cannot move. I’m frozen with indecision and indecision is the only decision I can make.

I look down and I realize I can’t see the carpet, yet I can feel it with my feet. It’s covered with serpentine, undulating rivers of gray and white smoke. The light and dark patterns make it appear as if the floor is covered with a nest of engorged and angry snakes; all of them slithering aimlessly in all directions, and all directions lead to me.

The flames engulf everything but the wall behind me. I’m paralyzed by the fear and I can’t turn my head to look what is behind me but I sense it is a wall. All around me rabid fingers of fire hungrily reach out for me. The flames are just inches from my face, taunting me with hot promises of pain and death.

I think I will take death but not the pain, but I won’t have a choice. There are no windows or doors in this room that I can see, no escape from the hellish glowing place.

Directly across from me I watch the central supporting wall burn and melt. It’s twisting makes it appear alive and sentient. I watch the rippling flames burn large almost perfectly round holes in it. I can almost hear it shrieking in horror as the inside of it burns. When the smoke intermittently abates I can see there are three large holes in the wall. I think I should be able to see through them perhaps into a another room or better still into the cool night outside. But I see nothing but the savage flames licking the wall, teasing wall’s boiling surface with its hot orange tongue.

Then at once the fire lies down like a huge beast grown weary; down on the floor, its huge chest heaving up and down it appears to be in the throes of a hideous death.

My eyes leave the grotesque beast of sleepy fire and I see the holes in the wall clearly. Inside each hole is a word written in smoke, each word quivering in place as if borne on a gentle but hot ephemeral wind.

INNOCENCE
BETRAYAL
FEAR

In the place where innocence floats I see the face of a child, alone and longing for the touch of her mother’s hand. The child’s eyes are sad and bewildered. She does not understand how vast the world is because the world in which she lives is small and careful. Her mother entwined with her own desires and needs pays scant attention to the little girl. The mother’s world has grown large and twisted and full of conflicting needy emotions and desires with which she is both comfortable with and afraid of. Her dreams of pedestrian things are colorless. She wakes with a thrist she cannot satisfy. She wants more than she can have and she has more than she wants, and in this sad discordance she and the child are alike.

In the dark sinister hole in the middle floats betrayal. I stare at that word as it writhes and twists in its own serpetine hell. I stare at it and I begin to see eyes staring back at me. They are the eyes of lost loves, of entanglements gone awry and of true love shredded by a heart hardened by the thrill of deceptions and betrayals. The eyes glow and glower at me and I am forced to look away. The pain is too deep and too fresh to endure, I cannot look upon those sad sinister eyes another second lest they suffocate me with their evil.

The fiery beast boils in some deviant and tortured sleep it moans and turns over but does not awaken. It is now entirely covered by by a blanket of roiling clouds of smoke and in the fine owdery dust of hellish black and gray ash.

I raise my eyes up from the dying beast and look upon the place where fear resides. It’s letters are bulbous and ragged. It’s far bigger than innocence and betrayal – the hole in which it floats cannot contain it. The huge jagged letters appear more substantial than the smoke from which they were came – they seem living serpents born of fire and destruction. They push back the walls of the hole and stretch it and distort it until the hole becomes as a huge growing living cancerous cell eroding the burnt structure that holds it. Its letters now seem like separate organisms, each controlled by a single mad mind.

The place where fear lives explodes and send shards of half-molten hot plasterboard flying across the room like shrapnel from a grenade. I feel a jagged piece of it piece my chest and but I cannot move – I’m frozen in terror and amazed by the terrible scene. I cannot move anything but my eyes. I can move them enough to see the life draining from my chest – the red liquid of life spurting from my punctured heart.

I watch as fear swallows innocence and betrayal. The blood gushes from my chest and disappears in the boiling smoke. I feel light and disembodied. I feel as if I am floating above the room of smoke and the dying beast of fire. Fear is everywhere. It has sucked the life from innocence and mated with betrayal and left me to die in this room without doors or windows.

The wall collapses and the ceiling gives way; my bleeding body lies motionless in the rubble, drained of life and of feeling. Still I can see each piece of the rubble which covers me is a bit of a memory.

I see traces of laughter, a trace of smile, the sound of a song, a shiny Christmas ornament, a baby girl, a woman’s whisper, a siren in the distance, a locomotive chugging the the night, a whale on TV, sharks swimming in a black ocean, leaves budding in the spring, the smell of dying things on a blue October day, big snowflakes falling from a leaden winter sky, a smile, a tear, a mother, a child, a father. Most of all I see lives wasted, lifeless bodies lying in the smoke of desperation, dead dreams and life’s ultimate betrayal. Lives consumed by the monster of fear.

It’s 1:20AM. I see the green glow of the digital clock. I’ve been sleeping for an hour. My heart is pounding; I am warm and thirsty. I get up and to get a glass of water. My heart is racing so fast I fear it will fly out of my chest or that I will fall face down on the hard floor and die — alone and cold in the house of uncertainty.

I get a drink and I sit down in the quiet hours of the night and try to calm myself with pleasant thoughts – but not a single pleasant thought comes to visit me. I realize I am totally alone and defeated. I check my phone – surely the fire was a nightmare – so this must must still be a dream.

The phone holds no solace – no one has called. The clock on the phone’s face reads 2:17AM.

I must be dead I think. This can’t be happening. No one can feel this isolated and separated and devastated and still be alive. My heart keeps pounding as if to break free from my chest. I look down at the pale blue carpet and see no sign of the snakes of smoke. The wall, is dull and needs painting but there are no signs of fire or any discernable damage, no holes, no words, nothing unusual at all – just a wall.

There are windows and doors – ways to escape I think. But I don’t have anywhere to go and I don’t have anyone to see.

All I know is the two motivations of life, love and fear, are playing out their hands in an implausible game of poker, each one anteing up and raising the bet; all I can do is sit at the table and watch.

Innocence has forsaken me. Fear and doom have befriended me. The clock tells me it’s 4:08AM and all I can do now is wait for the sun. As if the sun will do any good.

I’m tired and defeated; I can find no peace in this sad new world. Even sleep betrays me.

The rain dances on my window sill — it’s 6:19AM and the June rain slowly washes away the dreams of the night.

Life is just a dream after all.

15 thoughts on “A Dream of Fire and Fear

  1. Karen Glamp

    If you don’t mind me saying this: this was stupid!!! Has nothing at all to what I expect to learn about computers and safe sites.

    Reply
  2. kiwibarb

    Karen Glamp has missed the boat. But if she stays with this site long enough, she will discover a wealth of material which, along with trustworthy information about computers and safe sites, will go a long way to educating and protecting her in her computer life.
    Meanwhile, you have given me an intriguing glimpse of the interior of a crematorium, so I’ll know what to expect when my turn comes. I think I’ll get buried instead.
    Seriously, I enjoyed your rant.
    Kiwibarb.

    Reply
  3. Gary

    Whats up with all the green “i’s & l’s”…… nice you can write like that, you should be writing novels. e novels of course..

    Reply
  4. mattie

    Disregard the ‘first’ comment, for they have no insight into another’s writings of fear which dominate ALL people of our time. It’s excellent writing of one’s emotions we all have — no one is exempt, nor will they ever be. Writer needs to see a book publisher for such a creative mind — who knows, Hollywood could make it into a movie! It could be titled ‘An Unknown Entity’ —
    not sure I’m using the right word there, but hopefully you know what I mean.

    Reply
    1. Carolwalksalot

      It was as if I were there except for the paralyzing fear. This was so, so intense. I could see it all, as plain as day. And I felt sorrow for the person who was sitting like a shell waiting, hopelessly though, for the sun to arise. This is great writing. Powerful. Signed Carol

      Reply
  5. walter taylor

    Perhaps Karen Glamp could consider revising her opinion of the inclusion of ”Essay’s” in what she feels is intended to be a specific technological discourse on computers and their related complications, if she doth appreciate that this site has a feature that is not found in most technical online publications, in that it doth have a sincere human face which truly appreciates and indulges with patience and good humour the somewhat limited technological knowledge and expertise of ”oldies” and octogenarians like my self, who value the efforts that are made to make complex issues meaningful to us. That ”non-tech items and Essays”’ are also included just reinforces our confidence in knowing that the authors are empathetic to the needs and technical limitations of new and senior subscribers.
    Methinks Karen, that as the ”Essay” is clearly indicated, that as with a radio or TV. remote, that it can be easily bypassed without too much of an effort so that you can concentrate on what you may consider to be more pertinent matters.
    respectfully…Walter,,

    Reply
  6. Annette

    If Karen didn’t like what she read, then why read past the first 4 or 5 lines, but it appears she wanted to get her 3 cents in on it degrading whoever wrote it. Sad when someone can’t type how they feel or dream, without someone getting all hyper about it. There just might come a day when she will have just such thoughts herself, and hopefully, she can look back and see how selfish and thoughtless she was to speak in the manner that she did.

    Reply
  7. Heather

    Maybe the person who wrote this posted in the wrong blog??

    Maybe they have a writing blog and this one.

    Reply
  8. Joan G

    As Annette points out, Karen could very well have skipped your finely written essay, which was presented as just that….an ESSAY! I always look forward to your essays. They are always thought provoking and sensitively written. I found this one to be more compelling than some, but perhaps it is a remembered dream. Whatever, it sparked, as always, thought, and indeed brought a very real feeling of what such an experience would be. You have a very real and gifted talent for writing, in my opinion.

    Reply
  9. Linda Frey

    I Really liked your Essay!!! Got Real Talent for Writing!

    Reply
  10. Ann

    Wonderful nightmare insight! We’re only passing through, not permanent residents. Love prevails in the end!

    Reply
  11. Nikilet

    I guess I must be different, based on most of these reviews. I expect to gain computer knowledge of some sort when I open this Cloudeight InfoAve page. That’s what I thought it was when I signed up for it. I have many other things I have signed up for that provide me with other types of things that I am interested in reading. I scanned this very long offering very quickly to make sure I wasn’t missing some other point. Personally, I think someone is a very good writer but I don’t think this is the place for it.

    Reply
  12. Barbara

    What a great thing to read on this Sunday morning..:( why all that space for her essay? No need for that on a computer site. Stupid

    Reply
  13. Barbara Rinard

    I didn’t need to read that on a computer site — real cheerful on a Sunday morning. “Why all that space for that?”

    Reply

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