Borderlands
Macabre Monday
My first post for Macabre Monday. This is something I wrote back in 2021. I plan to post another next Monday.
For the next few weeks I will also be posting Sci-Fi episodes on Fridays.
Enjoy!
I dreamed I crawled up out of the mud.
I've been having strange dreams lately. As if another set of memories were being grafted onto mine. My own memories seeming more distant. Like fruit on a tree dangling slightly out of reach.
One of them breathes beside me as I wake. My arm lashes out, but I jerk it back just in time.
I sit up, and as I get to my feet my legs buckle under me. I steady myself against the doorframe, look back towards the bed... a stranger. No, not entirely. The eyes are wide and unfocused. Something familiar twists and flickers behind them.
I leave the room.
In the hallway I pull at my T-shirt because it’s soaked in a cold sweat. Yet I don’t change my shirt or go to clean up. I listen.
Sounds I’ve lived with my whole life now seem strange to me. The persistent humming and whirring of electrical and mechanical devices. The sudden roar from outside that recedes into the distance too fast to be natural.
As I follow the light into the living room and look out through the half-drawn curtains, it takes me a while to put names to what I see. It’s still night-time, except it isn’t truly dark. The sky’s a muddy glow, and silhouettes a landscape of city blocks dotted with lights. And although the city sleeps and the streets are empty, I know that each of those lights represents, simultaneously, a member of the civilisation that produced all of this, and a potential host.
“Oh God, my wife. She’s my wife.”