Love Craft.

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I laid The Necronomicon on my bedside table, my eyes, tired, after a long day at work, had been slowly drifting closed for the last hour, only the draw of the book had kept me reading so long.

 

A fan of Lovecraft since my dreary, dismal youth I had thought to revisit his faded masterpiece once again. No sooner settled in bed, pillows raised behind me, head resting on the padded headboard and the book opened than I was drawn back into his mystery and imagination. Tales of madness, ghouls, becalmed seas, monsters and daemons took me once more away into his other visions of our world.

 

I had a dream that night, so vivid, I thought it reality, I was in bed and dreaming.

There was a monster under my bed, dark and deadly, an unnamed beast, scrabbling and clawing at the slats on the base of the bed, clawing at the underside of the mattress, ripping away the fabric and the stuffing. Every so often a horrendous screech filled the air as the beasts claws caught on the metal springs and scraped against them.

The beast had it’s own demonic tang. The beast made no sound other than the scrabbling, it’s voice, if indeed it had one, silent, all I could hear was the horrible rasp of its breath as it clawed and scrabbled it’s way through the mattress. I could see nothing, the perpetual darkness of my dream and the night itself blinding me, only the faintly metallic scent of drying blood made my nightmare real. Dreams do not have an aroma.

 

I could not move, after all, I was asleep and I was only dreaming. The sounds grew louder the breaths of the beast came more quickly as it spent it’s energy trying to get through the mattress and reach my bare unprotected back.

My unconscious mind assured me that I was to be the beasts next meal, it would devour me and send my soul to hell.

 

I awoke, startled, the remnants of the dream still in my mind, still playing with my senses, I could still smell drying blood, but all I could hear was bird song and the faint sounds of industry in the distance.  It was no longer dark but my eyes had not yet opened.

 

I heaved a sigh of relief for the dream had been so real, feeling to the dreamer as reality.

 

With a sigh I opened my still tired eyes, a bad sleep, terrible dreams, arose and with the thought of a shower and waking for the new day and work I still could not resist the wonder of truth.

 

Dropping to my knees I looked under the bed and saw in the thin light reflected from my still curtained windows, under the bed; the tangle of broken springs and tufts of stuffing that lay around and the cavernous opening in the boys back where I had clawed away skin, Gnawed on his ribs breaking them and then feasting upon all of the sweet meat that lay inside.

 

I remember the day I woke and realised that the monster under the bed was me, and the innocent sleeping above me, my prey.

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