Dream...

Hello peeps. There, that's got the cheery stuff out of the way. I woke up this morning, the sunshine pouring in through my window with the happy thought that sometimes I wish that I’d lived through something great and terrible.

I think the thought was a left-behind from the dream I’d been having; the one where I found myself on a rain-dark street, dim streetlamps haloed in the mist, to the left a bleak tree-lined canal kept back by grey steel security fencing, to the right a row of tall, brick warehouses.  All a cliché I knew even in my dream, but dreams are like that; obvious whilst we are dreaming them, oblique when we wake.

I had no idea what I was doing there, but as I rushed along the narrowness of the windswept alley I noticed overhead 2 planes, a passenger jet and a small private plane, obviously on a collision course. I stopped and watched as they drew closer and closer together. When they hit there was just an explosion of light, no sound, only a flash, maybe they were just images projected onto the clouds, not solid at all - and then I noticed the helicopter.

It was flying underneath the planes and must have been hit by some falling debris as that too suddenly soundlessly exploded. I stood looking up wondering what was going to happen next (was it over?) and then the obviously expected happened, as it was obviously expected to do, and the debris began to hit.

Suddenly the alley was full of running people, soundlessly moving, all trying to avoid the chunks of steel, the sharp plastic shards, and the incinerating fuel which plummeted (and at other times languidly floated) from the dark sky above. I ran for a bike shelter and cowered inside watching as person after person was struck and fell. I felt helpless.

Then I was inside the warehouse; corridor after corridor, as the people from outside moved around me, stepping through the walls, passing through me and on to somewhere else. I tried to go with them but each time I tried the solidity of the wall stopped me dead. I felt a sense of loss and was jealous of these others who were moving on.

Then I woke, the sunshine pouring in through my window, and a happy thought that sometimes I wish that I’d lived through something great and terrible.

Who’d be a dreamer?