Blood Red

Foreword

I’m not visited by too many bad dreams, far fewer than my fair share, given some of the things I’ve done in my time. But for the last few months, there’s been one; it stops my breath, until I sit bolt upright in bed, wide eyed and slicked with sweat, knowing that sleep is over for the night and weak enough to wish that there was someone beside me, someone to be awakened by my distress, someone to hold me and tell me to be calm, that everything’s all right. . even though I know that it isn’t, and that it might never be again.

In my dream I can see the body fall, arms and legs flailing in a vain attempt at flight. I’m observing this from below, but I don’t consider for a second that I’m in any danger myself. I don’t attempt to move out of the way. I stand there in frozen fascination, for there is something I want to know, something I need to know.

To trot out the old cliché, it’s not the fall that does for you, it’s what happens immediately afterwards. Yes, sure, except. . There’s a school of thought that claims that the victim will have fainted before coming to a very abrupt stop. I’m here to tell you, that isn’t true: for in my nightmare, as that doomed, plummeting human comes towards me, about to be killed by gravity, the very force that is keeping me and all the rest of us safe, I can see the face, eyes bulging, teeth bared, and I can hear the silent scream. I can see it, and I can recognise it and I scream myself, out loud, because it’s. .

And that’s when I wake up, the name dying on my lips, the body shattering on the rocks as illusion fades into reality, and I yearn for the comfort I may never truly have again.