Monday 21 September 2009

missing man

I was lying on a couch watching a television program about a missing person. The footage was old, in black and white. A group of men were going to work, entering a big building like a shed. The man in question was dressed like all the others: overalls (which I assumed to be dark blue) and a white shirt with sleeves rolled up). He had overgrown dark straight hair, although not long, and a big bushy beard so that much of his face was obscured. His eyes were serious, dark and possibly evil - although people often appear sinister in old footage. The man was last into the building and, as he crossed the threshold, he looked behind him, seemingly straight down the lens of the camera. He went inside, the door shut behind him and the commentator said that that was the last time he was seen alive. Suddenly, there was a pile of blankets and sheets on top of me and the man, dead, was lying to my right with his limbs sprawled across me, weighing me down. B stood at my left looking down at me. The man was still in black & white, or rather, shades of grey. The colour was drained out of him - he was lifeless. The blankets and sheets shifted so that they covered my face and I felt pressed down into the couch, buried under the weight of everything on top of me. I tried to scream, but could make no sound. Breathing became more difficult and with each exhale I tried again to scream or to ask B to pull the blankets off so that I could breathe, but I could barely muster a noise. B tried frantically to uncover my face, eventually unearthing me in the pile of blankets. Again the pile shifted, burying me under. Again I desperately tried to scream or tell B that I was suffocating, again making no sound. B scrambled to uncover my face, pulling away the blankets to allow me to breathe. In an instant, B was gone, disappeared from the room, and the second she vanished the man shuddered - a deep shudder, shaking his body. I was not sure if he had been feigning death, or if he was now waking from death, but I knew that either way, he was a terrible man. I was filled with horror and woke.

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