A Nightmare
Dec. 15th, 2002 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldMy nightmares are usually ephemeral: either I wake from them disoriented, disturbed and forgetful, or they are quite contingent upon what I've just lived through and too tied to these contingencies to make much sense. There's one exception, though; its horror still resonates with me. Perhaps it was because it is a recurring nightmare, perhaps because it was so intense the first time I experienced it, perhaps because it began not as a nightmare but as a flu-induced hallucination.
I am lying in bed, and I am looking at the ceiling. There is a bowl-shaped object on the ceiling, the rim facing down. (I don't know how it got there, but it is present.) It is made of a porcelain-like substance that lacks, however, porcelain's translucent nature. It is simply and solidly white. It is also flawless--there are no surface irregularities visible, no places where the finish wore thin or where handling produced a vanishingly small crack or where the lip is short of a perfect curve. The bowl, in short, is inhumanly perfect.
When I experienced the nightmare for the first time in its hallucinatory state, I began screaming. I don't react nearly as badly now, when that hallucination revisits me in a nightmare, but I still find it terrifying.
I am lying in bed, and I am looking at the ceiling. There is a bowl-shaped object on the ceiling, the rim facing down. (I don't know how it got there, but it is present.) It is made of a porcelain-like substance that lacks, however, porcelain's translucent nature. It is simply and solidly white. It is also flawless--there are no surface irregularities visible, no places where the finish wore thin or where handling produced a vanishingly small crack or where the lip is short of a perfect curve. The bowl, in short, is inhumanly perfect.
When I experienced the nightmare for the first time in its hallucinatory state, I began screaming. I don't react nearly as badly now, when that hallucination revisits me in a nightmare, but I still find it terrifying.
