night terrors

6/11/11, 5:03 am

I dreamt I was lost, lost in concrete stairwells with too-low ceilings, suddenly lost on a college quad intersected by long walls of mirror and glass forming rainy alleys on the dark morning grass. My eyes wouldn't remain open, I was drunk and staggering blindly

and awake and hadn't the slightest idea where I was

I fell back asleep, immediately in the apartment of a girl about my age, begging me to deal with the roaring elder god swelling and groaning on the street below, a great moloch of sharp fins and rotting dark vegetable matter, sweeping up cars and pets and unknown people , and the whole scene was one of panic and great primal terror.

Next I was as I was the preceding afternoon, wearing a grey-striped pearlsnap shirt and dark jeans, leisurely strolling about my father's yard. Dogs ran up to play, dogs I recognized and also some strange. I thought nothing of it until a brood of kittens began doing the same, following me mewing, climbing up my leg. And then the birds; doves, chickens, songbirds, all following me, harassing and pleading and it was horrid and I realized I could understand their prayerful complaints. Mice began raining from a catalpa tree that was cut down years ago, falling upon me, one somehow making it past my elastic waistband and I could feel it disgusting and warm soft, nestling in the crotch of my underwear, coarse velvet and tiny nails against my genitals. I found my father and begged him to see the horde of animals taken to following me, looking at me with desperate empty animal eyes, and then the insects came. Ants, cicadas, flies. "There was a fucking mouse in my fucking underwear!" I gesture wildly at the animal entourage, all of whom followed my every move as overzealous followers of a faithless and corrupt terrified guru. When the birds began tucking their heads beneath their wings, looking back at me with sickeningly coy human glances, I gave up. "It's alright" I tell my father who may not have even been there. "I'm only sleeping"

and I'm back in the girl's apartment, though she is much younger now, and she haltingly tells me that her grandparents have been living in her bathroom for three years. She asks me to look in on them, and I hesitate when I see the dark closed door down the hall to the right. Suddenly, the door slowly creeps open, and her grandfather emerges. "Only he never looked like that!!!" she exclaims, clutching at me. The man is scarcely human now, walking with a gnarled cane that looks to be an extension of his arm, his hair a tangled mess of wiry white and twisted brown and green supplejack vine, arcing over his head to nearly for a halo or horns. His eyes open

Enough. I wake, heart aching and nearly sobbing, cheek pressed against dirty green carpet and see that at least the ants are real. I look at my cellphone, see it is nearly 3 am and I've slept for five hours and know I will not sleep again tonight. I rise, piss, drink water, smoke cigarettes, watch infomercials for miracle bras, take a mile walk in the dark and find an armadillo.

But what of those twenty minutes I won't mention, between sobbing on the floor and rising pissing drinking. Anxiety, panic, dread. Escaping from a sleep worse than death. Indescribable, makes a scared boy never want to sleep again. To wake up lost and alone, confused and terrified, better not to sleep at all.

Now I'll watch the sunrise on the back porch, watch the storm roll in and listen to the asshole rooster announce how he's going to take this day in his beak and spurs and fuck it, Amen. You're missing all of it. I need coffee.