Transformation Scene

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A terrible dream.

So terrible that, when I woke, I was shaking as if I had a rigor. The sheet and blankets had fallen to the floor, and I felt icy cold although I was wet with perspiration.

I sat up in bed, looked round the room, but the minutes passed and I could not believe that the dream was a dream. The familiar furniture, the customary sounds from the street, had an irrelevant quality, whereas every incident in the dream retained overwhelming reality.

Perhaps that was understandable, as I had just wakened, but, after I had dressed, after I had had toast and coffee, and smoked a cigarette in the sitting-room of this Chelsea flat where I have lived for some years, the memory of the dream still obsessed me like an incubus.

I tried every device to exorcise it. I talked aloud. I argued with myself—emphasised that I am recovering from illness; stressed that I—Max Arnold, an artist—am no stranger to odd experiences, so it was ridiculous, at the age of forty-four, to be unable to banish the memory of a dream—no matter how spectral or how terrifying. I got excited and began to argue with myself more vehemently. But it was no good. I failed. And I failed because I could not convince myself that the dream was a dream. . . .

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