The Descent

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The dreams came almost every night.

At first, I almost didn’t take notice of them. When they started, Luke had been gone only a few months and I was in that black fog that follows the death of a loved one. During the day, grief would fall on me suddenly. I’d look at the clock to find that an hour had passed and yet I couldn’t account for the time. Evenings were worse; I’d lie alone in the bed Luke and I had shared waiting for the night to inch by. Evening meant long hours of insomnia, listlessness, fitful snatches of sleep, and the pale lavender-gray of dawn coming too soon. The occasional nightmare could do little to impress me compared to that slow hell.

I first realized I was having nightmares when bits would suddenly bob to the surface of my consciousness: a flash of pale pink flesh, soft ochre candlelight, a streak of crimson blood. It was only by the end of the fourth month, when I started to have something resembling rest again, that the nightmares bled through, and I couldn’t fail to take notice of them then.

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