The Nightmare Garden

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IN MY DREAM, I am alone.

The spires of a ruined city reach for gunmetal clouds, the horizon a wound in the belly of the sky.

Acrid chemical smoke burns the insides of my nostrils, and all around, sirens wail, banshees made of iron, steel and steam.

A road stretches out before me, and I must walk. Walk toward the dead city, under the red sky stained with the black taint of fire and smoke.

Something breaks under my boot, and I know before I look down what I’ll see.

Bones. Human skulls, femurs, ribs. The bones of other things as well, things that starved once the humans rotted away. Twisted spines, elongated jaws. Teeth.

I am alone. Alone except for the sirens, alone except for the burning, empty city on the edge of a rotting, polluted river green with algae, host to rubber-skinned, gibbous-eyed things with mouths large enough to swallow me whole and protruding stomachs ready to digest me.

Not even a ghoul remains to send up a howl. The city is dead. My city is dead.

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